Here's my votes before Jack chimes in.
1. Your team were recently at a "match fixing" scandal, can you give us a brief explanation of what happened and what it was like supporting a team in such a problem?
It's hard to be brief about this, so I won't...
What happened was political, really. It may sound cynical, but you have to understand the background and context. Is there undue influence on referees in Serie A? Undoubtedly. But that's also been discovered to be the case in Germany a couple years back, Portugal prior, etc.
Which isn't to say any of those leagues are perhaps more or less "corrupt" than any other. Anybody who wants to believe that their league is free of conflicts of interest and undue influence is living a great lie. Football is big business, and all that money demands results. It's human nature that people are going to push the envelope under those conditions like a Ruud Van Nistelrooy flirting with the passive offsides rule.
Juve board members were apparently found guilty of trying to influence referee assignments for friendly matches. I say 'apparently', because the fans and the public unfortunately never got to see evidence -- as this all was handled behind closed doors, adding to its suspicious nature.
Afterall, all this suspiciously came out because several investigations all reached dead-ends, and someone dumped the collected evidence and a note on someone's desk in an oddly desperate move as Juve was struggling to hold on to the lead over Milan at the end of the '05-'06 season.
So it's easy to be cynical as a fan. We're used to untold claims of referee favoritism and cheating over the years, as the cult of the conspiracy theory is alive and well in Italy as much as ever. But it's very suspicious that the team that benefited most from the situation had 16 successive years of dismal failure despite untold millions, the evidence came from a telecom company whose executive was a club investor, etc.
But worst of all, after all the talk about "cleaning up Italian football", following the teams that were penalized for their roles in calciopoli, no rules have been changed, no conflict of interest policies have been stated nor clarified, no mechanisms to help prevent referee influence have been put in place, etc. In other words, with the calciopoli penalties, mission was accomplished and everything was left the same as if nothing otherwise had happened or needed to be changed. All of which are the hallmarks of poltical motivation.
Supporting the team was tough. It's still not clear to us who was really a crook and maybe who wasn't, or to what degree many clubs are guilty of common behaviors. It was hard to separate friend from foe, someone to support versus someone to blame for the problems. We had to concern ourselves with the real possibility that the entire club could disappear. We shed a lot of players we've grown to love over the years too.
The players, and particularly the fans, were the most innocent of all in this -- and they got screwed most of all.
2. Your team were in Italians League 2, did you lose some supporters?
All of the ones that we were glad to lose. Supporting Juve comes with its traps, as there's a lot of evidence to suggest that Juve supporters have thin skin, are gloryhounds, are fair-weather fans, etc. So what few we did lose -- and we didn't lose that many, IMO -- were not loyal enough and needed to go anyway.
3. Was it hard watching your team playing lower class opposition each week, when you should be in the Champions League battling with the likes of Chelsea and Real Madrid.
It made the CL that much less interesting and relevant. And then seeing Milan able to even play in the CL, despite their involvement, just emphasized the inequity and disparity of how the situation was handled.
But a funny thing happened. The Serie B clubs were interesting. We were suddenly once removed from a lot of the glamor, commercialization, hype, greed, and other nasty bits that have come to characterize football at the highest levels in the world. Playing in B, we played some really traditional clubs like Napoli, Genoa, Bologna, and you felt the team was going back to the roots of the sport. It was a chance to appreciate football stripped of all its negative trappings of big business for a while. And I enjoyed watching it a lot.
For a lot of fans, however, the opportunities to watch games dropped precipitously -- making it harder for people to see games due to far fewer TV coverage options.
4. How do you feel your team will do next year?
It should do well. They've retained a number of great players, and added some new ones. The championship is a bit of a challenge, but competing for a European CL slot next season is very realistic.
5. You lost many of your best players, but you still have quality players. Which players are going to cause a threat to Newcastle on Sunday.
Del Piero as always. Nedved as the engine of a lot that happens. Almiron is starting to impress. And when Trezeguet is on, he's one of the best finishers out there.
The rest of the questions I'll leave alone, as I don't have much to add about the Newkies myself.
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Hopefully with a new owner, manager and team we'll become that good team we were when we played you in the Champions League all those years ago.
