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At 7.15 on Thursday evening, Serie A changed.
Think of it like the departure board at a train station suddenly fluttering as the league updated the table. An hour earlier, amid the swirling flags and plumes of smoke gushing from flares let off by Roma fans escorting the team’s bus to the Stadio Olimpico for their Europa League quarter-final, the Italian Olympic Committee’s Board of Guarantors could hear the din as they issued a verdict in the Salone d’Onore down the street.
Juventus were in Lisbon for their own quarter-final, but the result all the players were following 45 minutes before their game against Sporting Lisbon involved the club’s legal team and the appeal to annul the 15-point penalty slapped down on them last January in a case about player trading. “It’s never pleasant to wait,” Juventus’ chief football officer Francesco Calvo said. They’d hoped to know the outcome before boarding the plane for Portugal the night before but were made to sweat.
The Board of Guarantors had been presented as the last chance saloon for Juventus, not to mention the long list of executives past and present who had been banned by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) three months ago. Afterwards, the appeal process would, in theory, be exhausted. As such, this was the bonus episode of Juventus: All or Nothing that no one wanted.
The Board of Guarantors could not enter into the merit of the case, only the legitimacy of it. For instance, should the case have been brought to trial in the first place? Could Juventus be tried again after being exonerated a year ago? Was there even an offence considering the subjective nature of transfer valuations? Did the FIGC start and finish its investigation into the club’s transfer business on time? Were there sufficient grounds to get the case reopened three months ago using evidence gathered in a criminal case that is yet to be heard?
Juventus have always denied all wrongdoing and have been unwavering in the belief they had strong grounds for an annulment. “We’ll defend the club in the appropriate institutions. You can do it by picking up points on the pitch” — that was the gist of the address Juventus’ new chairman Gianluca Ferrero and chief executive Maurizio Scanavino delivered to the players after the penalty was imposed. The players have upheld their side of the bargain. Until a recent derailment of three consecutive league defeats, the most recent in controversial fashion in stoppage time against champions-elect Napoli on Sunday night, Juventus’ form since February has been podium worthy in Serie A.
It has not been easy to perform over a period book-ended by losses to Napoli. The original decision came a week after Luciano Spalletti’s rampant Partenopei inflicted a 5-1 defeat on Juventus at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, a top-of-the-table clash that, had it gone differently, could have closed the gap to four points. Massimiliano Allegri and his players got hit not once but twice: they weren’t only out of the title race — they were out of the top half too after the points deduction.
“It affected us,” Manuel Locatelli said. “We talked about it amongst ourselves. As soon as the sentence became official we were messaging each other on our WhatsApp group. We spoke about it the following day and came to the conclusion that it was pointless thinking about whether we’d get them back or not.” The tension it generated should not be underestimated. Juventus’ former scudetto winner Emanuele Giaccherini related his own experience of playing for Chievo when they were docked points in a display of empathy towards beleaguered Sampdoria who face not only relegation but bankruptcy. Teams can let themselves go. Juventus have not.
“Do you think any other team could have done what we’re doing if, along with all the injuries (to Paul Pogba, Federico Chiesa and Angel Di Maria), the same things had happened to them?” Danilo told The Athletic. People forget this is a team without Gianluigi Buffon and Giorgio Chiellini, Juventus’ old guard. Danilo has had to step up and be captain because age is catching up with 35-year-old Leonardo Bonucci. New leaders have had to emerge. “This team has felt at war with everyone for a while now,” Wojciech Szczesny shrugged. The pressure has been immense.
The Polish goalkeeper had to go off against Sporting after suffering heart palpitations. Nicolo Fagioli, one of the players from Juventus’ “Next Gen” reserve team that Allegri has leaned on, missed a chance to equalise against Lazio and then broke down in tears on the bench after his mistake led to Sassuolo’s winner last weekend. Moise Kean was shown a straight red in stoppage time against Roma for chopping down Gianluca Mancini with a petulant kick 40 seconds after coming on. Each of these incidents can be seen as abstract and in isolation but Allegri, with regard to Kean’s irresponsible sending off, referred to the context and how “what’s happened to Juventus this season has never happened in football before”.
Nevertheless, a cautious optimism, buoyed by a resurgence in results, began to percolate steadily over the last six weeks. There was a noticeable shift in tone from Allegri who went from acknowledging the risk of Juventus being drawn into a relegation battle to insisting his team may not be second in the table but were second in his head and on the pitch. “Are we sure that Juve don’t have 59 points? We’re in Italy,” Roma coach Jose Mourinho cynically observed at a time when they were on 44. “I’ve been here four years not four days.” He was not surprised when the news came through that the points penalty had been suspended.
The written reasons for the decision have yet to be published and the Board of Guarantors has a month to commit them to paper. But Ugo Taucer, the attorney general, gave an insight into his thinking as he left the Olympic Committee’s Palazzo H the night before the verdict came through. He vindicated the FIGC on some points but “on the other hand”, Taucer said, “I fear the application of Article 4 (of the FIGC’s justice code) is unfounded in relation to the points penalty awarded against the club in question and I hope this shortcoming will be assessed again in a new judgment.”
Taucer’s pronouncement came as a shock because the hearing this week was expected to be definitive. Instead, it’s a case of taking two steps forward to go one step back. For now, Juventus have hurdled Atalanta, Inter Milan, AC Milan and Roma in the table, going from seventh to third. “It’s been a ‘bella giornata’,” Allegri said after his team eliminated Sporting to reach the Europa League semi-finals the same evening; a “beautiful day”.
“Juventus celebrate twice” was the front page of the Agnelli-Elkann-owned La Stampa. But those celebrations may only be temporary and weren’t entirely sweet. The Board of Guarantors returned the points penalty to sender. We go back to the future. Juventus will appear before the Federal Court of Appeal as they did last January, a sword of Damocles looming over them.
The points penalty, considered disproportionate and unmotivated by the Board of Guarantors, will be re-evaluated. That means it could be reinstated, reduced or annulled. Some executives, such as Juventus’ former vice-president Pavel Nedved, Paolo Garimberti and Enrico Vellano, the former CFO of the club’s majority shareholder Exor, will be able to appeal their bans. This partial, temporary and attritional victory didn’t come without losses either. Andrea Agnelli’s two-year suspension was upheld and the appeal process is exhausted for him at least in the sporting domain. The same goes for Fabio Paratici, who finally resigned from Tottenham, and his old deputy Federico Cherubini who has still been attending Juventus games. Calvo expressed his “regret and solidarity for them” prior to kick-off at the Estadio Jose Alvalade.
That night ended with five Italian teams in the semi-finals of UEFA’s three competitions. It’s the first time since 1999 that Serie A has been in the final four of each tournament. But no one among Italy’s current top six, apart from Napoli, knows which one they’ll be participating in next season. For the clubs competing for the Champions League places, the news was a surreality check. When Roma’s general manager Tiago Pinto got wind of the news just moments before his team played Feyenoord, he said: “I don’t know if you use this expression in Italy, but I have to laugh in order not to cry. As a sportsman, if the table we play in for three months doesn’t correspond to reality then the mechanism is wrong.”
In an instant, Juventus leapfrogged Roma who did at least stay in the top four, unlike the Milanesi who endured a major comedown from the high of reaching the Champions League semi-finals for the first time in more than a decade. Milan were second when the points penalty was issued. Rivals Inter were fourth. Look at the form guide since then and the reinstatement of the points on Thursday and Milan’s results would be good enough only for 11th and Inter’s for 12th. Did either of them take Juventus’ fate for granted? How much, if any, influence did the penalty have on their psychology and the decisions of their coaches? Would, for instance, Stefano Pioli and Simone Inzaghi have been as extreme in their rotation between Champions League ties if the points penalty had never been applied?
These are unanswerable questions and blame for their drift through the spring cannot be reduced to a single factor. Champions League earnings from an unexpected run all the way to the final for one of these teams — Milan and Inter have raked in more than €80million (£70m, $88m) each so far — won’t totally offset the lost money from failing to qualify and participate in next year’s group stage.
The hit in expected revenue is estimated at around €25million, which for a club run like Milan is very close to the maximum fee they’re prepared to pay for a player. It is one Fikayo Tomori. The swing away from qualification caused by Thursday’s decision is dramatic. Statistical models upgraded Juventus’ chances of making the Champions League to 84 per cent. Milan’s chances of qualifying through their league position were downgraded to 38 per cent, and Inter’s to 15 per cent.
FOMO at Inter had already started to manifest itself before the evaporation of Juventus’ points penalty to the extent that speculation arose about the club mulling over a Champions League bonus to wake the players up in the run-in. “That would be a negative thing to do. The players shouldn’t be mercenaries,” Inter chief executive Giuseppe Marotta said. “We shouldn’t have to incentivise them to do something that’s in their grasp. It would be depressing. I got rid of the top-four bonus when I arrived. I can’t let myself think they have to be motivated by money.”
What the models can’t predict is the contents of the Board of Guarantors’ written reasons and whether or not Juventus’ points penalty gets reintroduced, downsized or removed. They can’t anticipate another, separate deduction either. Around 10 days ago, the FIGC’s federal prosecutor’s office notified Juventus it had concluded another investigation into how the club accounted for salary payments during COVID-19, relationships with agents and alleged partnerships with other teams. Disciplinary proceedings are expected next month.
Then there is UEFA’s own investigation, another variable absent from the model. “We’re convinced we have always acted in the right and this conviction remains in the wake of today’s decision,” Calvo said. “We’ve had the fullest dialogue, with the utmost respect, since January when the ruling was made.” A ruling that Allegri feels messed with his team: “On the one hand you could say this penalty galvanised us. On the other, if they hadn’t deducted the points maybe we’d have 10 points more than we do now because it’s hard to explain the impact it has had on us mentally.”
The league remains shrouded in uncertainty. “All we can do is focus on what we can control,” Pioli said. “The sooner the league table is definitive, the better it is for everyone.” Considering the active cases, Serie A might not be set in stone until the formal end of the season on June 30, which is more than three weeks after the final whistle blows on the last round of games. “From a legal perspective I can’t give an opinion because I don’t have the expertise,” Lazio coach Maurizio Sarri said. “As a sportsman, the league isn’t a level playing field. It isn’t if the standings are kept like that for three months and then they say: ‘I’m sorry, we made a mistake. It might actually be this’. As for the sporting justice (system), I hope someone has the good taste to resign.”
The league’s credibility and adequacy have taken hit after hit. Luigi De Siervo, the chief executive of Serie A, expressed his “disappointment” that the FIGC “wanted to intervene during the season” and his hope that the “sanction be reconsidered”. Then on Saturday, Gabriele Gravina, the president of the FIGC, intervened in the case of Romelu Lukaku — whose second yellow card in the first leg of the Coppa Italia semi-final, shown amid deplorable racist chanting as he celebrated scoring an equalising penalty in Turin — was insensitively upheld. Aware of the optics, Gravina compassionately and sensationally overruled his own prosecutors.
These are the disorienting shifting sands of Italian football. No one knows where anyone stands. No one apart from Mourinho: “We’re in Italy.”
(Top image: Designed by John Bradford; photos by Mondadori Portfolio and Simone Arveda via Getty Images)
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