footballspectator

Looks like the disgraced team of Italian football, Juventus, is facing up to the fact that it will be punished with relegation after fixing a countless number of matches, and is putting together a plan for next year’s season in Serie B.

The disgraced team of Turin will be forced to get rid of most of its millionaire players in an attempt to raise money to compensate for likely losses from sponsors and tv rights. Buffon and Vieira, whose contracts end in 2010 and are on stellar salaries, will be sold, as will Trezeguet, who’s tired of not winning any silverware in Europe. The older players such as Nedved, Cannavaro and Thuram will stay with Juventus but are likely to be loaned for a year. Del Piero, who Juventus will rebuild their team on when (if?) they are promoted back to Serie A, might also be loaned to another team, unless he’s prepared to take a hefty salary reduction.

As for the other players, frankly we can’t see many of them wanting to stay at the Old Lady…. Ibrahimovic and Mutu are still young and have a career ahead of them, and it shouldn’t be difficult for them to find a new team. Emerson still appeals to many teams and it won’t be a problem for him to find a new home. Capello will also leave, despite claims that he will honour his contract that ends in 2007: Juve have already found a replacement for him in Sampdoria’s Novellino.

Many European teams will wait until after relegation is announced to feast on Juve’s prime assets, as their negotiating power will be much stronger - Juve will be forced to sell to survive and so will not be able to haggle on price.

Juventus won their 29th Serie A title today, but celebrations were overshadowed by the recent match-fixing allegations, following which the club risks having both scudetti won in the last two years revoked and being relegated to Serie B (if not to a lower division).

While they may turn out not to be the only team to have manipulated matches in recent times (Fiorentina are thought to have benefited from Juventus’ refereeing connections to avoid relegation last year, Lazio and Milan are also being investigated) it is the fact that they have always represented the unassailable power, the untouchable, dominating force in Italian football that would make their relegation so special and such a historic event.

It’s hard to imagine a Serie A without Juventus: they’re the only team in Italy, together with Inter, to have always played in Serie A. At the same time, with increasing evidence against them emerging day by day, it’s even harder to see how they will escape their destiny in the the lower division(s).

If there is such thing as football justice in Italy, it’s only a matter of weeks until the announcement that next season Juventus will be playing against more modest teams the likes of Crotone, Rimini and Arezzo.

Prosecutors in Turin and Parma are investigating several players, including Buffon, Iuliano, Chimenti and Sevilla’s UEFA-Cup winner Maresca, in an illegal betting ring.

Buffon, who is currently Juventus’ and Italy’s first choice goalkeeper, is believed to have gambled up to 600,000 € in one year on Serie A matches.

If found guilty, he is likely to be banned and could miss the World Cup. The law is quite clear in regard to this: the FIGC prohibits registered players from gambling on matches in their own championship, and those found guilty of breaking this rule face bans between three months and three years.

Paradoxically, while the latest events are sending shockwaves throughout Italy, many are hopeful that all this may have a similar effect to the 1982 WC. Fourteen years ago, with only months to go before the start of the Azzurri’s campaign, a match-fixing scandal involving several high profile players, including top-scorer Paolo Rossi, rocked the Italian football world. With stars such as Beccalossi and Pruzzo banned, a low morale and even lower expectations, after a slow start Italy went on to win the cup.

The scope of the investigations into alleged match-fixing is extending beyond Juventus to also include Milan, Lazio and Fiorentina, as well as a number of players and officials.

La Gazzetta dello Sport reports that some 41 individuals are now formally under investigation by prosecutors in Naples, including referees De Santis (one of the 23 officials at the WC), Rodomonti, Racalbuto and various football federation FIGC officials. Up to 29 (!) legs (of 38) from the 2004-05 season may have been affected by fixed matches.

As increasingly more evidence comes to light and new revelations are made, pressure on Juventus will continue mounting. What was unthinkable until recently may slowly start becoming a real possibility: if found guilty, the Old Lady (and possibly other teams involved too) may ultimately face relegation and will have to start next season from the Serie B, just like AC Milan and Lazio did at the end of 1979-80, when they were found guilty of fixing matches.

Following days of increasingly embarassing press revelations over tapped telephone conversations involving General Manager Luciano Moggi discussing refereeing appointments with various referees and league officials, the entire board of Juventus F.C. has resigned today.

The Juventus website does not go into any detail:

The Board of Directors has returned its mandate to the shareholders until the appointment of the new Board and to this end has announced the first call of the shareholders’ ordinary general meeting for 29th June 2006 and the second call for 30th June 2006 with the following agenda: “Appointment of the directors after defining their number and remuneration”.

In recent years, Juventus has been surrounded by controversy on numerous occasions, not last when it was accused (and later found guilty) of administering the banned drug EPO to its own players, in the mid-90s.

While the club had managed to come clean of similar accusations in the past, today’s resignation is a historic event in Italian Football that people will talk about for a long time. It is hard to imagine that this will remain an isolated incident. It is the first time that such a potere forte of Italian football risks implosion: today’s resignation is likely to have a lasting effect on the football world in Italy that will see other illustrious names and big clubs implicated.