It was a very Italian moment, grand opera really.A mere three weeks ago, as the fireworks lighted up the stadium in Berlin, as the Italian players paraded their newly won World Cup trophy, it was Verdi’s triumphant music that rang out. The grand march from “Aida” … and, with a slight word change (well, Gloria all’Egitto doesn’t quite do it), Gloria all’Italia!

From opera we expect magnificent spectacle and divine music, but, oh, those plots! They usually range from unbelievable to laughable and are frequently chaotic, bulging with improbabilities and impossibilities. Just such an operatic plot was lurking behind the great Italian victory.

Even as the azzurri were celebrating, the world of Italian soccer was disintegrating into chaos under the onslaught of the worst scandal that soccer has ever known. At its center, Juventus of Turin, the most successful club in Italy with a worldwide following, now appeared as the main player in a widespread game-fixing scandal.

The Juventus general manager, Luciano Moggi (“Lucky Luciano”), was caught on phone taps as he manipulated referee appointments that would favor Juventus.Three other clubs — AC Milan, Lazio, and Fiorentina — were involved. Heads rolled: Moggi and the entire Juventus board of directors quit (Juventus appointed a new chairman with a suitably operatic name: Giovanni Cobolli Gigli), as did the president of the Italian soccer federation, and the top officials at the referees’ organization.

A special sports tribunal, set up to hear the charges, began its hearings two days before the World Cup final. Five days after the final came the verdicts. They were merciless. Chief culprit Juventus was sent down to second division Serie B for the season due to start this fall. Humiliation indeed for a mighty club that, in its 109-year existence, has never played anything other than toplevel Serie A soccer. Worse, Juventus must start the season with a penalty of minus 30 points — meaning that it would have to win 10 games before it could register a single point in the standings. Piling on the agony, the tribunal stripped Juventus of the Serie A championships that it won in 2005 and 2006.

Fiorentina (12-point penalty) and Lazio (7-point penalty) were also relegated to Serie B. AC Milan, considered the least guilty, retained Serie A status, but was given a 15-point penalty and banned from playing in the lucrative European champions league — a privilege that it had earned with its second place finish in Serie A last season.

All the sentences were, inevitably, challenged. Revised, and more lenient, versions were delivered 11 days later. Lazio and Fiorentina were to stay in Serie A, Juventus was still condemned to life in Serie B, but the points-penalty was reduced to 17 from 30. AC Milan could enter the European championship at the early qualification stage. The AC Milan owner — the former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi — was not satisfied and called for the club’s complete absolution. Berlusconi’s formidable record of winning court cases strongly suggests that more challenges are likely. This time in a court of law, where it will be argued that the sports tribunal overstepped its legal authority.

The speed of the procedure was dictated by one thing: The Italian soccer season opens in the beginning of September and the league (to say nothing of television) could not make up its schedule until it knew which teams were playing in which divisions.

Similar pressure came from UEFA. The European authority trying to draw up the Champions League schedule wanted to know which Italian teams would be included. But UEFA was clearly uncomfortable with the reinstatement of AC Milan. An emergency meeting was called, with a UEFA spokesman stating that it had a duty to assess the ethical status of clubs in its tournament. Its decision, due last Friday, has been postponed until tomorrow. Something — a legal consideration, no doubt — is giving UEFA pause.

Meanwhile, Juventus is hemorrhaging players.The thought of playing one season — possibly two, if the club does not gain immediate promotion back to Serie A — in Serie B has not sat well with Juventus’s stars.

Many of them want out. So, in a distasteful twist to this wild drama, the operatic upheavals continued. Suddenly it was garage-sale time, and all the soccer talent that Juventus had assembled was available. Coach Fabio Capello, no doubt sensing the worst, resigned on July 4. The following day he was appointed coach at Real Madrid. Three weeks later he was joined in Madrid by two Juventus players: defender Fabio Cannavaro and Brazilian midfielder Emerson. Real’s Spanish rivals Barcelona were just as quick to take advantage of the Juventus woes, snapping up defenders Gianluca Zambrotta and the Frenchman Lilian Thuram.

Moving to stem the tide, Juventus appointed Frenchman Didier Deschamps as its new coach, who last week called a halt on further trades: “No one is going anywhere,” he said, “In a year’s time we’ll be back [in Serie A] and competing for a major title.”

But Juventus is clearly a club still in turmoil. Even as Deschamps was circling the wagons, the club chairman, Cobolli Gigli, was quoted as saying that “If there are some departures, there will also be some arrivals. Whoever leaves will not be sold cheaply.”

Juventus is estimated to have taken in more than $51 million from the trades with Real and Barcelona. A lot more cash could be flowing in if the rumors of new defections turn into fact. Gianluigi Buffon, widely regarded as the best goalkeeper in the game, is reportedly “unsettled” by the thought of Serie B, as are two more of Juventus’ foreign players: Frenchman David Trezeguet and Swede Zlatan Ibrahimovic, both forwards.

So this is how Italian soccer looks right now: Inter-Milan is the current “champion,” a fictitious status that allows it to enter the Champions League, even though it finished last season in third place, behind the disgraced Juventus and AC Milan. A sadly depleted Juventus is in Serie B. And the image of the referees, traditionally suspected of corruption by Italian fans, has been further damaged. The cheating clubs have been punished, which is fine and dandy, but as Juventus labors in the lower depths of Serie B and Fiorentina, Lazio, and AC Milan struggle with points penalties in Serie A, their innocent fans will now suffer, which is hardly fair.

All in all, a thoroughly unedifying spectacle. There is no Gloria all’Italia! here, nothing grand about this opera … it is much closer to opera buffa.