Calciopoli (Italian: [kalˈtʃɔːpoli]) was a sports scandal that emerged in Italy's professional association football league in 2006. It involved some of the most famous and successful football teams in Italy: Juventus, AC Milan, SS Lazio, ACF Fiorentina, Arezzo and AS Reggina. Media reporting on the scandal labeled it Calciopoli (literally "Footballville", adapting the term Tangentopoli (Bribesville) that had been used to describe the political corruption scandals in Italy in the early 1990s.
The scandal was first discovered by Italian authorities during an investigation of allegations of doping by Juventus players. 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.
It 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.
Background
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, and whose founder Riccardo Luna continued to boast of being "the first to reveal the intrigues of Calciopoli". The first major sport newspaper to anticipate and report the scandal was Milan-based La Gazzetta dello Sport, which also anticipated the subsequent court rulings. Transcripts of recorded telephone conversations soon thereafter published in major Italian newspapers 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.
Investigation and sporting sentences
On 8 May 2006, Franco Carraro resigned from the presidency of the FIGC, the body responsible for selecting Italy's FIFA World Cup national team; he remained a member of the UEFA's executive committee and as a FIFA official. Juventus' entire board of directors resigned on 11 May, while Moggi resigned shortly after Juventus won the 2005–06 Serie A championship on 14 May, saying: "They killed my soul." Giraudo stated: "We take our leave, but you will see that bandits will come after us." On the Borsa Italiana, Italy's stock market, Juventus shares had lost about half their 9 May value by 19 May. Massimo De Santis was due to be Italy's refereeing representative at the 2006 World Cup; he was barred by the FIGC after coming under investigation. Roberto Rosetti remained untainted by the scandal, and was chosen as one of the twenty-one 2006 FIFA World Cup officials.
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, one of the most powerful and rich family in Italy, which controls, alongside the Elkann family, one of the greatest holding company in the world Exor, the largest automobile manufacturer in Italy FIAT, their members have held political offices, Umberto Agnelli has been briefly the president of Italian Football Federation in the '60s and also FIAT has been the sponsor of the FIGC and also of the Association of Italian Referee (AIA) with the conflict of interest associated. In addition to allegations of corruption and sporting fraud by owners, executives, players, referees, and league officials, Aldo Biscardi, the host of Italy's most popular football show, resigned amid allegations that he collaborated with Moggi to boost the club's image on television, compared to the Milanese side. 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. Journalist Christian Rocca commented: "I wonder why the Italian media say every possible abomination on the potential conflict of interest of Adriano Galliani, president of Lega [Calcio] and executive of Milan, but don't use the same criterion towards Guido Rossi, extraordinary commissioner of the Italian Football Federation and former executive of Moratti's Inter Milan from 1995 to 1999, and of Gigi Agnolin, appointed commissioner of referees but still former executive of Roma from 1995 to 2000 (instead of Moggi, look what a combination)." Federal prosecutor Carlo Porceddu, a critic of the trial, especially for its decision of revoking Juventus' title by assigning it to Inter Milan, stated in 2017 that Rossi appointed friends, one of whom was on Inter Milan's board of directors.
In all, magistrates in Naples formally investigated 41 people, and looked into 19 Serie A matches from the 2004–05 season and 14 Serie A matches from the 2005–06 season. Prosecutors in Turin examined the Juventus chairman Antonio Giraudo over transfers, suspected falsified accounts, and tax evasion. Prosecutors in Parma investigated Gianluigi Buffon, the national team goalkeeper, as well as Antonio Chimenti, Enzo Maresca, and Mark Iuliano, for suspected gambling on Serie A matches; all were cleared in the same year. After the first penalties were handed out, more clubs were looked at for possible links to the scandal. Lecce, Messina, and Siena were also investigated as prosecutors continued to analyze transcripts of telephone calls.
Matches under investigation
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.
The nineteen matches of the 2004–05 championship under investigation by the Naples prosecutor were the following:
- Reggina–Juventus 2–1 (6 November 2004)Referee: Gianluca Paparesta
- Lecce–Juventus 0–1 (14 November 2004)Referee: Massimo De Santis
- Juventus–Lazio 2–1 (5 December 2004)Referee: Paolo Dondarini
- Fiorentina–Bologna 1–0 (5 December 2004)Referee: Massimo De Santis
- Bologna–Juventus 0–1 (12 December 2004)Referee: Tiziano Pieri
- Juventus–Udinese 2–1 (13 February 2005)Referee: Pasquale Rodomonti
- ChievoVerona–Lazio 0–1 (20 February 2005)Referee: Gianluca Rocchi
- Lazio–Parma 2–0 (27 February 2005)Referee: Domenico Messina
- Roma–Juventus 1–2 (5 March 2005)Referee: Salvatore Racalbuto
- Inter Milan–Fiorentina 3–2 (20 March 2005)Referee: Paolo Bertini
- Fiorentina–Juventus 3–3 (9 April 2005)Referee: Pierluigi Collina
- Milan–Brescia 1–1 (10 April 2005)Referee: Pasquale Rodomonti
- Bologna–Lazio 1–2 (17 April 2005)Referee: Paolo Tagliavento
- Siena–Milan 2–1 (17 April 2005)Referee: Pierluigi Collina
- Milan–ChievoVerona 1–0 (20 April 2005)Referee: Gianluca Paparesta
- ChievoVerona–Fiorentina 1–2 (8 May 2005)Referee: Paolo Dondarini
- Livorno–Siena 3–6 (8 May 2005)Referee: Massimo De Santis
- Lazio–Fiorentina 1–1 (22 May 2005)Referee: Roberto Rosetti
- Lecce–Parma 3–3 (29 May 2005)Referee: Massimo De Santis
Walter Distato and Leo Leonida from the University of London and Dario Maimone and Pietro Navarra from the University of Messina conducted a study on the 2004–05 Serie A championship. According to the study, Juventus averaged less points per game with investigated referees (De Santis, Rodomonti, Bertini, Dondarini, Rocchi, Messina, Gabriele, Racalbuto, and Tagliavento) than those who were not; Juventus averaged 2.63 points per game with the latter, and 1.89 points per game with the former. Fiorentina and Milan, two other clubs involved in the scandal, averaged 1.22 points per game with the latter, and 0.93 points per game with the former, and 2.19 points per game with the latter, and 2.0 points per game with the former, respectively. The only exception was Lazio, another club implicated in the scandal, which averaged 2.0 points per game with the former, and 0.81 points with the latter.
About their study, the authors wrote: "Ours is a purely statistical study. We are not interested, nor are we able to establish, if Moggi and the other executives under investigation could influence the matches, but from our point of view we can highlight three hypotheses more than valid: either there was no referee conditioning in the 2004–05 championship, or it existed but did not produce relevant results, or it's possible to think of a clash between executives for the acquisition of the football system that gave rise to winning and losing clubs in that which we can define as a 'parallel championship.'" Navarra, one of the authors, wrote: "In addition, in the study we also took into account the strength of the opponents faced by the teams involved. Juventus, for example, met stronger teams in matches directed by the referees under investigation. This could explain, at least in part, the considerable difference in the overall point average."
Club punishments and Juventus' controversy
On 4 July 2006, the FIGC prosecutor Stefano Palazzi called for all four clubs at the centre of the scandal to be thrown out of Serie A. Palazzi called for Juventus "being excluded from the Serie A Championship and assigned to a lower category to Serie B with 6 points deducted", while Fiorentina, Lazio, and Milan were to be also downgraded to last place in the 2005–06 Serie A and relegated to the 2006–07 Serie B. He also asked for point deductions to be imposed for the following season for the clubs (three for Milan and 15 for both Fiorentina and Lazio). The prosecutor also called for Juventus to be stripped of its 2005 title and downgraded to the last place in the 2006 league.
In the case against Reggina on 13 August, the prosecutor called for Reggina to be demoted to Serie B with a 15-point penalty. On 17 August, Reggina was handed down a 15-point penalty but no relegation from Serie A. Furthermore, the club was fined the equivalent of €100,000, while the club president Pasquale Foti was fined €30,000 and banned from all football-related activities for two-and-a-half years.
In the ruling, the Federal Commission of Appeal (CAF), a FIGC judicial court, stated that Juventus was not responsible for Fiorentina avoiding relegation, and that Moggi and Giraudo operated independently of Juventus and its owners. In addition, the court ruled that there was no evidence of match fixing, and there was no cupola or "Moggi system", as was reported by La Gazzetta dello Sport. Finally, referee selections were done in accordance with the rules of the FIGC, phone calls made by Moggi to referee designator Paolo Bergamo did not constitute in itself a sporting illicit, and there was no organization of yellow cards to give. Nonetheless, the sentence stated that "though Moggi didn't exercise his ability to condition matches, he still possessed the ability", and even though there were no Article 6 violations against Juventus, it introduced the much-disputed illecito associativo ("associative illicit") violation; the given motivation was that "Juventus' advantage was evidenced by their position in the standings at the end of the season."