U.S. Soccer and the world lost one of its best men and referees, Vincent Mauro

By Michael Lewis

It's not easy to talk to a top-level referee these days.

You probably have to go through at least one organization to get permission and then some.

Back in the day, it was easier.

You just had to be in the right place at the right time.

I used to joke with the game officials that I knew on Long Island, Eastern New York and New Jersey, and there were plenty of them, that referees and sportswriters would have to sit in the back of the proverbial bus.

I got to know some very well. We usually talked off the record, about soccer, officiating and even life, believe it or not (yes, not everything you say to a sportswriter or any journalist, for that matter, is on the record).

At the 1987 Under-20 World Cup in Chile, I met the great Vincent Mauro.

After the U.S. squad (which, by the way, included goalkeepers Tony Meola and Kasey Keller) was eliminated from the tournament, there weren't too many Americans left in the competition's orbit. Mauro was one of them as he worked the middle and the line (they were called linesmen in those days before FIFA changed the name of the position to assistant referee.

That was back in the days when FIFA had game officials working the middle and the sidelines.

Mauro certainly was on his way up the FIFA refereeing ladder, although you would never know it from his demeanor. He was as down to earth as you could get.

We wound up taking the same flight back to New York; I believe it was Pan-Am. We struck up a conversation while waiting to board the plane and even on the flight.

Just about everything was off the record. We talked about the tournament, of course, how Yugoslavia surprised just about everyone but themselves in capturing the championship (Robert Prosinecki and Davor Suker, who later starred for Croatia after the breakup of Yugoslavia, were key performers on that team).

I knew early on that Vincent Mauro was a class act, on and off the field.

Unfortunately, we lost Vincent, as it was reported by the New Jersey State Referees Committee reported on its Facebook page on Saturday that Mauro passed away. He was 80.

I am glad I got to know Mauro from a personal and professional standpoint.

Not only did Mauro live his dream, but he also was passionate about it.

In 1990, he got the opportunity of a lifetime, being selected as one of 36 referees to work Italia '90, aka the World Cup.

“It’s just an honor to be a participant and to be invited,” he told this writer for a story in 1990. “You ask any referee, ‘If you want to go to the World Cup, would you pay our own way?’ Ninety-nine percent of them will say yes. It is the most important thing for a referee.”

In fact, Vincent was so honored about working the World Cup that he would have done for nothing. Heck, he would have even paid his own way.

Fortunately, he didn't have to worry about the latter as he took a six-week leave from his job as an engineer with Syska and Hennessy for his stay in Italy.

Mauro returned to the land of his birth to officiate at the largest sporting event in the world. He was born in a small town near Avellino in southern Italy before emigrating to the United States in 1964.

"To me, it's almost like a double," he said then. "It hasn't settled on me yet. I still believe it's a dream."

The dream became reality. Mauro wound up working six matches, five on the line and one in the middle.

Mauro was passionate about refereeing, as his actions spoke louder than his words.

A week after returning as a referee’s assistant at the Copa America final between Brazil and Uruguay before 180,000 fans at Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro in July 1989, Mauro officiated at the Long Island Junior Soccer League select tournament.

He had driven from his Arlington, Mass. home to watch his son, Joseph, play for the district Under-13 select team.

“I always bring my uniform,” Mauro said. “You never know when there is a shortage of referees or when they don’t show up.

Mauro was needed, working several U-13 and U-14 matches.

“I have received so many good things from soccer,” he said. “This is the way I can give it back.”

Mauro's ascension to FIFA referee status was no shock or rapid. He started out as a pure youth referee in Massachusetts, graduated to the senior level, hen to the national level. He was in the middle of the old American Soccer League and North American Soccer League games. He finally was named a FIFA referee in 1985.

Let's face it. It's not easy becoming a FIFA ref, let alone working at the World Cup. In 1990, there were 40,000 licensed referees in the United States and six were selected as FIFA referees then.

At the time, some 167 countries belonged to FIFA, and just 36 game officials selected to work Italia 90.

“I must be doing something right,” Mauro said in 1990. “I never thought about the World Cup. I always wanted to be the top referee. When you get to the top of your business, you try harder.”

The hard work certainly paid off.

In 1987, he worked the U-20 World Cup in Chile; the middle in a semifinal and then on the line in the third-place match.

A year later, he worked the Olympics Games in Seoul, handling the game officials' chores for the Brazil-Nigeria matchup, was senior assistant referee for the Soviet Union-Australia quarterfinal and the fourth official in the gold medal match between the Soviets and Brazil. Immediately afterwards, he did the Asian Cup in Qatar.

In 1989, he was at Copa America and then the Asian final qualifiers in Singapore. He worked the United Arab Emirates-Saudi Arabia and China-Qatar encounters.

Through 1990, Mauro estimated that he had worked more than 1,600 games.

When asked what his most memorable matches was, Mauro paused and had to think about it.

"I never had a boring game," he said.

There was one NASL game in Chicago in 1983 when Team America visited the Chicago Sting on artificial turf at Soldier Field.

"Believe me, I lost 10 pounds," he said. "I was just one piece of wet clothing. Players can stop and rest and drink some water. The referee can't. The referee has to keep pace. I was afraid of dehydration."

All that experience certainly came in handy in Italy that June 1990. So did Mauro's proficiency in several languages. He spoke English and Italian fluently and took French in high school. He also knew Spanish and a bit of Portuguese.

At the Seoul Olympics, Mauro was a popular man among his colleagues were who were from French-speaking Gabon and France.

Mauro was just another in a long line of Massachusetts-based referees who made the grade at the FIFA level. David Socha of Ludlow, Mass., worked the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. Dilvo DiPlacido of Framingham, Mass. worked the U-16 World Cup in Canada in 1967, among other assignments, and Angelo Bratsis of Holbrook, Mass also was a FIFA ref.

Back in the 80 and 90s, was it in the drinking water in New England, or something else?

"We started with a group of referees when the national program was put in place [in 1975]," Mauro said. "There were 20 of us and 12 became national referees. We worked hard. We went into the classroom from September to May every Tuesday night. We took the laws a part. We argued. We disagreed. We went on the field. We trained together.

"This is our secret. We helped each other. There is no jealousy. If someone is down, we help him up. If somebody is successful, we all applaud."

At Italia 90, Mauro worked the line in five matches, including some classic confrontations.

He was on the line the opening encounter between defending champion Argentina and Cameroon, which set the tone for a low-scoring tournament as Diego Maradona suffered one foul after another in a 1-0 victory for the former.

Mauro also worked the contentious confrontation between Germany and the Netherlands, as the former prevailed, 2-1, in the group stage, and the classic quarterfinal between England and Cameroon as the English rallied from a two-goal deficit into a 3-2 win. He also refereed the Korea Republic-Belgium group stage game.

Not too shabby for someone who was able to live his dream and then some.

RIP, Vincent.