The Juventus scandal! The financial scams: measures against, only -15 points in the ranking!!
It is the 2022 – 2023 season of Serie “A”
Juventus is sentenced for financial fraud with only -15 points, effectively escaping the strictest punishments such as relegation to Serie “B” and exclusion from the Champions League, when it comes to such crimes!
Charges: False corporate communications, obstruction of the exercise of the functions of public supervisory authorities, market manipulation and fraudulent declaration through the use of invoices or other documents for transactions that do not exist. The prosecutor of Turin believes that the company has irregularly changed the financial results of 2019, 2020 and 2021, a maneuver that has also affected the performance of Juventus’ stock on the stock market. “Forza Juve” Decision: The Federal Court of Appeal goes beyond: Heavy punishments for the leaders as well: 2 and a half years for Paratici, 2 years for Agnelli and Arrivabene, 1 year and 4 months for Cherubini and 8 months for Nedved.
“Always your strength” Unlike the other cases, as was the most sensational case in 2006, for “Calciopoli”, (buying and selling of matches and referees), this time the team is being punished for another reason: financial fraud! !! From one scandal to another!!! It seems clear that the name “Juventus” can never remain without coming to justice, because it does not, if not in one violation after another… and starting from this experience, a good and attentive follower of Italian football does not I would be wrong if I make such a prediction… Maybe we are on the only page that has warned of many irregularities and we have questioned the progress of this team, its successes and sometimes even directly with articles and comments. And here “the wolf changes the grass but never forgets the habit” Historically, during the periods of time in Italian football, there have been times when it occupied the head not only of the classification table (without any merit), but also of the sports media.
Corruption!
Buy and sell matches!
Doping……..
The scandal of capital gains is only the latest case in a long series of controversial issues that have marked the history of the Juventus club.
From the Moggi system to doping, from refereeing to bloody cup finals (1985 in Heysel, from a non-existent penalty).
It all started 125 years ago on a bench among the Art Nouveau buildings of Corso Re Umberto in Turin. It was an afternoon there at the end of October in 1897 – where a group of boys, students of the “Massimo D’Azeglio” high school, children of the Piedmontese bourgeoisie, decided to found a football team. To set the name, they chose to refer to their blessed age and used Latin: thus Juventus was born. Those passionate teenagers could not imagine, at the time, that their primordial creation would become the most famous club in the history of the Italian championship.
But even the most hated, constantly accused of irregularities, sometimes even convicted by the courts. Thus a shining epic constantly tarnished by various shadows: scandals made by dubious arbitration, bloody cups, banned drugs, encrypted phone cards, up to today’s alleged financial violations, which forced the board of directors of was resigning in the group, including the president Andrea. Agnelli, for whom the Turin prosecutor’s office is seeking a trial. “It’s almost the scandal like “Calciopoli”, only that everyone was on us that time, while this time we created it ourselves”, the financial director Stefano Bertola (under investigation) said a few months ago during a dinner – intercepted by the magistrates – with sporting director Federico Cherubini (who has not been investigated).
“Calciopoli” is the name by which the scandal engulfed the world of Italian football in 2006 and particularly hit Juventus, where it was considered the linchpin of an “illegal match-fixing system” headed by managing director Antonio Giraudo. and general manager Luciano Moggi, both convicted, but then saved at the last minute by the statute of limitations, for sports fraud and criminal association.
Through a dense network of relationships with Federcalcio executives and appointed referees – to whom he had even given foreign SIM cards to keep phone conversations confidential – Moggi conducted arbitrations at his convenience, but he also had the power to directed, for the better. or worse, the careers of referees and footballers, as well as the fortunes of some teams.
The Sports Justice condemned Juventus with relegation to Serie B (the first in history) and with the annulment of the two championships won on the field in the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons with champions of the caliber of Buffon, Cannavaro, Nedved. , Del Piero, Trezeguet and Ibrahimovic: a “dream team” directed by the “Iron General” Fabio Capello. For some fans of the “Old Lady” it was a setback, for others an abuse of power, but for practically the rest of Italian football, this story was finally given the justice it deserved after years of robbery, theft and corruption. . But for the Anjeli family, the owners of Juventus, the motto has always been like this: “”Victory is not important, it is the only thing that matters” (a little bit about how it is achieved) For the “Old Lady” it has always been like this: to finish a championship in the second place it is equal to loss, that is, failure. And so (many) seasons of absolute dominance alternated with periods of acute depression. Just as (often) successes have been accompanied by controversy.
The list of scandals is long.
Year 1961, April 16 : Juventus-Inter is played, and there are many spectators in the stands and around the field; the threatened referee suspends the match for security reasons. Lega Calcio sanctions Juventus, with a loss in the table. Inter thus gains 2 points and joins them at the top of the ranking. But president Agnelli – Umberto, who also runs Federcalcio – is appealing. And on June 3, on the eve of the last day of the championship, the Federal Court gives him the right: he returned the defeat by default and ordered that Juve-Inter be replayed on June 10. It’s just that on that day the whites will already mathematically be champions of Italy. In the end, Inter, in protest, sent the Primavera boys (including the debutant Sandro Mazzola) to the field, losing 9-1. Twenty years pass.
It is now May 10, 1981, in three weeks towards the end of the championship: the direct clash between Juventus and Roma took place, where the whites were positioned first in the ranking and the yellow-reds were second, only one point behind. In the 72nd minute, with the score 0-0, Rome’s player Turone scores with a header, but the referee cancels for an alleged offside position: the match ends goalless, the Scudetto will go to Turin, but an uproar that will last for decades. explodes. So much so that at the most recent Film Festival organized in Rome, a documentary was presented that still talks about him, with a title that does not require explanation: “Er gol de Turone era bono” (Turone’s goal was valid).
The next season, 1981-82, is again “a storm”. Juventus and Fiorentina are presented in the last week of the championship, paired on equal points first in the ranking. The Whites won 1-0 in Catanzaro, but the Calabrians protested a denied penalty, while in Cagliari, Fiorentina did not go beyond a 0-0 draw, but were “furious” for a disallowed Ciccio Graziani goal. Scudetto goes to Juventus and director Franco Zeffirelli, a hot-blooded Florentine, explodes with rage: “Better second than thieves!”. Sixteen years later, the duel between the Whites and Inter took place again. It was April 26, 1998, with four games remaining in the championship: the Agnelli club – whose general manager is Moggi – leads the standings with a single point advantage over the Nerazzurri. The direct match was played at Turin’s Delle Alpi: Juventus took the lead with Del Piero’s goal, but in the second half the visitors were denied a sensational penalty due to an obstructing foul by Iuliano on Ronaldo. Inter’s coach, the usually calm Gigi Simoni, shouts: “Shame!” But only one exception will make it right: the Scudetto is unfairly black and white again.
A few months later, the doping scandal erupted in the Juventus camp. The big accuser is the bohemian Zdekenk Zeman, coach of Roma : the one who speaks little and always in a low voice, but when he speaks – between one cigarette and another – he hits and whips. Interviewed by “L’Espresso”, Zeman raises his doubts about the “muscular explosions” of Vialli and Del Piero: “For some time – he attacks – that in Serie A it has been increasingly difficult to resist the temptation of magic pill”. Turin’s chief prosecutor, Raffaele Guariniello, opens an investigation, which then leads to a trial for sports fraud against Antonio Giraudo and Riccardo Agricola, respectively the managing director and the social doctor of the white and white club.
The trial will end nine years later: the Cassation considers proven the illegal administration of drugs to Juventus players, with the exception of erythropoietin (Epo), but the offense is now time-barred; the criminal files of Giraudo and Agricola (released by the Sports Justice) remain clean. Agricola will stay at the club until 2009, to then return, from 2017 to 2020, as director of “J Medical”, the ultra-modern 10 million euro medical center, one of the symbols of the black and white renaissance behind “Calciopoli ” under the presidency of Andrea. Agnelli.
A presidency that can boast the famous nine championships in a row (as well as a handful of other national trophies) but on which the curtain hastily lowered in recent days to escape the orders of justice seeking to try the top executives of the club for crimes such as false corporate communications, obstruction of the exercise of the functions of public supervisory authorities, market manipulation and fraudulent declaration through the use of invoices or other documents for transactions that do not exist. The prosecutor of Turin believes that the company has irregularly changed the financial results of 2019, 2020 and 2021, a maneuver that has also affected the performance of Juventus’ stock on the stock market. In the documents of the investigators, the finger is pointed in particular in two cases: on the one hand, the alleged fictitious capital gains, that is, based on an inflated estimate of some players to be able to budget a higher figure; on the other hand, several months’ salary was paid to the players, but never entered into the bordero. In the wake of the Turin investigation, UEFA has also launched investigations into suspected breaches of Financial Fair Play regulations.
After the criminal cases, at the sports level, the team was only punished with a deduction of points in the ranking, avoiding a fine, relegation to Serie “B” and participation in the international arena, especially in the Champions League, a vital source of income for every club at the level high, as well as an authentic obsession for every Juventus fan: So the question remains if full justice was done or as always a tangent when it comes to a powerful company like that of the tycoon Anjeli?
But, precisely, the philosophy of Juventus has always been the statement of the aforementioned Boniperti: “Victory is not important, it is the only thing that matters”. So, to finish first, someone is willing to do anything. But in the Machiavellian effort to avoid falling into the mediocrity of purgatory, we sometimes end up falling into immorality and dishonesty. And now, years after years of scandal, the physiognomy of Juventus is revealed more and more clearly, Angel’s company, which is sinking from the white of heaven directly into the black of hell.
Link below for the 1-st part of this issue:
(Copyright ) By Pjerin Bj | The exclusive date is January 20, 2023
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Sports Vision + / The Hour of The Champions
References: Personal notes from the Serie “A” Championship in years / La Gazzetta dello Sport / “Calcio 2000 /
