Calciopoli 2006

Lore & Background

The scandal emerged from wiretaps in a broader investigation into football agency GEA World and Juventus management. Transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Juventus's General Manager Luciano Moggi and various officials revealed an elaborate scheme to affect the outcome of matches by influencing referees. This involved having referees who were favourable to Juventus being assigned to their games, directly (or indirectly) pressuring referees to make decisions beneficial to Juventus, or giving penalty cards in preceding matches, which would render certain players ineligible to play against Juventus. The scandal first came to light as a consequence of investigations of prosecutors on the Italian football agency GEA World founded by Luciano Moggi's son Alessandro. The leak of news that triggered Calciopoli in May 2006 did not start from the major sports or investigative press but rather came from Il Romanista, a newspaper entirely dedicated to Roma supporters. The first major sport newspaper to anticipate and report the scandal was Milan-based La Gazzetta dello Sport. Transcripts of recorded telephone conversations suggested that Juventus general director Luciano Moggi and Juventus CEO Antonio Giraudo had conversations with several Italian football officials to influence referee designations during the 2004–05 Serie A season. Notable referees, such as Pierluigi Collina and Roberto Rosetti, were among the few referees to emerge unscathed from the scandal. The scandal drew attention to many potential conflicts of interest within Italian football. Inter Milan provided sponsorship to the Serie A through Gruppo TIM, as Inter Milan vice-president Marco Tronchetti Provera was TIM director. Silvio Berlusconi, Milan's president and owner, was Prime Minister of Italy and owner of TV company Mediaset through Fininvest, while Adriano Galliani, as the vice president and CEO of Milan, also served as the president of Serie A. Juventus has been historically owned by the Agnelli family since the 1930s. Then-FIGC president Carraro was a former president of Milan and politically close to Berlusconi, while its successor in the four months as Extraordinary Commissioner Guido Rossi was a former member of Inter Milan's board of directors and minority Inter Milan shareholder.

In Their Own Story

The air inside the San Siro was thick with a mixture of anticipation and disbelief as the league table finally settled. For years, the shadow of Turin had loomed over every Nerazzurri victory, but in this strange season of 2006-07, that shadow had been legally erased. The players on the pitch felt the weight of history; they were not just playing for points, but for a title that had been mathematically guaranteed by the courts and the federation before the final whistle even blew. As the celebrations erupted, it was clear: the era of Inter's resurgence had begun in the ashes of Italy's greatest scandal.

Reader's Guide

The standings of the 2005–06 Serie A championship, which was won by Juventus, were remade to retroactively punish implicated clubs the year prior. This controversially resulted in third-classified Inter Milan being awarded the scudetto by then-FIGC commissioner Guido Rossi after a vote, on whether the title should be assigned by the tre saggi ('Three Sages') Gerhard Aigner, Massimo Coccia, and Roberto Pardolesi, as well as Juventus' relegation, and four other clubs (Fiorentina, Lazio, Milan, and Reggina) received penalty points. Only Aigner voted in favour of the assignation, with Rossi's ultimate decisive push for the assignation, even though UEFA only needed the final standings, and the cited precedent of the unassigned 1926–27 Divisione Nazionale title, which was revoked from Torino and not assigned to Bologna as the second-classified club. The 2005–06 championship was never investigated, and only the 2004–05 Serie A championship, also won by Juventus, was revoked.

Did You Know?

• The scandal emerged from wiretaps in a broader investigation into football agency GEA World and Juventus management.
• The first newspaper to report the scandal was Il Romanista, a newspaper dedicated to Roma supporters.
• Inter Milan was awarded the 2005–06 scudetto after