‘Il Padrone’ Reaps What He Sows in Italy

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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Last month I wrote of the “unusual calm” surrounding Italy’s preparations to play in the World Cup. Now comes the explosion, a hydrogen bomb of a scandal that Roberto Mancini, the coach of Inter-Milan has called “the most serious ever heard of in the history of world soccer.”

No one involved in Italian soccer – calcio it is called – can escape the effects of this mushroom cloud, for it casts a huge shadow of doubt over the integrity of the entire professional game in Italy. “Calciogate” is a scandal that the Vatican’s newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, described as “an offense to sports and to its values. The earthquake which is turning the world of soccer upside down is an offense to the joy of childhood.”

At the center of the scandal is a man who came to be so powerful that he ceased to worry about what he said and to whom he said it.That man is Luciano Moggi, who, until Saturday, was the general director of Juventus, the most famous Italian soccer club. Now he has resigned – along with the entire Juventus board of directors – and is facing a police investigation into match fixing.

Moggi – Lucky Luciano they called him – apparently had a lot to say over the telephone, especially to top administrators at the Italian soccer federation (FIGC), the men who assign referees to Italian Serie A games. The police have tapes of those conversations.

The mere existence of the conversations, almost regardless of their content, has been enough to bring about the resignation of Franco Carrara, the president of the federation, and his deputy. The tapes are damning. The conversations have an all-pals-together tone to them, as Moggi comments on referee performance – including which referees should be punished for making mistakes – and discusses referee assignments for upcoming games.

On a different tape, Moggi is heard boasting of what happened in November 2004, after Juventus was beaten 2-1 by Reggina. He relates how he berated the referee, then locked him in his locker room and went off with the key.

Is it possible that Moggi was able to influence referees to favor Juventus? If so, how long has this been going on? After all, Moggi joined Juventus back in 1994. There are no doubts in the mind of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who owns the AC Milan club: “We demand they give us back the two league titles that are our due. We’re tired of suffering injustice.” Berlusconi is referring to last year, when Milan finished second to Juventus, and to this season, which ended on Sunday with Milan again coming in right behind Juventus.

Berlusconi’s indignant demand would be a lot more convincing were Milan not also under investigation – along with Lazio, Fiorentina, and Juventus. Altogether, the police are looking into 19 Serie A games from last season involving the four clubs.

Suspicions of match fixing are serious enough, but the accusations against Moggi do not end there. He has been described as il padrone of Italian soccer, always a somewhat ambivalent term that has now taken on an unmistakably sinister connotation. We can listen to the tapes again – this time Moggi is talking Aldo Biscardi,the presenter of one of the top soccer television shows.Moggi is suggesting to him which referees he should criticize, which he should lay off.

The Moggi tentacles spread beyond administrators, referees, and journalists to include players. Moggi’s son, Alessandro, has been a player agent since 2001, when he formed the agency Gea World. It was with Gea that Moggi’s problems began,for the agency has been under investigation by magistrates in Naples since 2004, suspected of “unfair competition with use of violence and threats.” The incriminating telephone intercepts come from the Naples probe.

Moggi must have known pretty quickly that his days were numbered. As the story became public, no one rushed to defend him. Especially noticeable was the resounding silence from the most important man at Juventus – Lapo Elkann, scion of the Agnelli family, whose Fiat company is the chief Juventus shareholder.

Elkann had more than Moggi to consider. Juventus managing director Antonio Giraudo is also under investigation on suspicion of “false accounting” relating to the club’s dealings in the player transfer market.

Juventus has now swept everyone out of office, but too late to prevent a calamitous slide in the company’s share price, which was off 26% yesterday morning before trading was suspended for excessive losses.The move may also be too late to avoid drastic punishment. Should the charges against Moggi – basically of trying to influence referees to favor Juventus – be validated, the club faces the virtual certainty of relegation to Serie B. This is the fate that last year was inflicted on Genoa, a Serie B club, which was found guilty of bribing an opponent in just one game, and was demoted to Serie C.

Should Juventus be stripped of this season’s title, it’s not at all certain that second place Milan, also under investigation, would benefit. The title might well go to third place Inter-Milan.

Moggi’s Juventus was at the top of calcio for year after year, enabling it to participate in the money-spinning European Champions League. In Moggi’s 11-year reign at Juventus, the club reached the Euro final four times and claimed the trophy once. In Serie A, it won seven championships and finished second three times.

Surveying that impressive record, Giuseppe Frascara, a former president of the Bologna club, remarked: “It’s almost enough to make you ashamed of being Italian. They controlled the Italian soccer season.”

As for the World Cup preparations, the beleaguered Italian federation has suffered the embarrassment of having to withdraw referee Massimo De Santis from the FIFA list of those scheduled to officiate in Germany. De Santis was in charge of four of the 19 games being probed by the Naples magistrates.

One encouraging aspect of the sleaze is that only one player has been named: Juventus and national team goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon, whose involvement, if any, seems peripheral. He has denied, betting on Serie A games.

But coach Marcello Lippi and his players cannot live aloof from the disturbing rumors and the suspicions that have engulfed Italian soccer. It is not possible to believe that they will be unaffected by the realization that the FIGC – the body that organizes and finances the national team – is now in such disarray that prime minister Romano Prodi has suggested a political commissar be appointed to run it.

pgardner@nysun.com


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