On the 20th of January, Juventus FC were handed a 15-point deduction by the Federal Court of Appeals, six points more than requested by the FIGC’s lead prosecutor Giuseppe Chinè, for inflating players’ values to generate artificial plusvalenze or capital gains. Juventus will appeal the decision to the Sport Guaranteed Board. In the meantime, many Juventus fans have taken to social media to voice their disgust at the decision taken by Italian football’s governing body.
Their primary frustration is that only Juventus have been penalized, while the eight other clubs involved (Sampdoria, Pro Vercelli, Genoa, Parma, Pisa, Empoli, Novara and Pescara) have all been acquitted. However, it’s not those (mostly lower-division) clubs Juventini are pointing their collective finger at. Rather, they’re pointing it at Inter, Milan, Roma and Napoli, alleging the big clubs have all committed the same crime and walked away scot-free.
The conclusion they’ve drawn is that Juventus have been the victims of a FIGC witch-hunt. Why else would Francisca Ibarra, wife of FIGC President Gabriele Gravina, post to Instagram a picture of a Juventus logo distorted to look like a “-15”? In reality, while unprofessional and perhaps inappropriate, the picture is far from proof of a witch-hunt. Rather, it’s proof that Juventus have merely been the victims of trolling. According to Ansa, the picture was falsely attributed to Ibarra in the first place.
There’s also a more logical explanation for why prosecutors went after Juventus, namely the “Prisma” investigation. In November, Juventus President Andrea Agnelli and Vice President Pavel Nedved, along with the club’s entire board of directors, resigned amidst allegations of false accounting and market manipulation from Italian financial market regulator CONSOB. The Prisma investigation reportedly uncovered new evidence demonstrating that Juventus systematically cooked the books. In short, Juventus were targeted (or “witch-hunted”) by the Turin prosecutor’s office because that’s what prosecutors do – they target suspected criminals.
The new evidence allowed the Federal Court of Appeals to reopen a case from April of 2022, when Juventus, Napoli and nine other clubs were acquitted of similar accusations. At the time, the FIGC’s prosecutor’s office relied on Transfermarkt, a popular but unreliable website for player valuations. As the new evidence only implicated Juventus, the other clubs were not penalized when the case was reopened.
Some have compared this “attack” on Juventus to when the authorities pick and choose which drug dealer to arrest. Though they know all drug dealers are guilty, the authorities simply don’t have the time or resources to arrest everyone. To extend the analogy, the authorities typically overlook the small fish in order to take down the big fish. Of the 62 transactions in the original investigation, 42 involved Juventus.
As it turns out, some clubs – the “Juve partners” – could be penalized after all. It takes two to tango. If Juventus inflated players’ values, then the clubs they swapped with did as well, and those clubs are likely implicated by the same evidence.
Napoli don’t do business with Juventus. Hence, they could not be implicated by the Prisma investigation. Yet, Juventini (especially those of the Twitter expert variety) can’t stop talking about Napoli and the Victor Osimhen exchange with Lille.
In 2018, Napoli purchased Victor Osimhen from Lille for €70 million plus up to €10 million in bonuses, which were not likely achieved given Osimhen spent half the season on the recovery table. The purchase price consisted of €50 million in cash and €20 million in players: third-string goalkeeper Orestis Karnezis and Primavera players Ciro Palmieri, Claudio Manzi and Luigi Liguori. Karnezis, now 37 years old, has since retired while the former Primavera players are all plying their trade in the lower divisions of Italian football.
On the face of it, it would appear as though Napoli inflated these players’ values by a total of €15-20 million. However, no new evidence has been discovered to prove that and there is no objective way to determine a player’s value. Again, the reason Juventus has been penalized is the discovery of additional evidence, be it wiretaps, written notes or Fabio Paratici’s “black book”.
Perhaps that evidence will be discovered in a new investigation, but the Naples public prosecutor’s office requires six months to complete the investigation. The cynic will say that’s awfully convenient with Napoli sitting 12 points clear of their nearest rival at the midway point of the season, but investigations take time. The Prisma investigation took years.
Even if prosecutors office uncover evidence incriminating Aurelio De Laurentiis’ club for the Victor Osimhen swap, the suggestion from Juventini that Napoli are just as guilty as Juventus is laughable. There are levels to this game. Napoli made one questionable swap (consisting of five transactions). The accounting profit recorded on the aforementioned players – likely closer to €15 million, as Karnezis, Palmieri, Manzi and Liguori were not worth €0 – had little relevance to Napoli’s overall financial health. During the De Laurentiis era, Napoli have been one of the most fiscally responsible clubs in all of Italian football.
Comparing the capital gains generated by Serie A’s top clubs over the past ten years does not prove that all those clubs were up to no good. At the very least, it does not prove they were all systematically up to no good. Clubs like Napoli, Atalanta and Lazio have a proven track record of buying low and selling high. Other clubs, like Roma, Inter and Milan have sold their best players (or not renewed their highest wage earners, for that matter) to get their finances back in order.
While most of these clubs have had one or two suspicious swaps, Juventus has systematically broken the rules. They made it a part of their normal business practice to knowingly inflate player values to generate artificial capital gains. According to Gab Marcotti of ESPN, “Prosecutors are also arguing that they violated Article 4 of the Italian FA’s rules, which covers fairness and probity, and Article 31, which covers false accounting.” Napoli fan Art Morelli identified some of the more blatant examples in a thread on Twitter.
2019/20
| João Cancelo/Danilo swap | Cancelo turned out to be a fantastic player, but it took three excellent seasons at Manchester City for his value to increase to the €65 million price he was sold for. Danilo, who was purchased by Manchester City in 2017 for €30 million, had made only 24 starts over two seasons when he was sold. Despite missing a fair bit of time due to an ankle injury, he was sold to Juventus for €37 million. |
| Stefano Sturaro | Juventus purchased Stefano Sturaro from Genoa in 2014 for €10.6 million. After a couple of loan spells back at Genoa, the Grifone purchased Sturaro outright for €16.5 million. |
| Andrea Favilli | Juventus purchased Andrea Favilli from Ascoli in 2018 for €7.5 million. A month later, he was loaned to Genoa for €5 million. At the end of his year-long loan, Genoa purchased Favilli for €12 million. |
2020/21
| Miralem Pjanic/Arthur Melo swap | Perhaps the most arrogant of the Juventus transactions was the swap of midfielder Miralem Pjanic for Barcelona’s Arthur Melo. Juventus purchased Pjanic from Roma in 2016 for €32 million. Though he had four successful seasons at Juventus, red flags went up when he was sold to Barcelona for a whopping price of €60 million. Meanwhile, Arthur Melo was sold to Juventus for €72 million. The widely reported financial mess at Barcelona made this swap even more suspicious. |
| Simone Muratore | Juventus Primavera player Simone Muratore was sold to Atalanta for €7 million. He was subsequently loaned to Reggiana in Serie B, where he made 25 appearances en route to relegation. Last season he made only three appearances while on loan at CD Tondela in the Portuguese second division. Note: players should not be judged on their performances after a transfer, but that’s how many are assessing the Osimhen exchange, so everyone ought to be judged according to the same standards. |
| Manolo Portanova/Nicolo Rovella swap | Juventus purchased promising young midfielder Nicolo Rovella from Genoa for €26 million before loaning him back to the Grifone. In exchange, Genoa purchased Juventus youth product Manolo Portanova, who at that point had never played in Serie A, for €12 million. Portanova featured regularly in the second half of last season but couldn’t save Genoa from being relegated. |
| Elia Petrelli | In January of 2021, Genoa purchased Elia Petrelli from Juventus for €8 million. He was subsequently loaned to Serie B clubs Regina and Ascoli and Serie C clubs Carrarese, Triestina and Siena. |
Thus, over the past few seasons, the Bianconeri generated a minimum of €100 million in artificial capital gains (and probably significantly more than that). If Napoli were to be found guilty, logic would suggest that the penalty imposed on them would be five times less, i.e. a 3-point deduction in the standings. At the moment, that would not make a significant difference in the Scudetto race, especially because Milan, Inter, Roma and Atalanta would likely be handed similar penalties. Granted, it’s a massive assumption that Lega Serie A would use logic.
Nevertheless, there’s an important distinction between the behaviour of Juventus and the behaviour of everyone else. Had they not cooked the books, Juventus might not have been able to achieve the league’s minimum liquidity thresholds required to register the club. Likewise, they might not have been able to comply with UEFA’s financial fair play regulations. UEFA’s conducting an investigation of their own as the settlement agreement signed in August of 2022 “was concluded on the basis of the financial information previously submitted by the club pertaining to the financial years closing in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.” The investigation could result in Juventus being temporarily suspended from UEFA club competitions. All this while Juventus’ parent company Exor injected some €700 million in equity into the club over the past three years.
Thus, it should not have come as a shock that prosecutors went after Juventus first. As Giancarlo Rinaldi so eloquently put it on the Rigore Podcast, “If we wanted to compare it to speeding in your car, Juve were in a Ferrari down the A1 in broad daylight. Other teams were more like driving your appy a few miles over the limit on a country road.”
If Juventus lose their appeal, or if they are given further point deductions for reported salary maneuvers – misleading financial markets by reporting players agreed to a 4-month wage reduction totaling €90 million when in fact they waived only one month of salary – or if UEFA bans them from club competitions, Juventus have only themselves to blame.
Whether or not rival fans celebrate those penalties has no bearing on the future of Italian football. Juventus would be no less guilty and Italian football’s reputation would be no less damaged if no one celebrated. How Juventus are punished should have nothing to do with the size of the club, irrespective of how La Liga might have dealt with Barcelona or how the English Premier League might have dealt with Manchester City for similar offenses.
Juventini urging each other to cancel their DAZN subscriptions is no different than “Instagram Karens” throwing tantrums after being caught shoplifting at the local retail outlet. That is, kicking and screaming doesn’t make Juventus any less guilty either. Yes, relegating Italy’s biggest club would be harmful for Italian football as a whole, but so be it, because the alternative means Juventus can cheat even more than they already have.
