IncuboRossonero said:
What can I SAY Martin...All my dreams have come true: the truth is out...Juve's name if FOREVER tarnished...from Zidane to Del Piero from Scudetto 18 to Scudetto 28 there will always remain the question "Was that won cleanly?"
Nick, you must be kidding, though. You make it sound as if most of Italy was blissfully putting Juve up on a pedestal as exemplary, Fair Play champions throughout history ... when all along most people had already made their minds up about whether Juve was a clean club or not before any trials.
If anything, I would say the whole thing just confirmed what many people believed all along -- accurate or not. Which is most unfortunate only because it often seems that, perhaps particularly in a place like Italy, it only takes evidence of corruption and misdeeds with an example or two to set widespread corruption theories spiralling at every turn. That's true for football as well as politics.
One example is often all it takes to whitewash a person or organization. And for a lot of people (Italian or otherwise), finding that evidence just confirms what you've believed all along. Scientific research experiences a somewhat analogous problem of using statistics to fit the theory rather than to fit the data. I think everyone had their theories long before this -- and calciopoli is just a convenient data point for them.
In the end, the whole ordeal doesn't really provide any additional information of use to those who already made up their minds.
At least Juve had the balls to admit they f*cked up in this affair. Everyone else is pulling the Bart Simpson defense, pretending that nothing happened.