Juventus in crisis: What triggered board’s resignation – and what happens next?
Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli has always been fond of the line from Jack Welch, one of the titans of American industry. “Change before you have to.”
It has been a theme of Agnelli’s 12 years at the helm of his family’s football club, the pledge to “Live Ahead” providing an explanation as to why Juventus broke up teams and rebuilt them to stay successful, launched a new crest in 2017 to appeal to Generation Z, welcomed Netflix and then Amazon behind closed doors and got behind the idea of a Super League.
On Monday, however, Agnelli and his board felt obliged to change themselves.
Only a few days after chairing a panel about the experience of Juventus Next Gen — the under-23s side that has brought through several players into the first team this season, and is a potent symbol of Juventus’ future — Agnelli and all members of the board, out of nowhere,
resigned.
It is the end of an era.
Agnelli restored Juventus to greatness. Having just finished seventh in the 2009-10 Serie A season and unable to appeal to the best players when he took over from Giovanni Cobolli Gigli, he inaugurated a game-changing new stadium, won nine consecutive league titles, did the domestic double four times and reached the Champions League final twice.
For a long time, until 2018, Juventus were a model club.
The media in Italy have likened the resignations to an “earthquake.”
Juventus have not experienced a day like this since 2006 when Calciopoli, a scandal about power and influence they were still appealing and seeking damages for as recently as
last month, caused a similar changing of the guard.
What is the background to Monday’s dramatic events?
It all revolves around the ongoing investigation into Juventus’ finances.
This time last year, the Turin club were engaged in a second capital increase in three years. Over the course of both exercises, new shares were issued for a combined €700million (£603m, $723m) to stabilise the club’s finances amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In the prospectus regarding the recapitalisation, Juventus were obliged, as a company listed on the Euronext stock exchange in Milan, to disclose that the club was subject to an inspection by Italy’s financial regulator CONSOB over “revenues from players’ registration rights”.
COVISOC, another watchdog charged with supervising the football industry in Italy, had passed on a report to the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) highlighting 62 transfers from the previous two years. The FIGC’s disciplinary commissioner was invited to take a closer look and consider whether the fees involved were inflated or not.
Forty-two of those transfers involved Juventus, the most high-profile being the swap of Miralem Pjanic for Barcelona’s Arthur Melo. But 36 of the 62, a startlingly high proportion, went under the radar because they pertained to young players.
In April, the FIGC cleared Juventus and the other 10 implicated clubs, the prosecutor’s case undermined by leaning on the widely-used but unofficial football website Transfermarkt as a benchmark for player valuations.
Far more serious, though, was a parallel investigation called Prisma that had been launched by the public prosecutor’s office of the court of Turin.
Why is the Prisma investigation more serious?
Prisma brought allegations of false accounting, false financial statements and market manipulation.
A search and seizure order was obtained by the public prosecutor’s office in Turin and they authorised the Guardia di Finanza — a police force responsible for investigating financial affairs in Italy — to raid the club’s training grounds in Continassa and Vinovo and their offices in Turin and Milan.
Sixteen people were placed under investigation including Agnelli, vice-president Pavel Nedved and Juventus’ former chief football officer Fabio Paratici, who left 18 months ago and is now managing director of football at Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur. A request to place Agnelli under house arrest
was rejected.
Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli has resigned, along with the club’s whole board (Photo: Daniele Badolato – Juventus FC/Getty Images)
The club issued a statement last month denying any wrongdoing, after prosecutors completed their investigation.
Attention focused on Juventus’ financial results in 2019, 2020 and 2021. After looking over the books, investigators alleged a significant discrepancy.
Also of interest were the arrangements made with the club’s players during the pandemic. A statement in March 2020 announced Juventus would approximately save €90million after their players agreed a wage reduction equal to their pay for the months of March, April, May and June that year. But the investigators allege the players waived only one month’s pay, and that the financial markets were misled by the club’s statement.
The “salary manoeuvres”, loyalty bonuses and how they were accounted for lay at the heart of Prisma.
Wiretaps included in the initial search and seizure order included a snippet of a conversation between Federico Cherubini, one of Juventus’ recruitment executives, and Cesare Gabasio, a former member of the club’s legal team, about Cristiano Ronaldo, who joined from Real Madrid in 2018 for around €100million, and how “they will jump down our throats” if a
“carta segreta” (secret document) “comes out”.
Juventus have always maintained they operated in respect of the law and accounting principles and in line with international football industry practice and market conditions.
On Monday, they stated that “given the centrality and the relevance of the pending legal and technical/accounting matters” the board “considered it in the best interest of the company that Juventus provided itself with a new board of directors to address these matters”.
What happens next and what punishment could Juventus face?
If Prisma finds any breaches, the FIGC may reopen its case, or start a separate one in light of the findings of the Prisma investigation.
An appeal launched by the FIGC’s federal prosecutor’s office in May against the acquittal of the 11 clubs involved, was rejected. But if Giuseppe Chine, the FIGC’s federal prosecutor, believes there is merit in revisiting the case based upon a review of the evidence gathered by the public prosecutor’s office in Turin, Juventus could be at risk of a fine or a points penalty under article 31 of the country’s code of sporting justice if FIGC finds against them.
The Prisma investigation itself has now concluded and it remains to be seen how the criminal proceedings pending before the Turin judicial authority progress — as acknowledged in the first half-year report for 2022 by the Agnelli family’s holding company EXOR.
Within the club itself, chief executive Maurizio Arrivabene, a former Ferrari team principal, is staying on for now to manage the transition.
Juventus have also announced Maurizio Scanavino as general manager. Scanavino previously led GEDI, the media group and publisher behind leading Italian newspapers La Repubblica and La Stampa as well as international titles including The Economist. GEDI is one of the companies in the portfolio of EXOR, which is led by the real power and scion of the Agnelli dynasty, John Elkann, who is Andrea Agnelli’s cousin.
On Tuesday, EXOR indicated in a statement that Gianluca Ferrero is their choice to replace Agnelli as Juventus chairman. Ferrero was born in Turin, ran Lavazza, the globally-recognised coffee manufacturer founded in the city, and is a big Juventus fan.
“As a corporate adviser, auditor, board and committee member of a number of companies, Mr Ferrero has significant experience and the required technical competencies, as well as a genuine passion for the club, making him the person most qualified to fulfil this role,” EXOR announced.
Is this Calciopoli 2.0, then?
No. This is completely different. It is a financial story about how a club listed on the stock exchange reported their financial results. It’s about player trading and payroll. It’s about how the club acted and reacted to financial pressures, particularly around making transfers and, principally, the pandemic.
How could this impact Juventus on the pitch?
Coach Massimiliano Allegri and his players will have what remains of the World Cup break to process it before their season resumes in early January.
Playing for or managing Juventus already comes with great scrutiny and pressure, so they’re relatively used to it. Some of the players were interviewed by investigators when Prisma started and this has already been going on for a year.
Allegri has overseen an upturn in results after a poor start to the season (Photo: Isabella Bonotto/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The matter is with the club and the former board.
Having said that, Allegri has often remarked in the past how a club’s structure is vitally important. He was sacked by AC Milan in 2014 at a time when his principal supporter within the club, Adriano Galliani, was being challenged as their co-chief executive by team president Silvio Berlusconi’s daughter, Barbara.
After 12 years of Agnelli, the swiftness with which EXOR has acted in nominating a successor only partially mitigates the uncertainty the board’s sudden resignation has caused.
It remains to be seen what vision Ferrero has for the club amid calls on social media for Alessandro Del Piero to return to the club he once played for as an executive, pleas that the former Italy international did little to deflect on an appearance with beIN Sports on Monday night.
And what does this all mean ahead of the January transfer window?
Juventus are one of the companies on EXOR’s portfolio.
For context, this is a conglomerate with revenues worth a colossal €33billion in 2021. Elkann and EXOR are therefore gold-standard guarantors. It was EXOR that underwrote the majority of the two capital increases in Juventus, and they can afford it.
For all the club’s strength as a brand and the cultural capital they possess, Juventus are a relatively small enterprise, pocket change on the balance sheet compared with the car business EXOR operates, which comprises Ferrari and Stellantis — the result of a 2021 merger between FIAT-Chrysler and the PSA Group, which makes Citreons, Peugeots, Opels and Vauxhalls.
Juventus, of course, have to operate within an FFP (financial fair play) framework and make a transition to a more sustainable model. But that transition has already started.
The €400million injected into the club this time last year partly gave them the confidence to go and sign Serbia forward Dusan Vlahovic from Fiorentina for €75million last January. He helped Juventus qualify for the Champions League and while
the club have exited after the group stage, a run of six straight clean-sheet wins in Serie A, following
a poor start, meant they went into this World Cup break in third place.
Dusan Vlahovic was a marquee signing in January (Photo: Pedro Fiúza/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
What does it mean for Juventus’ involvement in the Super League?
Juventus remain part of the Super League project, along with Spanish duo Real Madrid and Barcelona.
It’s too early to tell what Ferrero’s intentions are for the club but the early indications are that Juventus are still firmly on board.
Reforming the European game was one of the five pillars included in the three-year plan Agnelli laid out this past summer. “After the unimaginable COVID storm” and “over seven billion cumulative losses in the industry between 2019 and 2021,” he considered it more essential than ever before.
“The overall goal,” Agnelli wrote to shareholders, “is to put fans and footballers, the souls of the most beautiful sport in the world, back at the centre of this industry, whose throbbing heart is in the European Union. This is to be achieved by ensuring that investors, as represented by the clubs, are legitimately represented within the governance and thereby establishing the right link between entrepreneurial risk and economic management control. The positive consequences of possible reforms will be to provide grassroots sport, through the federations, with the resources it deserves, distributed transparently through entities with clearly defined roles.
“Reforms, in any context, can only be achieved through listening and constructive dialogue with all stakeholders. Juventus wants to be an active part of that dialogue.”
Agnelli stood by that, even in his final remarks to Juventus employees on Monday.
“I will continue to imagine and work for a better football, comforted by a phrase by Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music’.”
For now, the music has stopped on Agnelli’s chairmanship, and he will not be at the helm next year when Juventus mark a centenary of his family’s ownership of the club.
Agnelli signed off at Juventus with the club’s motto “Fino alla Fine.” Until the end.
But for him as president, this appears to be it.
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