Serie A's Serious Troubles
Corruption and match-fixing scandal hits calcio and Luciano Moggi has many questions to answer
Storm clouds gather over Italian football as Juventus win a second successive scudetto.
A long-standing complaint about Juventus, the most successful club in Italian soccer history, is that they always seem to be on the right side of dodgy refereeing decisions - vital penalties given in the last seconds, late offside calls ruling out perfectly good opposition goals and the yellow card staying in the ref's pocket when they would be waved with glee in the face of those playing for other clubs.
The same resentment against successful clubs is a mainstay in every other country so it's not surprising that in conspiratorially-minded Italy these suspicions are particularly prevalent.
But recent events involving public prosecutors in Naples, Turin, Rome and elsewhere, have shown that those rumours cannot be dismissed as entirely unfounded.
Two weeks ago, the Italian media reported transcripts of phone taps of Juventus's general manager Luciano Moggi's conversations with Pierluigi Pairetto and Paolo Bergamo, responsible for the Italian Football Federation's refereeing appointments.
Pairetto was reprimanded by UEFA for giving out confidential information earlier than allowed about who would referee a couple of Juventus's Champions League games and naming some "good" refs for some pre-season friendlies.
Moggi's conversations with Bergamo were even more sinister - Moggi is invited to arrange which referee should arbitrate which matches and talks about punishing others so they won't think they have "carte blanche to make whatever decisions they want".
Despite Pairetto's protestations of innocence - "maybe there were some comments which were inopportune but my good faith is beyond question" - the storm refused to blow over as Gianni Petrucci, president of Italy's National Olympic Committee, urged the Federation to hold a speedy investigation into the conversations.
Days later, Federation president Franco Carraro and vice-president Innocenzo Mazzini both resigned, and investigators announced they were widening the enquiry into the football agents' collective GEA run by Moggi's son, Alessandro, alleging "threats and violence" to coerce players and clubs into using the company's services and abuse of a "dominant position".
Rome prosecutors then announced they had placed Moggi Sr under investigation for "illegal competition with threats and violence" due to his bragging that he had locked referee Gianluca Paparesta and his two assistants in the locker room after Juventus surprisingly lost to Reggina in November 2004.
Events soon snowballed with Naples prosecutors announcing they were investigating 19 matches from the 2004-05 Serie A season for suspected match-fixing and that they had informed 41 people they were under investigation - including the aforementioned Luciano Moggi and Franco Carraro, as well as Juventus CEO Antonio Giraudi, top referees and high-ranking officials at clubs including AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio.
If this wasn't enough, Gianluigi Buffon, Juventus and Italian national team goalkeeper, voluntarily met Parma magistrates on Sunday over separate allegations of illegal betting by four former and current Juve players on Coppa Italia matches.
The entire Juventus board has subsequently resigned while police have raided the offices of the Italian Soccer Federation and the Referees' Association as well as the home of Carraro. One of Italy's World Cup referees, Massimo de Santis has also been withdrawn from next month's tournament in Germany.
It must be added that Italian legal procedures demand that prosecutors notify suspects that they are being investigated and it does not necessarily mean they will then be charged. Not all of the 41 being investigated are suspected of being involved in all charges while Juventus face relegation to Serie B and the subsequent loss of many important sponsorship deals if found guilty.
But we've been here before - the phone taps that picked up the Moggi chats were put in place by Turin magistrates investigating the doping scandal Juventus found themselves embroiled in last season and in 1973 the Sunday Times of London accused Juventus of attempting to bribe a referee to influence the second leg of a European Cup semi final against Derby County that year.
Italian Prime Minister-elect, Romano Prodi has suggested that outgoing Cabinet Undersecretary and former journalist Gianni Letta be appointed to oversee the investigation into the running of the Federation. The history of Italian football is littered with reports of committees attempting to clean up the game, none of them very successful as this latest scandal shows.
PS - there was a football match involving Juventus on Sunday afternoon. They beat Reggina 2-0 to "provisionally" win their 29th Italian championship. Sadly, the destination of this year's scudetto will be definitively decided in the courtroom.
