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       #Post#: 108154--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Michael Oliver nears English record
   DIR By: jad
       Date: July 1, 2026, 5:22 am
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       --- Quote from: Lanyardhater link ---
       >
       > Thank you ARF.  I hadn’t realised Collina was in Italy’s top
       flight for as long as he was (15 years I’ve just found out) - I
       rather lost track of Serie A when Channel 4 stopped showing live
       matches (James Richardson, Peter Brackley, Gary Bloom - and even
       the legendary Kenneth Wolstenholme - happy days!).
       >
       > But Collina was still 88 shy of the man from Syracuse!
       >
       --- End Quote ---
       If Italian Wikipedia is to be believed, the runner-up to
       Concetto Lo Bello is Daniele Orsato, who handled 289 games in
       Serie A.  He may have benefitted in part from the fact that for
       ten years of his career there were separate lists for Serie A
       and Serie B.  Another relevant factor is the retirement age: Lo
       Bello retired at 50, Collina at 45 and Orsato at 48.
       And then there is the distribution of appointments.  In 2014 I
       went to an exhibition to celebrate the golden jubilee of the
       Bologna's last scudetto.  One of the exhibits was a table giving
       the teams and match referees of all the 35* fixtures played that
       season, and if I counted correctly, only thirteen referees were
       involved in those fixtures.  Even more striking was the fact
       that in the second half of the season, when it was presumably
       clear that Bologna were challenging for title, their games were
       handled by three referees working in rotation.  One of these was
       Lo Bello, and since it is reasonable to assume that he also
       officiated at games involving other teams, one might logically
       infer that was refereeing in Serie A in just about every round
       of fixtures.  In later years appointments have been distributed
       more evenly: nowadays a top referee might expect over a 38-game
       season to serve as match referee at somewhere in the region of
       18-20 Serie A games.
       *35 because this was the one and only occasion when the title
       was decided by a play-off between the top two teams, who had
       finished equal on points.  And the referee was Concetto Lo
       Bello.
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