Juventus punished for fraud

Sportive and financial crisis at Juventus

Juventus lowered from third place to ninth in the rankings, due to the deduction of points. This is not only a bummer for the results, but it’s also a financial disaster. The chances of the once successful Juventus not participating in the Champions League again this year are grand, which is why it misses out on revenues and status. On top of all this, it’s only the question whether top football players like Di María, Pogba and Vlahović still want to identify as Juventus football players or whether they’ll go seeking for another club to play at.

Forgery and manipulation

Juventus made a statement at the beginning of the Covid crisis by making it seem like footballers handed in a part of their salary to support the club in hard times. This was seen as deception afterwards. Players received their salary, just like usual, through a creative financial construction. Ex-chairman Andrea Agnelli was responsible and got suspended for two years. Ex-technical manager Fabio Paritici (who works for Tottenham now) received a suspension of almost three years. Furthermore, Juventus icon and ex-vice-president of the club is suspended for eight months. He was already accused of forgery and manipulation a few years back.

Juventus trainer Massimiliano Allegri: ‘These developments don’t change anything.’

Allegri believes not much will change, despite of the crisis in Turin. He told the Italian press it didn’t feel like starting over for him. ‘It’s always our duty to win games.’ He also stated a few positive remarks. For example, that the club is still participating in the league and it’s still trying to win the Europa League. He also believes that Juventus can still win 60 more points this season. They need to win all the remaining games in order to win this amount of points.

Cristiano Ronaldo demands 19.6 million because of leaked documents

The same leaked documents, in which the corruption appeared, also stated that Ronaldo is still entitled to 19.6 million euros from Juventus. They, apparently, made a contract in which was stated that Ronaldo would receive this amount of money when transferring to another club. Ronaldo and his fiduciary and attorneys had never seen this document before. A grave mistake, admits club attorney Cesare Gabiaso. It won’t be very beneficial for Juventus if this payment truly has to take place.

Juventus scandals

More documents containing corruption and forgery can still come to light after all these revelations. The Court of Arbitration for Sport will dive deep into Juventus’s financial sources and will flip the entire accounts up side down to seek for further corruption.

Juventus was caught tampering before in 2006: investigations revealed that the club influenced referee appointments. This came to light through overheard phone calls. The cause? A remarkable number of unjustified penalties were awarded and unjustified cards were handed out in the Serie A during the season of 2004/05. This Calciopoli scandal was the biggest scandal known in Italian football. As punishment, two Serie A titles (2005 and 2006) were withdrawn and Juventus was banned from the Serie A and got relegated to the Serie B. It’s likely that Juventus will be seen as a manipulative club forever from now on.