Surprise!!! There’s Corruption in Italian Football

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Less than a month before the World Cup is set to kick off in Munich, Italy has been rocked by a football scandal of epic proportions. Obviously, Neapolitan prosecutor Giovandomenico Lepore isn’t much of a fan or so it seems. Otherwise, perhaps he and his cohorts might’ve decided to wait a month or two before making these allegations public.

But then again, it was probably pretty tough to hide what’s been going on behind the scenes for more than a year now, especially after the entire Juventus board of directors resigned on Friday upon learning that their club, and in particular its General Director Luciano Moggi were at the center of controversy.

According to Lepore, club officials, federation officials, officials who assign referees to matches, referees and a journalist are among those under investigation. Along with Napoli and Fiorentina, Milan and Juventus are part of an investigation into “criminal association” and “sporting fraud”, in which 19 matches are being examined on suspicion that results were fixed. In total, 41 people are under investigation.

Perhaps no one is under more scrutiny than Luciano Moggi, the former General Director of Juventus, who resigned Sunday after his club won the Scudetto for a record 29th time. His entire board had already resigned two days earlier. And if found guilty, I hope they throw the book at Moggi. The things he’s been accused of make my stomach turn as both a fan of the game and as a referee. I cannot imagine such behind-the-scenes arm-twisting as that which Moggi has been charged with.

Investigators who tapped his phone for a year leaked some of the transcripts. In one he is heard telling Paolo Dandarini, who was about to referee a Juventus match: “You know what you have to do. Make sure you see everything - even that which isn’t there.” He also made frequent calls to Pierluigi Pairetto, joint head of the Italian referees’ association, to influence the choice of officials, and is heard upbraiding Mr Pairetto - once for providing a referee who allowed a goal against Juventus, another time for not securing a referee Mr Moggi had asked for. The official was terribly apologetic and promised to do better in the future.

One of Mr Moggi’s favourite tactics, it is alleged, was to ensure that top players in other teams got yellow cards, so that they were suspended when they were due to face Juventus. But the most direct grip he exercised on results was through the players. Mr Moggi’s 32-year-old son Alessandro is the boss of GEA, the biggest and most important players’ agency in Italy, which controls 200 professional players and 24 coaches. When Juventus played Siena last month, seven of the players in the Siena line-up were on GEA’s books: Juventus won the game 3-0. GEA is the subject of a separate criminal investigation.

In yet another incident, Moggi had the audacity to essentially kidnap the three match officials by locking them in their dressing room after Juventus had gone down in defeat and for not assuring a Juve victory beforehand. It’s like something from a “Sopranos” episode.

Now, like many football fans, I rather enjoyed reading the true tale of a small Italian club that made it into Serie B several years back. “The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro” by Boston writer Joe McGinniss recounted the author’s year with the club. I found his behind-the-scenes look at life in Italian football to be very intriguing, but was very disappointed at the end when McGinniss destroyed almost all of his relationships because he was appalled by the fact that the team threw a match in order to help their final opponents to attain promotion to Serie A.

I thought it wrong that the author should become so personally involved with his story. But in retrospect now, I understand his disgust and share in his disappoint at the dishonesty that seems to be so prevalent in Italian football. But I guess when it comes right down to it, top-level football is no different than any other business. It’s about money. And with the stakes as high as they are corruption seems like an easy way to protect your investment.

Ironically though, this scandal has rocked public stock in Juventus. Trading of its shares were suspended during the trading day last Friday when its price was falling at a precipitous rate, dropping more than 25%.

It’ll be interesting to see how this affects the team next year. Assuming they aren’t relegated to Serie B after being found guilty of these allegations, I wonder if their on-field performance will decline just like the value of its stock.

As a result of this multi-faceted scandal, the Italian football federation Saturday withdrew the World Cup accreditation of a well-known referee after he was also implicated. Referee Massimo De Santis, who I believe is a cop ironically, will be watching the World Cup from home rather than working at some of the matches. The two assistants slated to work with De Santis in Germany were also implicated and now will also not be featured at next month’s quadrennial tournament.

The Vatican newspaper, meanwhile, described the football scandal as an offense to sports and to its values, an opinion that I’m sure most of us share with the Holy See. The former team president of Bologna, Giuseppe Gazzoni Frascara, said the scandal is almost enough to make one ashamed to be Italian. He even questioned whether the Italian team should even play in the world championship. However, unlike the domestic league, I don’t think the referees at the World Cup will be so easily corrupted, so that would seem rather harsh in my estimation.

Maybe somebody who should stay home, however, would be Juve’s goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon who has been accused of betting on football matches, which is strictly prohibited. You don’t want a guy like that on your team if he’s placing wagers on the U.S. beating the Azzurri. That could make for a nice payday after all.

In the last major scandal to hit Italian football, AC Milan and Lazio were demoted to Serie B in 1980 following a match-fixing and illegal gambling investigation. But maybe sending the guilty squads down two divisions to Serie C1 would seem like a more just punishment. This might ensure that clubs never-again engage in such blatantly unsporting tactics in the future.

**I’d like to come clean here and admit that much of the above inforation has been lifted directly from other articles produced by, among others, The Independent, Voice of America, and Al Jazeera.