No red card for Collina...yet.
Written by JDPGlobal | Thursday, 30 June 2005
There is some good news for Collina fans who thought that he had blown his final whistle at the Series A relegation play-off between Bologna and Parma on June 18.
Italian football’s most famous figure, with staring eyes and gleaming pate, will have to put on hold the plans for an REM tribute band for a year now.
This unexpected turn of events has happened after the Italian football federation decided to raise the maximum age to 46. This will allow Collina to retire on June 30 next year, even though some serious questions have been raised about his eyesight and a fatal error that put Chelsea into the quarterfinals of the European Cup.
But, the bad part of the news is that Collina would still be ruled out of a farewell appearance at the 2006 World Cup finals, as UEFA has no plans to alter its age limit of 45 for international matches.
'The motivation behind the proposal is that Collina could extend his career with a move to the Barclays Premiership, where the retirement age is 48', one of the critics commented. However, experts ruled out the word that that talks broke down when the FA insisted that its Italian counterparts took Mike Riley and Steven Bennett in part-exchange.
