CHEATING The System: Italian Edition

match fixing a shameless act not only dishonorable dishonest and dostedly but also just a very uncool thing to do despite this if you give someone the opportunity to win a vital set of points in a title race win a coveted piece of silverware or simply make big bucks at the bookies history shows that many men have fallen victim to temptation in the past and unfortunately for us we may never actually know how many instances of match fixing have actually occurred before our very own eyes except for every week when man united plays i mean they can't actually be that bad can they today our focus is going to be italy a country rich in football history but also a country that has been plagued with some of the craziest scandals the football world has ever seen anyone else remember that one time a.c milan got relegated for gaming the system no how about the time it happened to juventus still know well even if you do today we're going to be diving down a rabbit hole to unpack these stories so with that being said how do you cheat the system in italy or at least attempt to yo what's going on guys hope you're all doing well welcome back to the channel before we get into this one i feel i have to mention that match manipulation occurs everywhere every football league every sporting organization for that matter you'd be a fool to think otherwise i'm picking on italy this time but the other nations and leagues will have their time in the limelight at some point so where do we begin there have been dozens of cases of reported match fixing in italian football over the years and i'm not even kidding about that but just to condense our investigation we're gonna focus on two stories in particular tortonero and culturepoli the reasoning being that to me these two just stand out amongst the best of the best match fixing heavyweights if you will you'll see what i mean right that's enough waffle let's kick this one off in 1980. our story starts with two men alvaro trinca and massimo kruziani a respected roman restaurant owner and cruziani his supplier of fresh produce and it was at trinca's fine establishments where all of this began a bit of backstory the only way to bet on football matches back in the 80s was through a state-run jackpot named totocalcio but this wasn't a very popular method of wagering for a lot of spectators because in order to win one would need to correctly guess the outcome of 12 or 13 matches much like the modern day lottery the chances of winning were slim however if that wasn't your idea of a good time there was an alternative black betting or toto nero betting on individual matches only problem was this was illegal you can probably guess where i'm going with this back to the restaurant several latio players were regulars at rinka's spot and built a rapport with the man kruziani and trinca were both businessmen and were always on the lookout for ways to maximize their income i guess one thing led to another and the pair eventually convinced the lazio players to fix their matches the two of them would pay the players upfront and place bets on the matches then they would reap their rewards when the deed was done all right okay it all sounds pretty good to me i mean what could go wrong a lot only a couple of players weren't in on the scheme at any time and last time i checked the match consists of 22 men games frequently did not go according to plan with trinker and kriziani losing far more than they won eventually they correctly suspected that the lazio players were ripping them off simply taking their money and playing as usual so they did the sensible thing and moved on to players from other clubs with uh more or less the same results and surprise surprise they both got into massive debt owing money to all the wrong people their families began to receive threats i have to admit getting ripped off when you're trying to rip people off is very tough anyway this is where things get really wacky the dynamic duo lawyered up spilled the beans on everything that was going on and threatened legal action against the players that had wronged them they were then arrested a few days later you can't make this up in any case it wasn't just them that were arrested so were 12 other players as well as the president of ac milan everyone with links to tortonero was in deep water okay so earlier on i mentioned how black betting was illegal back then but that's only partially correct while it was against the rules set up by the italian fa tortonero an illegal sports betting was not a criminal offence in italy back then out of interest this only became a crime in italy in 1989 and of course tortonero heavily inspired this ruling anyway in the end all of those arrests almost 40 individuals when it was all said and done were acquitted of criminal charges however the italian fa responded with their own form of justice ac milan and latio were relegated felicia colombo milan's president at the time was banned for life several players were handed lengthy suspensions and quite significantly among those players was paolo rossi this is significant because rossi was the man who carried italy to their world cup title in 1982 won the ballon d'or in the same year and is a bonafide italian national hero he was banned in 1980 and suspended for three years but that suspension was conveniently lifted two years into his ban and shortly after that he won italy the world cup should he have even been allowed to play it's a little suspicious i can't lie but i doubt any italians are complaining not sure about the germans though in any case this was a huge deal back then all around a monumental showcasing of a rotten rotten side of our beautiful game but sadly it would not be the last time that someone attempted to game the system what we're about to discuss is perhaps the most publicized case of match manipulation not just in italy but in football history 2004 we turn our focus to turin more specifically the old lady juventus the most successful italian football team of all time 27 serie a titles nine copa italias and two european cups at that point michel platini dino zoff alessandro del piero and roberto balgio are just a few of the many legendary names that played for the italian giants a historically dense club for sure however at this point in time milan was on top serial winners in 2004 champions league winners the year before that it was actually juventus that they beat in that ucl final the only all-italian ucl final to date by the way maybe just maybe juve were falling behind and their response bringing in zlatan ibrahimovic fabio canevaro patrick vieira and giorgio ciolini among others over the next two years and winning back to back scuderiti in 05 and or 6. ibian connery would truly back on top and the cherry on the cake italy won the world cup shortly after juve's 0-6 victory five of the players in the italian side that made the trip to germany were plying their trade in turin this included the national team captain and ballon d'or winner from that year fabio canevaro the last defender to ever win that award too going back to the domestic scene and unsurprisingly the opposition fans and media were pretty upset by uva's success as expected they resorted to name calling and therefore being honest salty accusations you they are just lucky the referees are their 12th man how do they keep getting away with this okay to be fair juve did seem to get favorable decisions when it came to 50 50 challenges of size rulings etc and etc but that's just the thing these were in majority 50 50 scenarios divisive by nature but as i said these were just the customary responses to a team in the ascendancy and besides that luciano moji juventus managing director assured us all that juve were completely and entirely above board juventus does everything by the book in italy everyone hates winners juventus has never cheated maybe others do even further to that aldo biscardi host of il proceso di biscardi an extremely popular italian football show would frequently defend juventus on air reaffirming that yuvey were not being given preferential treatment by anyone i don't know about you guys but to me that's pretty reassuring this was truly an opinion we can trust except it wasn't actually not at all turns out mr biscardi was good mates with mr moji and he was being instructed to paint uv in a positive light to sway public opinion public opinion on what you might ask well remember that one time lutzian emoji said this ah he wasn't exactly telling the full truth and when the truth eventually came out around the same time that the o506 season was wrapping up the footballing world was left in awe of the sheer scale of this deception culture poli or football gate a phrase that takes inspiration from the u.s scandal watergate just before the start of the 0405 season an investigation into suspected mass manipulation was underway phones were tapped suspicious personnel were put under surveillance it was a pretty delicate operation and it was eventually proven through a series of hundreds of thousands of recordings that moji had consistently been in contact with high-ranking officials in the italian referees association this was typically through burnaphones and other improper channels which as a high-ranking member of a serie a club is not allowed the crux of the situation was that referees would be hand-picked for uv matches despite the fact that this was supposed to be a random selection process they would then be instructed to rule every borderline call in uva's favor and turn a blind eye when juventus players committed fouls but it went even deeper than that star players from other teams would strategically be sent off or booked whenever possible in the lead-up to their matches against ibian canary that's right they were manipulating matches that did not involve juventus at all there are so many wild wild details of this operation that i know full well i will not be able to list all of them here one because this video would run for hours and two because i'm 100 certain that there are several aspects to the story and all the shady dealings that will never see the light of day ever however one aspect which i found intriguing was that in exchange for their cooperation referees were gifted favors by moji the agnielli family the owners of juventus are also the owners of fiat a car manufacturing company among the favors handed out by moji were discounts for fiat cars that's right discounts this man asks you to commit fraud for him and all you get is a discount on a fiat i can't lie i'm snitching moving along before you go ahead and label moji and juventus as the villains i have news for you they weren't the only ones what the recordings revealed was that high ranking members of almost every serial club had an improper line of communication with the refs association it was common practice regardless it was juventus who were found to be the most aggressive perpetrators and were punished accordingly both of their titles over the past two years were stripped away and they were relegated to seti b for the 0607 season that's tough so we've established that moji was clearly a very big player in this situation but as i've also mentioned a lot of the other clubs were guilty of illegally contacting referees in this time period combine all of that information with the severity of juventus punishment and what you get is a lot of people that felt that what this all boiled down to was a witch hunt to take down mochi but then again perhaps that is stepping too far into tinfoil hat territory fiorentina and latio were initially relegated too but those rulings were overturned in favor of points deductions ac milan and regina were also handed points deductions and the milan scenario is a story in itself they finished second in o6 but because they were also implicated in the drama the title for that year ended up going to third-placed inter even though conversations involving their higher-ups and the referees had also been recorded anyway much like the totonero scandal this also included a point of contention that i don't think is talked about all too much milan were initially deducted 44 points excluding them from the following u.s champions league except when that deduction was reduced to 30 points not only did they compete they won the whole damn thing it's pretty spicy i know but i doubt milan supporters are complaining liverpool supporters on the other hand so that's that for the clubs as for the individual performances no prison time was served due to the statute of limitations expiring the accused being acquitted or a suspended sentence being delivered again this was a set of cases that took place over several years and i've left out a ton of detail for time purposes but as always i've linked a ton of sources below in the description if you want to do your own reading before we wrap this one up i want to take a second to talk about the following season a season in seti b i can't understand how mental this is as far as i can tell the players had nothing to do with these shady dealings ibrahimovic canovaro vieira turam zombrota imagine the champions from the most recent season of any top league were found guilty of match manipulation and got relegated imagine kevin de bruyne in the championship karen benzema in the segunda division killian and papi on a literal farm okay that joke was in bad taste i'll take it back but you get the idea regardless you don't have to imagine that they would likely jump ship before any of that happened to their careers all of the above players and more left the club in the definition of a fire sale which only makes sense as you can imagine a relegated juventus basically had zero bargaining power moving forward things weren't doom and gloom for too long by 2012 they were champions once more and regained their spots amongst the world elite but no matter how much time passes there are some memories that will likely just never fade away like that one time that italy experienced perhaps its highest of highs and its lowest of lows all within the space of a couple of weeks and that's where we're going to leave this one some crazy crazy stories but we're both full of them let me know what you guys thought about this one leave it all in the comments below and if you're feeling generous why not follow me on twitter and instagram but only if you want to that is all from me today really hope you guys enjoyed hope you're having a good day cheers and i'll catch you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Football Iconic

Views: 168,440

Keywords: Football Iconic

Id: 9oIFrwEvGzQ

Length: 15min 26sec (926 seconds)

Published: Sun May 29 2022