The World’s Most Hated Referee

We Came to Win

Gimlet

Sports, Soccer, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.3 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2018

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Say the name Byron Moreno to any fan of Italian soccer and you’re likely to get the same response: that guy is the worst. It all stems from one game at the 2002 World Cup where Moreno was the referee. It was a match between Italy and South Korea that resulted in an unlikely upset for South Korea. Italian fans have never gotten over it, insisting Moreno was part of a huge scandal to fix the results of the World Cup. But a look into Moreno’s past tells a more complicated story. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.media/OurAdvertisers CREDITS: We Came to Win is hosted by Nando Vila. This episode was produced by Emily Ulbricht, Emma Morgenstern, and Ngofeen Mputubwele, with help from Anna Foley and Jasmine Romero. Our senior producer is Matthew Nelson. Our editors are Caitlin Kenney, Devon Taylor, and Jessica Weisberg. This episode was scored, sound designed, and mixed by Bobby Lord. Check out more Gimlet podcasts at gimletmedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	A couple of months ago my producer Emily Ilbricht walked into a New York soccer bar.
0:08.0	An Italian league match was playing so the bar was full of Italian expats. And Emily came here to ask them all one very specific question.
0:17.6	What's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name, Byron Marina?
0:21.6	If I have to be explicit, it was like a shitty asshole for us.
0:26.0	It was like the worst wrath that I never seen my life.
0:30.0	He makes such crazy coal against... life.
0:33.0	He makes such crazy coal against Italy that was like really
0:37.0	unthinkable.
0:38.0	We were probably the best team ever since 200 years.
0:42.0	It was the best team available and we just lost because of him.
0:46.0	One thing is sure you will never be forgotten by any Italian man or woman, grandmother.
0:52.0	We definitely ate him like... man or woman, grandmother.
0:53.0	We definitely ate him, like,
0:55.0	it's probably the darkest page of our history.
1:00.0	The darkest page he's referring to is the 2002 World Cup match between Italy and South Korea.
1:06.2	A game that Italy were huge favorites to win, but lost.
1:10.8	A loss they blame on Byron Moreno.
1:14.0	And the pain of this loss was so brutal, so everlasting that now,
1:19.0	16 years later, the name Byron Moreno invokes fury, not just in soccer bars, but in all kinds of places in Italy.
1:28.0	Because Byron Moreno's name has transcended sport and become a national insult.
1:33.2	Like in the Italian Parliament in 2015, when the politician Janluka-Castale
1:40.6	compared the Speaker of the Senate to Byron Moreno. It was perceived as such a
	...

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