Juventus Sees a Hidden Hand at Work Juventus remains in first place in Italy's Serie A, though not by as much as it thinks it should be, after a 1-1 tie against Genoa on Saturday night that threatened to empty the club's sizable reserves of indignation. The spark behind Juve's fury was the decision of the referee, Marco Guida, not to award a penalty in the third minute of added time when Genoa's Andreas Granqvist cleared a cross off his arm in the penalty area. The incident was clear, but so was Guida's immediate reaction that the handball was not deliberate, much to the dismay of the players who soon surrounded him, not to mention their finger-wagging manager. Unlike with the equally obvious handball (non) call that probably cost Chelsea a win in the F.A. Cup on Sunday, there was no question of whether the officials in Turin had seen the incident, according to Juventus Coach Antonio Conte. I can understand that a penalty might not be given, but not a referee telling me he didn't feel he could give it. I would have preferred him to tell me that he hadn't seen it, but I don't accept that kind of answer. The goal-line official and the fourth official said that it was a penalty, so what's the point of having other referees if their opinions aren't considered? Conte went on to suggest that Guida wasn't up to his job - "In such cases, you have to hand in your refereeing license" - and told Sky Italia: "Even a blind man would have seen it was a penalty! I'll accept it if they admit their error, but hearing a referee say, 'I didn't feel ready' to give the penalty, is not normal. The Juventus president, Beppe Moratta, went further. He claimed that the referee "comes from Naples," insinuating that Guida sought to manipulate the outcome in favor of second-place Napoli, which closed to only 3 points behind Juventus by beating Parma, 2-1, on Sunday. "It's not right that a referee from the Naples region is designated to referee a Juventus game," Moratta told reporters. Just as a referee from Novara, a town west of Milan, should not be picked for a Juventus game, Moratta said, neither should a referee from Naples. Juventus, of course, knows quite a bit about picking referees. That was what made their criticisms particularly rich, especially when they came out of the mouth of a coach who recently served a suspension for his role in Italy's most recent match-fixing scandal. "Every time there's an incident that goes in our favor, there's a lot of noise made," Conte said. And when there's one that goes against us, people tend to overlook it. That's not right in my opinion.