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Calciopoli: The Scandal Returns

It’s been four years since the fateful days when Juventus’s world exploded. Relegated to the Serie B, fined, stripped of their titles and of their star players, La Vecchia Signora had to start from scratch. But now information is emerging. Information that suggests a completely different reality.

A conspiracy theory has always existed among the Juventus faithful: this because of favoritism towards Inter and because of Inter’s deep involvement in the prosecution following the 2006 scandal. But recent confessions from disgraced Luciano Moggi and ex-Inter player Christian Vieri, along with comments exchanged between then-Inter manager Roberto Mancini and Luciano Moggi in early 2006, have rocked public opinion on the scandal.

The conspiracy is that Inter, frustrated with their little success despite spending millions in new players, used their connections with Telecom Italia (the Italian national telecommunications company) and staged phone tappings and a supposed match-fixing scandal. There is evidence that points this to being a fact. Jean-Claude Blanc, chief executive of Juventus, also believes that one day the truth of what really happened will be revealed.

Several months before Calciopoli, Moggi made some remarks about Mancini’s personality. Mancini responded by saying ‘I won’t answer Moggi. But he knows that he will have to answer when the time comes.” This, so long before the scandal erupted, is extremely suspicious and suggests that Mancini knew about the scandal long before it came to light.

Guido Rossi was an executive at Inter at the time of the scandal. In May 2006, he was named emergency head of the FIGC (Italian football federation) to organize the various punishments from the scandal. Marco Tronchetti Provera was also an Inter executive at the time, as well as being the president of Telecom Italia, the Italian telecommunications company. He was the one who first came out with the phone tappings. The fact that these two men were so pivotal in the uncovering of the facts, and that they were high-ranking execs in Inter, is incredibly suspicious.

Christian Vieri came out with his allegations last November, when he retired from football. His allegations, if true, are damning evidence to this theory. He states that Massimo Moratti, president of Inter, hatched a plan with Telecom Italia to eliminate all competition so Inter could become successful again. He goes on to say that the players were bound to secrecy by a contract, and that his contract was paid 70% by Inter and 30% by Telecom Italia. He says he has documents that prove this, and his lawyer is prepared to take legal action.

If all this is true, Italian football will be revolutionized. Juventus will need hefty compensation for money lost by being demoted to Serie B and for selling all their star players, as well as serious defamation. AC Milan, Fiorentina, and the others implicated in the scandal would also take serious legal action. Inter would implode. The 2004-05 and 2005-06 titles would return to Juventus, as well as, probably the 2007-08 and 2008-09, where Juventus was always the second best. 2006-07 would go to AS Roma.

The implications this would have are so tremendous that I fail to imagine how different the world of Italian football would be. More evidence is that Juventus players were very successful at international level at the time of the scandal, as were the club in European competition. Those international and European games were not staged, therefore the talent was real. Also, Alvaro Recoba, who was a major attacking force for Inter in 2005-06, was using a fake passport, thus rendering him ineligible. Inter were never penalized for this.

The truth will come out. Justice will be served. Calciopoli will end, once and for all.

Topics: Help Football, Inter Milan, Juventus, Serie A