The reason hes so good is because he doesnt stick to the letter of the law like alot of the other refs. He does as he chooses the other refs are so worried about the agudicator in the crowd monitoring him. Collinas the best ref ever.
Interesting Collina interview in the Observer the other day - said something along the lines of how he likes to interpret the rules, rather than rigidly apply them, depending on specific circumstances. Mind you, the photo managed to look even scarier than he does most days. . .
As a kid who only ever read football-related books, remember poring through the autobiographies of Keith Hackett and Clive Thomas (surely the likes of D'Urso, Poll, Riley, etc, wouldn't dare?), and they were both interesting = to the same extent that the Roy of the Rovers / Shoot "You are the ref" quizzes were - but both were too showy - as I will always hate, above all, Graham Poll for being (the fact he denied Spurs a nailed-on last-minute penalty in the Millennium Stadium two years ago and condemned me to the most miserable journey home of my life, is entirely coincidental). Then again, in his Observer piece, Collina flatly rejects the theory that a good referee is an unnoticed referee - maybe he's just an England fan!
