Italian football faces moment of justice

AN event without precedent in world football begins today, when the Olympic Stadium in Rome is turned into a court of justice.

This is the moment when the CAF, the appeals committee of the Italian Football Federation, sits in judgment on the four clubs and 26 individuals accused of involvement in the biggest corruption scandal in football history.

Over the next week, Cesare Ruperto, former president of the Constitutional Court, will preside over hearings that will decide the future of Italian football. Judgment will be swift. It is expected that penalties will be announced by July 9, the day of the World Cup final. Any appeals are due to be heard by July 20, in time for decisions on which Italian clubs will compete in Europe next season.

Predictions of the outcome vary. There is little doubt about the guilt of the accused — over 10,000 pages of intercepted telephone conversations have seen to that — but some are more guilty than others. At the heart of the scandal is Luciano Moggi, former director general of Juventus, and regarded for years as the most powerful man in Italian football. He and Juventus managing director Antonio Giraudo are accused of direct responsibility for match-fixing during the 2004-5 season, as is the club.

It is almost certain that Juventus will be stripped of both the league titles they have won in the past two seasons, and prevented from competing in Europe. More significantly, the general expectation is that the club will be relegated, most probably dropping one division, although there have been arguments for a stronger penalty. The three other clubs involved (Fiorentina, Lazio and Milan) will face lesser penalties, most likely points deductions. Juventus have already been preparing for relegation, as have their lawyers, who will argue that the club has purged its guilt by forcing its former directors to resign, therefore should be allowed to remain in the top flight.

Financial experts argue that the costs of relegation (as high as e200 million in accounting terms) are too severe and would have an impact on Italian football as a whole.

Apart from Moggi and Giraudo, the individuals involved include several of the top names from Italian football: Adriano Galliani, managing director of Milan and former league president, the brothers Andrea and Diego Della Valle, the owners of Fiorentina and Claudio Lotito, president of Lazio.

Alongside them in the dock are Pieluigi Pairetto and Paolo Bergamo, the men responsible for selection and designation of referees, Tulio Lanese, president of the referees’ association, and 10 match officials, including Massimo de Santis and Paolo Bertini, both of them international referees. Magistrates in four cities have spent up to two years investigating the conspiracy, and investigations are continuing into GEA World, the leading football agency accused of corrupting and rigging the transfer market.

On Tuesday, Luciano Moggi finally broke silence and was interviewed for three hours on television. His argument is that other, more powerful, interests are involved.

“If a proper 360 degree investigation was done,” he said, “the truth would have come out about the various lobbies that control Italian football. Football without me will be no better: these lobbies will continue to dominate.”

There are those who believe that Moggi may use this occasion to drag other people down with him.

It is Italian football’s biggest crisis, even as the team prepares to make its bid for World Cup glory.