The referee Boggi is dead: from international matches to the clash with Nicchi – Calcio

Mourning in the world of football, especially in that of the referee class. He went to Salerno at the age of 67, Robert Anthony Boggi, former international whistler. Born in New York, but raised in the Campania city (it belonged to the Aia section of Salerno), Boggi had been ill for some time. In 2020 he had confessed: “I’m sick, I don’t know how much time I have left”.

Boggi’s debut in Serie A in 1990

Boggi managed 119 games in A league, making his debut in a Bari-Lazio match in 1990, the year in which he won the “Giorgio Bernardi” award as the best young rookie referee in the top flight. He was nominated international in 1996 (when he won a new recognition, the Mauro Prize) on the choice of the then designator Casarin and kept the position until 1999, when he decided to resign. Meanwhile the new designators were Bergamo and Pairetto. In the year of Calciopoli, 2006, the Extraordinary Commission of The Hague chose him as the new designator of the Serie C match officials, a position which however he left shortly after due to some disagreements with the president Gussoni, later becoming an observer for UEFA.

Boggi and the clash with Nicchi

He wasn’t one to tell them, Boggi. She knows something about it Marcello Nicchi, who found him an opponent in 2012 for the nomination to the presidency of The Hague. Nicchi won and Boggi didn’t take it well: “After the twenty years of Mussolini and Berlusconi, get ready for Nicchi’s”, said the whistler of American origins. The federal leaders did not take it very well and decided to take legal action. In recent years Boggi has criticized the division between Can A and Can B, while regarding the Var he has always declared himself in favor (“if there is a penalty it must be given, what does it matter if someone else signals it and not me?”) , however hoping for shorter decision times. And another stance was to give the referees the opportunity to speak into the microphones after the match. A subject that still remains a taboo today. Meanwhile, the vice president of The Hague, Duccio Baglionitogether with the members of the National Committee, expressed to the Boggi family “deep condolences on behalf of all the Italian referees”.