It seems that the rest of Italian football is only a dream. On Tuesday, the Court of Appeal examined the complaint of Juventus, Lazio, Milan, Fiorentina, dissatisfied with the sanctions applied to them, and issued a verdict. The verdict is sensational. All four of the defendants were sentenced - apparently, for exemplary behavior during the meeting.
AC Milan will start the new season with a deficit of eight points instead of the previous fifteen, and, which is especially valuable, the Rossoneri will have the opportunity to play in the Champions League qualifications (Italy’s application for the 2006/07 Champions League will look like this: in the group stage they will play “Inter” and “Roma”, while “Milan” and “Chievo” will start the fight for the title of the best team in Europe from the third qualifying round). “Juventus” in the series “B” will be returned 13 of the 30 selected points. And “Lazio” with “Fiorentina” will “be released with a clear conscience” - the Romans and Florentines will retain their place in the class of the strongest. True, you will have to pay for parole: “Lazio” starts at minus 11 points, “Fiorentina” - minus 19. But, as the hero of the famous cartoon sang, we will survive this trouble. The main thing is that they have not flooded the apartment.
In theory, convicts should jump with delight, but the appetite comes with food. Fiorentina's president Andrea Della Valle, suspended from all football affairs for three years (and at first it was four), said that this was only the beginning of the rehabilitation process. The owner of the "violets" intends to sue further and restore himself in all rights. The leaders of Lazio have roughly the same plans - they also believe that they are not to blame for anything. After all, if everyone agrees, why can't the proud Romans do this noble work?
Juventus bosses the court decision frankly disappointed - it turns out that the old Signora will have to serve his sentence alone. Nobody likes the role of the scapegoat, and it was in such a cloven-hoofed creature that Juve turned after an appeal. And only in the camp of Milan they celebrate the victory - they already realized that they got off with a light fright. 8 points are mere trifles, especially in the championship, where there is no Juventus.
In general, the situation was again turned upside down. Or vice versa, everything is so confused that few people remember where the legs are here and where the head is. For a while, it seemed that Italian football wanted to cleanse itself - to arrange a demonstration auto-da-fe. Luciano Moggi, Adriano Galliani and other comrades in black robes had to walk the streets, sprinkle their heads with ashes, sing prayers and shout loudly: "Mea Culpa!". Then they would be burned exponentially at the stake, and the calcho was instantly cleansed of contamination.
Honestly, this scenario was initially unlikely. Justice went through the heights without touching the roots growing from hoary Italian antiquity. It turns out that the Italians woke up one day and found that their football was corrupt. It used to be good, but now it's bad. All too simple.
Life by concepts - it is addictive. Everyone quickly gets used to these concepts, it soon begins to seem that the concepts are the laws. Since time immemorial, Italian football has been living according to concepts, and no show trial can change this. It is characteristic that the Italians cannot bring it to the end. They wanted to punish the guilty in all the strictness of the law - but no, prayer has already turned into a farce. For some reason, it seems that the decision of the court of appeal is just a comma, not a point in this case. Clubs have already felt that justice gives weakness, which means that you can put pressure on him further. Until the end.
Of course, all this does not apply to the terrible and terrible Luciano Moji. He, like Caesar's wife, is beyond suspicion, just the opposite. At the moment, Moji is a kind of Koschey Immortal Italian football, an absolute hypertrophied evil. It already seems to many that it was he who plunged Italian football into chaos, he corrupted the judges, he seduced the players, he, he, he - all of him. But in fact, Moji just better than others figured out the situation. He knew all the loopholes well, and drove the concepts in a wonderful way for himself. Moji has now made a scapegoat, but his departure is a substitution of cause for effect. In a conceptual society, a new Moji will certainly be found, and everything will go the old way.
Such a probability is already at the hearing. On July 19, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, citing sources in Naples’s prosecutor’s office, said that “in the near future” an investigation into two more Serie A clubs would be opened as part of the same match-fixing case.
Kirill DEMENTYEV