Dearest THE PADO,
After all your sweet nicknames for yours truly including but not limited to conspiracy theorist, whiner, sore loser and Kasmir and claiming allegations always come out during scudetto time I would like to point your attention to stories being reported all over the World...as usual I am always two steps ahead of the game...
ITALY's Serie A champion Juventus could face sanctions for sporting fraud.
The Italian Football Federation announced overnight the opening of an inquiry into allegations that Juve's general director, Luciano Moggi, chose referees for the team's matches.
Accusations levelled against Moggi in two newspapers overnight, but originally aired in 2004, concern the Juve chief requesting specific referees for matches with Messina and AC Milan.
The Gazzetta dello Sport and the Corriere della Sera published accounts of telephone conversations between Moggi and Pierluigi Pairetto, a former member of the federation's refereeing commission, in which Moggi asks for officials of his choice to be assigned to the matches in question.
Moggi is also accused of having asked Pairetto to select a specific referee for a 2004 Champions League game with Djurgardens of Sweden – at the time, Pairetto was also vice-president of the UEFA refereeing commission.
A statement for the Italian federation said it received transcripts of the conversations from the Turin public prosecutor's office in March and added: "This new and complex documentation makes all other enquiries and analyses irrelevant."
The inquiry was actually opened in March but only announced overnight.
According to Italian press reports, the transcripts were not sufficient to suggest corruption or match-fixing, but do open Juventus to the possibility of league-imposed sanctions.
The federation also recently opened an inquiry into alleged irregularities by the GEA, the association of players's agents, whose president is Moggi's son, Alessandro.