116street Soccer

Footballing from a lesser authority...

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Location: New York, New York

Friday, May 12, 2006

Red-Handed?

Before I get to talking about Clint Dempsey, it would be incredibly irresponsible of me not to mention the Juventus situation. For those of you who don't know, Juventus general director Luciano Moggi was caught in wiretapped conversations with officials from the Italian referees' association, as well as the UEFA referees' commission, attempting to influence referee selection. Yesterday, in response to the scandal, Juve's entire board of directors resigned en masse, as did the president of the Italian soccer federation, Franco Carraro, earlier in the week. Today, police raided the offices of the Italian soccer federation in search of more information on the case. Juventus, in the meantime, can win the Serie A title this weekend with a draw over Reggina.
This could really turn into the sporting scandal of the year, especially if (as reported) this goes beyond the Serie A and into UEFA and the Champions League. Even the German match-fixing scandals of the past year didn't approach this; with the scudetto on the line, the scrutiny the referees will be under this weekend will be unprecedented. Not to mention that Juventus, which up to this point could very well have been considered a model organization in European football, now makes the Real Madrid asylum look first-class in comparison. Furthermore, with Lazio, Fiorentina and even possibly AC Milan now being implicated in match-fixing as well, it seems as though this story won't be going away anytime soon...

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