Uneasiness in Italy as Scandal Widens
Juventus, the venerable Old Lady of Turin, retained its title as Italy's most decorated domestic champion on Sunday -
but there was nobody at home to buy or to taste champagne.
The Serie A title came relatively easily as David Trezeguet and the substitute Alessandro Del Piero scored without response from Reggina at the final league match played
before:confused2: 56,000 in Bari because Reggina forfeited home advantage after crowd trouble.
But Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister and owner of the runner-up, AC Milan, proved true to form when he contested the result, claiming: "We demand they give us back the two titles that are our due," referring to titles from this year and last year. "We are tired of suffering injustices."
The former prime minister appears to be jumping the gun, pre-empting the legal process that is just beginning to dig deeper and deeper into what magistrates in Turin, Parma and Naples suspect is systemic fraud in Italian soccer. The atmosphere is poisoned by aromas of suspicion as fresh as the daily catch of fish.
The Juventus board of directors has resigned, pending a meeting of shareholders on June 29. The heads of the national soccer authority in Rome have fallen. Prosecutors and police are everywhere poring over the implications that started with tapped telephoned conversations allegedly of Luciano Moggi, the Juventus general manager, attempting to influence the choice of referees at his team's games.
Transcripts of those calls, aired through the media, prompted the resignations of the Juve board, and of Franco Carraro, the president of Italy's soccer federation.
If Berlusconi has called it right, the possibility of demoting the Old Lady grows murkier each day.
It is as if someone on high, seeing how the national squad was headed for a decent World Cup, decided that now was the hour to unveil all.
"It has nothing to do with the Azzurri," Marcelo Lippi, the coach who is due to name his World Cup squad on Monday, said, referring to the national team.
He must wish that were so. In Munich on Friday, Franz Beckenbauer, the president of the World Cup organizing committee, echoed Lippi's sentiment when he said: "
It's a shame, but such a scandal was coming. It probably won't hit the Italian national team, who are one of the favorites most people would choose for this World Cup. But the players will have the distraction of being asked about the scandal. It could put a damper on team spirit, I hope it doesn't."
Beckenbauer, who coached Germany to win the World Cup on Italian soil in 1990, is old enough to appreciate that Italians can cope - even thrive - on scandal.
Paolo Rossi, the hero of 1982, was freed from custodial sentence for match fixing to score the goals that won that tournament.
As cunning as a fox in the penalty box, Rossi was the supreme goal poacher - a "
thief in the goal mouth" as the late Gianni Agnelli memorably described him. Agnelli was then the patriarch of Juventus and head of the FIAT organization.
Moggi, a ubiquitous presence at the club for the past 12 years, has spent a lifetime dismissing accusations that he "fixed" match officials. The accusers, he insists, are losers, he is a winner, conspiracy is in the heads of jealous opponents.
This time, it is in the transcripts of hundreds of phone calls tapped by prosecutors. This time, Moggi has not thrown off his pursuers, and his resignation, along with the entire Juventus board, suggests that there is a case to answer.
Were sport so easily cleansed, we might rest assured that the Azzurri would be untouched at least until the June-July World Cup is won and lost.
But the tentacles spread; there are simultaneous and sinister allegations in the wind.
Massimo De Santis, the only Italian referee invited to take part in the 2006 World Cup is one of 41 people named by a Naples prosecutor. In the north, another magistrate who cracked political corruption in the 1990s, is also on soccer's case.
"My conscience is clear," De Santis said Thursday, "
I have earned this World Cup and I will not give it up for anything."
By the weekend, the soccer federation had withdraw him and two assistant referees from the tournament, and if De Santis is, as he insists, wrongly implicated in the Naples investigation, then he is the first innocent victim of this contaminated season.
Italy's prime goalkeeper, Gianluigi Buffon, must also be sweating about whether he makes the World Cup flight. He is as gifted as any goalie on earth, a man of magnificent concentration and reach on the field. He has fought his way back for Juventus and Italy after a traumatic shoulder injury.
But his name has been outed, ironically in La Stampa, the Turin newspaper that was owned by Agnelli. The newspaper alleged that Buffon, when he belonged to Parma, bet hundreds of thousands of euros on games - and betting is illegal for the players.
The daily drip of disclosures has therefore reached Lippi's dressing room, whether or not the Azzurri trainer (who was formerly at Juventus) believes his sanctuary is untouched by it all.
It could be that Lippi, who retreats to his quiet home resort of Viareggio and spends his free time sailing, rarely sees or hears anything that is permeating the Italian scene.
One of the milder comments made during the week of disclosure came from Francesco Totti, the captain of Rome and the potential play maker for Italy if Lippi is convinced his broken ankle and disrupted form has healed.
"Whoever did wrong must pay," said Totti. "We need to clean the whole thing up. As to names, I don't know them and I don't want to know."
Should both Totti and Buffon make the squad, "not knowing" will become a difficult exercise to sustain once players are encamped and in one another's company 24 hours a day.
Again, the 1982 World Cup, when Rossi was welcomed to the bosom of the team, sets a precedent that suggests they will get over whatever differences of opinion they have.
The timing of these enquiries, and simultaneous ones involving drugs at Juventus and false bookkeeping at the same champion club, prompted Gianni Rivera, once Italy's idol, to sum up: "A tsunami has hit the world of soccer."
His phrase may not be appropriate, but his conclusion is. "I hope it doesn't sweep away the good part of the game, just the rotten."
By ROB HUGHES
International Herald Tribune
Published: May 15, 2006
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