[Archived] Italian Refereeing Scandal

[Fife Rover]

CARRY ON FIXING

WORLD CUP FINAL ITALY v FRANCE, TOMORROW, KICK-OFF 7PM

Lift the World Cup and we'll give amnesty to clubs says minister

Martin Lipton Chief Football Writer

ITALY were handed an extraordinary boost ahead of the World Cup Final last night when the country's justice minister said there should be an amnesty for the clubs in the corruption scandal.

Seven of Marcello Lippi's starting side in Berlin play for clubs facing relegation from Serie A following the bribery and match-fixing shame that has taken Italian football into the gutter.

Juventus quartet Gianluigi Buffon, Gianluca Zambrotta, Fabio Cannavaro and Mauro Camoranesi face being demoted two divisions to Serie C with the Turin club the most heavily implicated.

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AC Milan midfielders Andrea Pirlo and Gennaro Gattuso, plus Fiorentina striker Luca Toni, also fear being plunged into Serie B, with another six members of Lippi's squad playing for those three clubs or Lazio who are also implicated.

But with recently-elected Prime Minister Romano Prodi having gone into the Italy dressing room after their semifinal win over Germany to join in the choruses of 'O Sole Mio', new Italian Justice Minister Clemente Mastella hinted at a possible escape clause for all four clubs.

Mastella believes the enjoyment the players have given the nation in the past month should be rewarded. He said: "The government cannot get involved in this issue but I do think the majority of fans want an amnesty.

"As a fan, let me ask this: is it fair that Cannavaro and Alessandro Del Piero and so many others should play in the third division after everything they have done?"

Lazio lawyer Gian Michele Gentile suggested the amnesty call would not come to anything because it would otherwise "render this whole trial pointless" but the highprofile intervention gave the Italy squad a massive lift.

Lippi's players were concentrating on how they would prevent Zinedine Zidane ending his career with the ultimate high in tomorrow's Berlin showdown.

Gattuso said: "You simply don't stop Zidane. He is one of the strongest players - when he has the ball you have to do the sign of the cross and hope he misses.

"When Zidane is 100 per cent he doesn't let you see the ball. With him, it's just a case of magic, now you see the ball and now you don't. It is worth paying money to watch him play."

While the Berlin Stadium is remembered more for the feats of Jesse Owens, those 1936 Olympics saw Italy taste victory in the football tournament.

Adding more golden medals tomorrow will require a bigger effort but former Everton star Marco Materazzi is backing Gattuso to keep Zidane at bay.

Materazzi said: "There's no need to charge Gattuso up, otherwise he would split the world in two. He can certainly mark Zidane.

"France are used to winning and we will have to work very hard because they have great players. But we are playing the most important game of our lives and we know what we have to do."

And skipper Cannavaro, who will earn his 100th cap tomorrow, is determined to shackle Thierry Henry and take revenge on France for two of the most miserable nights of his career.

Cannavaro said: "Earning my 100th cap in the World Cup Final is like crowning a dream for me."

The 32-year-old added: "I knew this could be my last World Cup so I asked my team-mates to help me go all the way.

"Whenever I think of France it brings back terrible memories of losing to them in the penalty shoot-out in Paris in 1998 and the Euro 2000 Final in Rotterdam.

"We're going to have to sweat, scrap and suffer but we can't contemplate defeat.

"We have already shown in this tournament that we are able to play good football."

Let's just hope France wins it then, or there will be no bargain sales for the rest of us!

[herbergeehh]

I think you just won the annual "least necessary quoting award" there, Fife

Two good quotes late at night, courtesy of Channel4.com:

“I don’t know if the editor of Der Spiegel has some sort of problem because he got beaten up by an Italian as a child or his wife has been cheating on him with an Italian Stallion.”

- Gennaro Ivan Gattuso.

“When we were on the field, Gianluca Pessotto was the only teammate who had permission to give me a talking to. Now it’s my turn to shake him out of it.”

- Paolo Montero: A hardman with a heart of gold.

[neekoy]

That would be disgusting if those clubs are given an amnesty.

The players have a choice in the matter, they will not play in lower divisions they will move on elsewhere, and that is the price the clubs ahve to play for the worst sporting offence that can be committed.

[G Somerset Rover]

Guys I think that its a win win situation regardless if the big clubs get Buffon/Nesta/Kaka etc etc. Think about it say Chelsea and Utd sign t6hese three players then their current players position becomes difficult therefore meaning that they'll be unwanted by the two clubs. Perhaps we could then pick up the likes of Geremi/Carvalho etc...or maybe even the likes of Crespo and Van Nistelrooy. Hughes and the board are quite right not to go panic buying quite yet because were going to be in the position of being able to get some quality players later this summer.

[philipl]

There is a very interesting article in this morning's New York Times. As it is a registration site I have copied it out:

Op-Ed Contributor

A Soccer Scandal Made for Television

By ALEXANDER STILLE

Published: July 9, 2006

THROUGHOUT Italy's ride to the World Cup finals, the team has produced moments of beauty, grit and creativity before a cumulative worldwide television audience estimated at 30 billion or more. But lurking ominously behind the Italian team's exploits, and perhaps even driving a desire for redemption through victory, is the scandal that has engulfed Italian soccer for months. It's a scandal born of two elements certain to be on display in today's championship game: the competitor's drive to win and the power of television to shape commerce and culture.

The scandal emerged from within the Italian leagues, where a handful of dominant teams are accused of trying to rig the national sport in order to ensure victory and, as a consequence, command a disproportionate share of television revenues. Indictments by prosecutors in Naples, based in part on thousands of wiretapped conversations, depict executives of the nation's most successful teams bullying and bribing referees to guarantee victory in key matches.

In one alleged instance, Luciano Moggi, the former general director of Turin's team, Juventus, punished uncooperative referees by confining them in a locker room. An executive of A.C. Milan, the team owned by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, apparently had no such trouble; he can be heard on tape brazenly calling another referee "our man."

That Berlusconi's name should appear prominently in this business is hardly happenstance. If Italian society and Italian soccer resemble each other, it's in part because both have been dominated so thoroughly by him. The richest man in Italy, Berlusconi oversees a vast empire that includes the biggest publishing and movie production companies in the country and a virtual monopoly on commercial television.

When he took over A.C. Milan in 1986, he bought up the best players, then presented his new stars by landing them, via helicopter, in the Milan stadium, accompanied by the blaring strains of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyrie." Other teams went into debt trying to compete with Berlusconi's showmanship and deep pockets.

While Berlusconi pauperized opponents with one hand, however, he enriched them — or some of them — with the other. He began using his private television company, Mediaset, to bring big money into the game. In the past, Italian soccer had rarely been seen on TV. The state-owned television network, worried that fans might not fill stadiums if they were able to watch matches at home, generally showed only one match per week — and only the second half of that.

Berlusconi's network changed everything, eventually televising several matches a week. Stadiums indeed became emptier. But through rising television revenues, soccer was transformed into one of Italy's biggest businesses, worth about $6 billion a year. And Italian soccer teams now depend more on television revenue than teams in any other major European country. Television led to a winner-take-all economy. Indeed, a group of young Italian economists published a series of economic studies of Italian soccer on the Web site La Voce that more or less predicted the current disaster.

Because networks are almost exclusively interested in broadcasting the matches of big-city teams with national followings (like Turin, Milan and Rome), smaller teams (Como, Brescia and Parma) have received a much smaller piece of the pie. With less revenue from television, these smaller teams have less money available to compete for star players.

It probably didn't help matters that the league chose as its president Adriano Galliani, the head of Berlusconi's team. Not surprisingly, he negotiated a television contract with Berlusconi's network that mainly rewarded A.C. Milan and the other wealthy teams. Even in the throes of scandal, Italian soccer has resisted mechanisms like revenue sharing and salary caps that help to maintain the health of American sports leagues.

Television not only provided incentive for corruption, but some of the venues, as well. Italy's soccer mania is fed by a seemingly endless supply of TV talk shows that dissect and analyze each match, including the behavior of referees. Some of this commentary was allegedly for sale. The host of one of the most popular shows was recently forced to resign after wiretaps revealed him seemingly taking orders from Moggi, the former head of Juventus, on how to talk about a match.

In response to the scandal, there is talk of punishing four teams, including A.C. Milan, by demoting them to the minor leagues. Several important sports figures risk going to jail for their actions and 26 are under indictment. But whether any of this will lead to genuine change is far from certain.

The Italian national team's marvelous World Cup play demonstrates that when players are freed from a corrupt system and allowed to compete fairly, the results can be truly exhilarating. Team Italy has had a beautiful run to the finals. Let's hope that, regardless of who triumphs today, the Italian players don't return home only to resume a tainted and ugly game.

Alexander Stille is the author of "The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country With a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi."

[Manchester Blue]

According to the times the other day it said that informed sources in Italy had said the most likely outcome will be Juventus being demoted to Serie B and stripped of their last 2 titles, with the other 3 clubs receiving fines and points deductions.

[neekoy]

Further from the amnesty plea

"In the run-up to the final, Justice Minister Clemente Mastella suggested an amnesty for all the accused if Italy won the World Cup -- a call he repeated after the final whistle.

"The idea of (Gianluigi) Buffon, (Fabio) Cannavaro and (Alessandro) Del Piero playing in Serie B or C next season isn't acceptable," he said.

Other politicians, however, have dismissed the amnesty idea."

Thank god for that, Mastella is obviously a Juve supporter

[DanLad]

What time is the decision out?

It is today, isn't it?

[SAS]

today or tomorrow

[RevidgeBlue]

According to the times the other day it said that informed sources in Italy had said the most likely outcome will be Juventus being demoted to Serie B and stripped of their last 2 titles, with the other 3 clubs receiving fines and points deductions.

That would tie in with today's rather bizarre news that Mutu has completed a transfer from Juve to Fiorentina.

If that does turn out to be be the outcome it will be a long way from being the "buyers market" philip has been getting his knickers in a twist about all summer.

I still wouldn't be surprised to see no-one relegated.

Edited July 10, 2006 by RevidgeBlue

[Flopsy]

they'll get a slap across the wrists and thats it. Possibly a fine and their title/CL place given to others

[philipl]

A huge amount hangs on the nature of the verdicts.

The Italians regularly cleanse and renew themselves of the inherent nepotism and corruption in the way their society is organised through having a powerful, independent and investigative judiciary.

In this football case two completely independent judicial groups are at work- the sports tribunal and the criminal investigation with the criminal broken up into four teams in four completely different and very independent regional offices.

From a judicial standpoint, that seems to be a recipe for optimising the chances of getting a guilty verdict as each of these groups knows that the others will be working flat out to get these high profile people convicted and that their reputation/promotion opportunities within the judicial system are dependent on doing at least as well as the other judicial groups on the case.

Politically, Prodi and the rest of the old time Italian politicians now back in Government never want to see Berlusconi or his like ever to darken/enlighten the Italian political scene again. Everybody knows that Berlusconi shamelessly used his media control to drive his political party which then re-wrote the laws in favour of his business interests and latterly tried to set up immunity from prosecution for Berlusconi himself. In the Berlusconi political/commercial industry, AC Milan was a key element and Galliano sitting as head of AC and the Italian League was Berlusconi's number one henchman in football and in other aspects of Berlusconi's empire.

The fact that Moggi is being publicly named and shamed yet Galliano is also in the dock but not so publicly fingered yet is probably all part of a bigger game to nail Berlusconi. The timing of the announcement of the first trial of Berlusconi for fraud last week is probably all part of a larger strategy which will include a sporting tribunal guilty verdict on Galliano this week which will open up the criminal processes on the AC Milan leg of the Berlusconi empire. The Sporting Tribunal might want to anticipate what might be coming out of the Berlusconi trials and do a deal so that AC only gets hit by punishment once so that whatever comes out later, they can point to AC having already been punished. Cascading Juve's titles onto AC would not be seen to be a punishment if AC are later seen to be part of a bigger and altogether murkier scandal.

Prodi has been completely unwilling to do any deal with Berlusconi despite a wafer thin majority so he must be confident of nailing Berlusconi one way or another and the football revelations have come rather conveniently for him.

When we look at sanctions, the Italians have not been backwards in relegating clubs including previous relegations for two of the clubs in the dock- both AC and Fiorentina. The misdemeanours ten (I think it is now) clubs have been relegated for in the past are all relatively minor compared with the wholesale sporting fraud now being alleged. An AC relegation because Berlusconi's man Galliano was demonstrably corrupt would again be good news for the present Government in separating the AC tifossi from their love affair with Berlusconi's politics.

Looking at the global picture, UEFA and FIFA have just banned Greece- the current European Champions- because there is legislation which enables Government to have influence on the Greek football authorities in return for funding. The reason the supreme bodies have taken such an extreme action is they see political control in exchange for money as having the potential for reducing the sporting nature of the game.

Were the Italian authorities not to act in a case of proven actual impairment of the sporting nature of the game, FIFA/UEFA would have no option but to intervene or else they would not have a leg to stand on when the Greeks contest their ban. There are millions at stake in the Italian game but there are billions at stake globally in terms of being able to offer a true sporting contest to the gambling industries (who rely on the public believing it is a sporting chance in order to take their money- operative word believing) and all the sponsorship moneys which undoubtedly go elsewhere if the sponsors perceive their customers associate them with outright corruption through football sponsorship.

Rather like pregnancy, you cannot be seen as being just a little bit corrupt/tainted in terms of brand integrity never mind what the realities might be behind the scenes.

If Italians can match fix through rigged referees and get away with it then the public might surmise it happens elsewhere with impunity. Besides which, this is too good a chance for the Spaniards not to kick Serie A whilst its down (there will be a lot of international TV rights which the Italians currently have as the second league after the Premiership going up for grabs) with the Bundeslega and French League probably anxious to advance their leagues' relative international standings as well.

I suspect the calls for clemency if Italy won were a crude political calculation by a Justice Minister who knows he caught the pre-World Cup Final mood of the public to incentivise the players but who also knows the nature of the verdicts already. If there are straight guilties on match fixing through buying referees, he can say "I did my best but these are truly naughty boys". In voting terms, there are far more votes amongst the supporters of all the clubs not on trial than there are of the four clubs on trial.

We will see.

Edited July 11, 2006 by philipl

[Guest Kamy100]

Trial Verdict is due at 5pm.

Speculation is that Juventus will be relegated to Serie B. The other clubs will remain in Serie A but will be fined and face a points deduction.

[Ronin]

You've already got Real Madrid making moves for Cannavaro, what with Capello now there as well, and Chelsea apparently in as well.

And if the "Big clubs" are relegated, wonder what the coverage on Bravo & Setanta will be like?

Edited July 11, 2006 by Ronin

[Cocker]

Just been on Skysports that the verdict will now be at the end of the week.

[yawnsie]

Arse! I've been sat here in work for the past hour, hoping to liven up my day by seeing Juve dumped down a few divisions.

[Eddie]

wrong topic

Edited July 11, 2006 by Eddie

[SAS]

bloody hell

they are taking the ######

just have it over with

[philipl]

Combination of things happening:

1) A desire not to deflate the World Cup win feel good factor too soon.

2) Behind the scenes attempted sentence bargaining with everyone having an opinion- FIFA, UEFA, media interests, Government, local politicians, the criminal investigators, the new management of Italian football, the four clubs involved, the four clubs who will get European places, the four clubs in Serie B that will get promoted, the club in Serie C that will get promoted, G14 etc. etc...

Some will be listened to, some won't be.

3) No doubt the Italian League will want to have a ready answer for whether they will take advantage of the relegations (if it is all four) to return Serie A to 18 clubs. It only grew to 20 because of a previous mess up in Serie B a few years ago. The delay tends to point towards allowing the authorities to plan for a bigger shake-up and therefore towards guilty verdicts on all four. As I've said before, clubs have been relegated in Italian football for lesser demeanours than the charges laid against AC, Fiorentina and Lazio.

The fall out from the anticipated verdicts is beginning- Juve to sell seven: http://wc2006.telegraph.co.uk/Document.asp...97-87405AF04CA7

The Times report that all of Real's £35m transfer budget will go on a Serie A clean-up of a different sort and that Ashley Cole won't find anyone willing to trigger his £16m release clause to leave Arsenal because of the glut of top flight players on the market.

Edited July 12, 2006 by philipl

[Paperazi]

Personally I think it would be un-just to not Punish them, the evidence is there. The chances are they will probably walk away with a fine (Thought by Italian FA to be hefty) possibly a transfer market ban, or at worst elimination from European competition. The Italians have a funny way of dealing with things, It tends to work out ok for themselves.

On the other hand, if they do get relegated, Financially they will be secure... On the basis they offload all the big moneybags at the club. I's say they would fly back up to Serie A straight away

[herbergeehh]

Those chances are very very slim, Paperazi. I don't know you, or where you are from, but I'm guessing you're not an Italian? (not the point, I just wonder with your name and all..)

Juventus will get relegated, I am as sure as you can be without actually knowing of that. Serie B or Serie C (1,2,3?) is the question, and of course also points deduction and fines are possible.

As for the three other clubs, I wouldn't be surprised to see them stay in the Serie A (without European participation - perhaps Fiorentina can get a UEfA place), since the cases against them are far less serious than Moggi and Juve's case.

As for the politicians and statements, it's not worth discussing - this is being used for everything it's worth. "We protect our heroes" and so on..

My unofficial bet:

Juve relegated to Serie C1 or Serie B with point deduction (15p?).

Fiorentina, Lazio, Milan certainly not further than Serie B, I think Lazio might be punished hardest of the three - relegation looms..

As mentioned earlier, punishment has been dealt out before in Italy, and this time the scenario is brand new - since some of the big men has been removed from central positions.

I also expect Juve to keep a lot of good players, and to achieve promotion directly.

[tchocky]

Well the verdict is as follows:

AC Milan - Serie A with 9pts deducted

Fiorentina/Lazio - Serie A with 15 pts deducted

Juventus - Serie B with 15 pts deducted

Too lenient ??

[cn_barlow]

Well the verdict is as follows:

AC Milan - Serie A with 9pts deducted

Fiorentina/Lazio - Serie A with 15 pts deducted

Juventus - Serie B with 15 pts deducted

Too lenient ??

Very disappointing news from a transfer perspective.

Where did you get this from?

Edited July 12, 2006 by cn_barlow

[yawnsie]

Yeah, where's that from tchocky? I haven't been able to find anything on the net.

[Flopsy]

me neither