Corona A&E

Whilst all the key figures in the scandal now dubbed “Interopoli” are currently appearing before the Milan Public Prosecutor, Maurizio Ascione, the vast majority of our media – both sports and non-sports outlets – continue to show little interest in the affair.

Let us forget the relentless media barrage seen in 2006, and then again three years ago in the capital gains case, with sensationalist front pages and wiretaps – even private or irrelevant ones – splashed across nine columns in the newspapers, just to fuel the now sadly notorious “public sentiment”.

By now, the pattern is well known: enemies are guilty by default, whilst for friends there is always a justification or a loophole that can make their position seem less serious, if not entirely blameless. Pretty much all football fans in Italy have noticed this, including those of Napoli, who chose to dedicate a striking display to the particular moment Italian football is currently experiencing.

Yet, amidst all this silence (or perhaps we should start calling it a code of silence), there is one voice that stands out from the crowd: that of the ‘good’ Fabrizio Corona, whose show ‘Falsissimo’ keeps millions of Italians glued to the web, eager to learn about the behind-the-scenes stories and scandals that are unlikely to find their way into the print media or on traditional TV.

In recent days, Corona himself had announced major revelations about the gilded world of football, even naming Claudio Lotito, senator and president of Lazio, and above all ‘Don’ ** Beppe Marotta**, the man who had also been identified by Roberto Saviano as the puppet master running the entire Serie A circus.

However, as the broadcast of Falsissimo drew nearer, some independent journalists began circulating alarming rumours, according to which Corona himself had been offered a whopping five million euros not to air the episode, or at least to water it down and strip it of the most compromising revelations.

I have no idea whether these rumours were true or not, but if I had to give a title to the show’s final episode, no other words would spring to mind but ‘cosmic nothingness’. There are two possibilities: either Corona has always boasted about football scoops he didn’t actually have (it wouldn’t even be the first time he’s lied simply to get publicity), or the latest episode of Falsissimo really was heavily edited.

Corona begins the show by discussing the investigation, yet at the same time declares that the current refereeing chaos does not interest him. After all, according to his account, the allegations made by Public Prosecutor Ascione (that referees favoured by Inter were being selected) are attributed to more general internal squabbles within the refereeing sector, employing the same line of defence already used by many pro-Inter journalists.

However, the former king of the paparazzi did not leave us without some interesting insights. According to his account, for several years now, the sporting directors of Serie A teams have been conducting the transfer market in collusion with various agents. In other words, the players signed by the teams are not those deemed best or most suited to the technical project, but those whose interests are managed by friendly agents, with whom the substantial commissions are shared.

Corona is calling for the clubs responsible for such behaviour to be charged with sporting misconduct, hoping for exemplary penalties such as automatic relegation to Serie B. I won’t go into the merits of the case, which, if proven, will cast further discredit on Italian football, but in my personal opinion it seems impossible not to notice, between the lines, the classic attempt to ‘stir up a fuss’.

Inter is currently in the firing line, the only club under investigation in the biggest inquiry in the history of Italian football. It could soon find itself accused of sporting fraud and, according to some, also face charges relating to various financial offences potentially committed under Suning’s administration.

An investigation that is difficult to conceal entirely and from which there seem to be no loopholes, save one: dragging everyone down with them, so as to dilute responsibility in a sort of ‘everyone does it’ mentality. Should numerous Serie A clubs indeed be implicated in an investigation into illicit dealings with sports agents, the Inter scandal would lose all its impact, and any sanctions imposed by the sports authorities would certainly be more lenient.

After all, you certainly can’t relegate all twenty teams. In my view, Corona represents the trump card drawn from the deck in what appears to be a desperate situation. But quite unexpectedly, in the early stages of the show, Corona also touched on another topic, that of Calciopoli, confirming what anyone who has bothered to look into the matter over the last twenty years already knows: there is not a single wiretap implicating Moggi or Juventus in which the offence of sporting misconduct is established.

To the detriment of what was then one of the strongest teams in the world (9 out of 22 players in the 2006 World Cup final between Italy and France played for Juventus), a veritable fraud was perpetrated, with the aim of installing figures favoured by the Inter system in positions of power.

The same Inter that now has but one mission: to weather this latest storm – the most devastating yet – and pull off yet another spectacular escape from trouble in the club’s history. To do so, they are prepared to do anything, even to sacrifice parts of their own narrative, to tarnish their beloved white tuxedo a little, and to rewrite the history of “Calciopoli”.

After all, twenty years have passed, the league titles are in the trophy cabinet and everything is time-barred. Except for the shame – fortunately, that has no expiry date.

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