Italian football in crisis
By Brian Alexander
BBC Radio Five Live presenter
The corruption scandal engulfing Italy has left the country with a
real sense of shame.
Former Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi is alleged to have
fixed matches and pretty much controlled the Italian league.
It is claimed he had control of some of the top referees and
administrators as well as over 220 players through an agency run by
his son Alessandro, and the son of Italian coach Marcello Lippi,
Davide.
AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio are also caught up in the scandal as
are the national team, who are preparing for the World Cup.
Italy, and the whole of European football, has not seen anything
like this before.
I travelled there for three days last week to try to speak to the
main players.
After a marathon 22-hour day, we cornered the owner of Palermo,
Rino Foschi, in a restaurant at 0100 to gauge his views on what has
been going on.
Foschi was having dinner with the directors of Sampdoria and
Fiorentina in a restaurant in Milan and I managed to persuade him
to have a brief conversation on tape with me.
The scene was like something out of a Godfather film, and I half
expected Robert de Niro or Al Pacino to be sitting at the next
table.
I also spoke to Giuseppe Gazzoni-Frascara, the former owner of
Bologna. The club was relegated in 2005 and Gazzoni-Frascara told
me it was as a result of the "Moggi system".
He claimed that Bologna were not prepared to sign up and ended up
being relegated instead of Fiorentina.
I set out to speak to Moggi himself, which none of the Italian
media has managed to do - and I got very close.
Through various intermediaries he finally agreed for me to fly and
meet him in Turin but it got vetoed by his lawyer, which was very
frustrating.
However, we did manage to get the country's new sports minister,
Giovanna Melandri, who said Italian football fans have suffered a
great wound but insisted that things could be sorted out.
And I will be discussing the issue with Fifa president Sepp
Blatter, world football's most senior figure, to get his take on
the scandal.
My feeling as I left Italy was that the whole of their national
game is in danger of imploding. How they are going to clean up a
mess which is so interwoven?
This was highlighted at a press conference where Italian League
president and AC Milan vice-president Adriano Galliani was
speaking.
Some Italians believe he should have known what was going on and at
the press conference a mob of about 50 fans gathered outside
chanting and letting off smoke bombs. It was all pretty
scary.
Juventus fans are in a particularly terrible position. They could
see their club relegated to Serie B or even go out of business if
the Agnelli family decides to stop funding the club.
There is real urgency here because all the national federations
have to give Uefa the official lists of clubs who are competing in
the Champions League and the Uefa Cup by 27 July.
Italian football will have to come up with some pretty strong
answers and satisfy Uefa that they are in the process of cleaning
up the game.
They have not got long to do this and there is the possibility that
the biggest brands in world football like Juventus and AC Milan may
not feature in Europe next season.
