Calciopoli 2, but this time it’s no farce (and that’s why it will come to nothing)

frafiomatale (78)in #sports • 2 months ago

This is the English version of the post Calciopoli 2, ma questa volta non è una farsa (e per questo finirà con un nulla di fatto), originally published in Italian in the ITALY community.

I was tempted to begin by listing all the ‘I told you so’ moments with which I had, in some way, anticipated today’s news in these columns, but self-congratulation is a sport at which I have never excelled, and one I am happy to leave to the champions of the ‘discipline’.

Besides, it’s certainly no great feat. All it took was a brain not yet preserved in mothballs and eyes not veiled by thick slices of ham or blinded by fanaticism to realise that, from 2006 onwards, things in our football stopped working properly and began to take an increasingly obvious downward turn.

But what is this news of the day? It was revealed to us by an official statement from Public Prosecutor Maurizio Ascione, who is leading the investigation at the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office: “Inter asked the referee coordinator, Gianluca Rocchi, for their matches to be officiated exclusively by ‘preferred’ referees.” And one example that immediately springs to mind is the case of Daniele Orsato, Italy’s top referee, who ‘coincidentally’ has not refereed the Nerazzurri for almost three years.

In a normal world, there would be no need to go any further. The Attorney General of the FIGC, Peppino Chiné, would already have sufficient evidence to judge and accuse Inter of match-fixing, relegate them and strip them of this year’s almost certain title (and perhaps even previous ones), just as happened to Juventus in 2006.

Same dynamics, same charges, but one major difference: in 2006, no evidence of any match-fixing emerged, and it transpired that the Bianconeri, despite having paid the highest price, were neither the only ones seeking to influence the referees’ selectors, nor the ones who behaved in the most aggressive and inappropriate manner.

This time, however, we are faced with fairly clear evidence of one-sided refereeing decisions (most notably Bastoni’s unsanctioned elbow in Inter v Verona or the recent Bastoni-** Kalulu**) and of blatant favouritism off the pitch, such as the failure to suspend Acerbi for racism or the unprecedented ‘pardon’ granted to Lukaku in the Coppa Italia, whilst he was playing for Inter.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

From what has emerged, it appears that there was a code of communication in the VAR room whereby supervisors would prompt the referees watching the monitor to intervene or let play continue, depending on which team was affected by the decision. And there are dozens of situations – strange to say the least – that could be cited, favouring Inter and going against their direct rivals.

Surprised? Not in the slightest, not least because allow me to refresh your memory on what has happened over the last twenty years...

We were told that Moggi created a system, but it was Inter’s Facchetti who was phoning and asking referees for explicit favours.
The FA president explicitly asked not to favour Juventus, especially in the match against Inter, but it was always the Inter fans who complained.
We fought to ensure teams had their accounts in order, but Inter entered the league with negative equity, forged letters of support and a president wanted for bankruptcy.
Campaigns against racism were organised, but no evidence can be found regarding Inter players.
A football club president was banned for 12 months, despite having correctly reported the blackmail he suffered at the hands of organised crime, but nothing was done against the Inter president, who not only failed to report it but never even opposed their dealings.
Capital gains were condemned, but when the managing director of Inter made them, he was dubbed ‘the capital gains wizard’.
Players who swore on the pitch were banned, but no audio evidence was ever found against the Inter captain.
Sponsorships linked to gambling were banned, but Inter simply had to refer to a web page with no content to circumvent the law.
Handwritten notes were challenged and labelled as false accounting, but no objection was raised against Inter’s accounts, which included income they had never actually received.

And now, last but not least, the referees too – the key piece of evidence against a club that has destroyed Italian football in order to survive. Let’s not delude ourselves: they won’t pay this time either, so much so that the newspapers, unlike in 2006, have already started to pour cold water on the situation. No “what is Inter facing?”, no ‘public sentiment’, no verdict announced, just a lot of due process.

The tone is decidedly different and although Inter is the only club explicitly named by the public prosecutor leading the investigation as an active party to the fraud, its name is virtually absent from newspaper reports, which seek to reduce the whole affair to an internal squabble amongst referees.

This is no longer sport, but a grotesque imitation of feudal law. From Moratti onwards, rivalry has turned to hatred, competition to fraud, and sport to nothing but business, to be pursued at any cost. Gentlemen, I give up; you have won; keep your football.

From now on, let them watch this farce themselves; perhaps one day they’ll go so far as to change the rules to play without opponents, win every match 100–0 and celebrate their triumphs alongside their business cronies, hailing them as ‘the greatest ever’.