Dunno how closely Arsenal fans are following Folarin Balogun (on loan at Reims in Ligue 1) but he's having himself a monster season. Hat trick today, top scorer in the league and clearly feeling himself as evidenced by goals like this https://streamin.me/v/efa53d82

I know Nketiah is the flavor of the moment, and rightly so, but this dude is absolutely legit. Born in NYC but seems to have gone for England (after playing for the US U18), too bad.

God damn biter. Lol

I’m just messing you.

Only thing Chelsea has to reach for is CL. Everything else is dead.

At least I will get to watch Real Madrid lump up Barcelona in the Copa Del Rey.

barca beats a struggling sevilla later and suddenly they're 8 points up in la liga with lewa back from suspension...oof

-----------
you think we playing chess, but i'm playing mad-making. Basaglia

I hope you all get to experience a Derby Day steeped in tradition and history like this one

Will post pics and photos of the tifos and flares and the banner choreography on Sunday

FORZA INTER.


>Dunno how closely Arsenal fans are following Folarin Balogun
>(on loan at Reims in Ligue 1) but he's having himself a
>monster season. Hat trick today, top scorer in the league and
>clearly feeling himself as evidenced by goals like this
>https://streamin.me/v/efa53d82
>
>I know Nketiah is the flavor of the moment, and rightly so,
>but this dude is absolutely legit. Born in NYC but seems to
>have gone for England (after playing for the US U18), too
>bad.

so technically sound
hell of a leader
tough as nails

we really fucked this transfer up by not paying him more or selling him when we had an inkling he wanted to move on from Inter

Imma make it out there one day. I simply must.

.

After what Saliba has turned into, and now Flo B. I’m all about France loans.

Jesus, Eddie, and Flo is a great collection of number 9s. At some point we sell one of the young ones for big $, just not sure which one yet


Also: I think his National team affiliation is full up for grabs. Would be a huge get for USA. I’d rather be he went with Nigeria, but that’s my preference for all players to go with the motherland (all Africans not just Nigeria)

I misread the OP

Still looks guilty AF to me (from what I've seen).

Is anyone gonna kick the tires on him?

Better not be us.

But if he does that’s like finding 100m in the couches cause he nice af. Either way it goes I’m with it.

to play Greenwood's spot.

on On the Continent. This clip talks about the differences in international tv rights (https://www.instagram.com/p/CoLEjHODVzV/), but there's also an extended discussion of the young player pipeline that smaller PL teams are starting to jump. The example brought up was Southampton signing Alcaraz from Racing - that was a move Benfica was looking at to a) replace Enzo and b) develop the next expensive signing to keep their money moving.

It's an interesting thought and an impact of PL supremacy that hasn't been widely discussed.

maybe this summer, tho by then who knows what new shenaningans Tebas will use to stop barca signings (who he again, unnecessarily brought up today out of the blue).

a shame--was looking forward to rooting for him. not a big loss for barca. kounde's filling in well and maybe now barca can hijack Arnau's move to atleti?
-----------
you think we playing chess, but i'm playing mad-making. Basaglia

so much for change, lulz.

So many opportunities to score, but lacked any type of
quality to put the ball in the net. It’s utterly atrocious.

Enzo has some Michael Essien in his play. It was a solid debut,
and he appears to have all the abilities, but still not worth
120 million or close to it, more like 60-65 million range.

It’s like paying 100,000 for a Toyota Camry. It’s a great car, and
is durable, but isn’t worth north of 40,000.

This team lacks veteran leadership or experience at CF.
We spent millions and we still don’t have a true number 9.

Cucurella is trash. 65-70 million wasted on a player who is not only
small, but he plays small. Glad to see Chilwell back, so hopefully he will
get the starts from here on out.

Reece returned today as well.

Another draw, and another blown opportunity to move up.

:)

Chelsea's history is a fart in the wind comparatively

no academy, no icons from the golden age, no anything but the fruits of oppressive corrupt autocracy in the age of late capitalism

congrats!

Whose legacy is hurling racial slurs, banging his left back’s wife, slipping on his ass and crying in the rain, and putting on his kit to lift trophies he wasn’t on the field to win. Who gave up on an encouraging coaching career to flog fucking NFTs.

And Fat Fucking Frank, the most empty-headed tactician this side of his “Golden Generation” teammate Slippy G

Name me one player in the history of Arsenal who was better
or greater than Eden Hazard.

He destroyed your entire 11 on one play …by himself

And after that there is Gianfranco Zola

No academy?

John Terry
Ryan Bertrand
Rueben Loftus Cheeks
Reece James
Mason Mount
Tammy Abraham

What do they all have in common?

They all won Champions League!

Now, your turn….you can’t!

and ill throw Ronaldo Nazario's name out there and you can let me know if anyone from your club's short, nouveau riche "history" can compare in any way whatsoever

-----------
you think we playing chess, but i'm playing mad-making. Basaglia

Ronald Koeman >
Dries Mertens >
Ruud van Nistelrooy >
fucking Romario >>>>

>Ronald Koeman >
>Dries Mertens >
>Ruud van Nistelrooy >
>fucking Romario >>>>
>


Typical Chelsea shithead

If I’m not mistaken.

Why the Fock would I care about PSV?…the discussion was PL based.

Nobody gives a Fock about PSV or Holland football. FOh.

still caught a hot one anyways

That’s number 1.

Number 2, took a hot one?

Over a team from holland who plays in a feeder league?

Negro, please..PSV ain’t nowhere near the club Chelsea is, and never will be.

Whether you a PSV fan or an Arsenal fan, you lose either way.

You better stop smoking that shit.

then you showed up with an itchy vagina and found out that my "feeder club" had a half dozen players better than Chelsea's best

i dont care what your Russian oligarch bought for you. thats not tradition, or culture, and youll never have either.

so ride that new €300M worth of transfers all the way to 9th and Ill check back when Chelsea is locked out of continental play and my feeder club isnt

good day loser!

ffs, and i'm not even an arsenal or EPL fan.
-----------
you think we playing chess, but i'm playing mad-making. Basaglia

Great striker, but he ain’t focking with the magic and beauty of prime Hazard.

After 2004 Arsenal ain’t do shit. He was there from 1999-2007. Once Roman
took over Chelsea, Arsenal turned to shit and they have been that way ever since.

We ran those dudes!

Other than the 2 PL trophies Henry won at Arsenal, Hazard’s title resume
is better.

Hazard was magic taking on 1v2, 1v3…Arsenal should know, he decimated those
fools.

Hazard was a thing of beauty



2 PL titles
FA CUP
EFL cup
2 Europas

That's it. That's the post.

Got munched on by Everton!

They are really going to shit the bed…lead is down to 5 points!

Who started the season with a Steven Gerrard-sized handicap.

change ownership.

What’s Villa’s excuse?


LULz

You make it so easy.

You still have the most expensive keeper in history (bought under the last owner). Nobody “made” you spend a half a billion in the historically most inflated of the transfer windows.

I told you our excuse. Our CEO couldn’t get over the time he spent working with Gerrard when he was a player and thought he’d make a good full time hire. So WE GAVE YOU A HEAD START this season by tying our brains behind our backs. And you’re still. WITH ALL those expensive players. only 2 points ahead.

operated club.

Thank you for providing the necessary clarity with that.


Dude. Stop.

Cupboard full of trophies that covers three decades!

Would your like one, two decorate your SPACIOUS cabinet?

Silverware goes great with burgundy and sky blue.

LULz

Thought he was our worst player today, but not a single good performance

Have to wonder whether Tomiyasu comes into the team next week over white TBH.

Hopefully Spurs put in a good shift tmrw.

been on the bad end of ref calls a lot lately ETH needs to call it out to reset the balance. but we persevere

Team was on a serious path to get relegated and looked like utter crap…
Now they are destroying everything in sight and are in 13th place.

They did the same thing in the Championship last year.

These small teams aren’t so small anymore.


Leeds. Lol. That is what happens when you add a bunch of Americans
to a squad….they turn into a MLS team.

except for the 0.2 m/s when Brennan Johnson's foot was in contact with the ball

that was a Keylor Navas Special, and the rest of the team was mostly shit

to 13th place in a blink of an eye, and they had the same run in
the championship league last year to get promoted. All the way from
the bottom to promotion.

They’ve beaten Liverpool, they have beaten Tottenham and they
drew with us.


Pretty impressive for a small club… and quite perplexing at the same time.
Back to back years in different leagues going on a winning run to get out
of the relegation zone and shoot up the table.

i said man, that could be a season changing signing.

dude is a legend, and got a RAW deal at PSG.

and as i expected, he got betweent the pipes and started kicking ass immediately.

before he got there.

They just bought him in 5 days ago.

He was instrumental in yesterday’s game…but he ain’t the reason for their season
turn around or last season’s turn around.

i recognize everything you said.

still? Navas a million times upgrade over Dean Henderson.

so yeah, it could change their season. how is that statement something worth you writing all that for?

smh.

Navas was the reason why they were surging.

You said that could be a season changing signing…and I was just pointing out
that they were already on the rise before that signing.

No worries.

Oddly enough, I’ve been keeping up with them and watching their games. I don’t know
why.

We ordered a lot of seafood and two bottles of wine and they refused to let us pay.., calling us guests of Milano (my friend is a HUGE Milan fan, and he went to Michigan , opposites attract pause)



…and then politely told us that we can’t hang out near the stadium bc he and all their friends are fascist and would not treat two brown bearded guys very nicely 😂 😂 while refusing to let us pay our bill. I don’t get it but w/e

(Inter Ultras are like this too so I’m not trying to slander Milan at all )

Italy is hilarious

Anyways here are the pics, it was incredible … non stop singing flares etc . 

So loud at some points I couldn’t hear my friends sitting next to me 




Pardon the nosebleeds , I bought these tickets last second,

next year I’m sitting dead in the center of San Siro so I can watch both Curvas / Ultras 



https://youtube.com/shorts/EeQjCxi1uDc?feature=share

https://youtube.com/shorts/pJZgQLDfk9A?feature=share



https://imgur.com/a/OtreTC8

https://www.espn.com/soccer/soccer-transfers/story/4870556/man-city-charged-over-multiple-ffp-breaches

A 15 pt deduction this season sounds like the right punishment to me

:)

This is why fans of clubs with real heritage have never given 2 fucks about what they win. It’s all illegitimate. Let’s end the farce once and for all.

>https://www.espn.com/soccer/soccer-transfers/story/4870556/man-city-charged-over-multiple-ffp-breaches
>
>A 15 pt deduction this season sounds like the right punishment
>to me

I'll miss his post-game interviews, dude was pretty insightful. Just hasn't found a way to mesh all of these random signings Leeds have made

but uh, i think he has good ideas for the USMNT and an eye on the right players for the USMNT as well.

hire him ASAP.

and the team lacked direction. He brought some spirit to the team last season
to help them stay up, but sooner or later real coaching and direction will be needed to
truly win in the EPL.

He brought in American players and he brought in an American assistant a month
ago…Leeds started to come off as a feeder team, and completely different than the team
that was promoted from the championship a few years ago.

However, it’s messed up that Leeds agreed to his transfer and hiring requests, only
to fire him right after.

what do those American players do now?

And I know Weston has to be pissed ..hopefully he balls out and gets
a permanent deal, because he doesn’t
want to go back to Serie A. They have an option to buy him at the end of the
season.

They found him underneath the earthquake rubble in Turkey. He is alive, and he
was rushed to the hospital. No other updates have been provided.


He played in the EPL during the early part of this past decade. He joined Chelsea
back in 2013, and was with the club for several years, but never truly got an
opportunity to play for the first team. Mourinho took over around that time, and
he was constantly sent out on loan. He displayed a lot of talent as a winger, but
those were the loan army years, so he got shipped out like most of our young talent
during that time.

I hope he is able to survive his injuries, and be able to continue to play futbol.

ATHLETIC SWIPE (extra long)


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Inside Manchester City on a remarkable day that nobody at the club saw coming
Inside Manchester City on a remarkable day that nobody at the club saw coming

Sam Lee
Feb 7, 2023
Manchester City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak spent 45 minutes in the visiting dressing room at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium following Sunday’s defeat to Spurs, with chief executive Ferran Soriano joining him for half an hour.

It would appear logical that they were taking the opportunity to get all of the players together to break the news of the impending Premier League charges against the club before the details went public.

ADVERTISEMENT

But the topic was strictly football: the club are doing all they can to stave off a patch of inconsistency they fear could cost them the league title. The dour 1-0 defeat at Spurs came after another disappointing performance.

But on Monday morning, things got a whole lot worse — and nobody at City saw it coming.

The club were informed that the Premier League had brought more than 100 charges against them — relating to alleged financial irregularities between 2009-10 and 2017-18 and failing to cooperate with an investigation since 2018 — at around 10am (GMT).

A courier dispatched by the league delivered papers detailing the charges to City’s offices and the league also spoke to Soriano by phone, although City sources say the public statement was published before the call had even ended.

Only a small group of the most senior City employees found out this was coming before the wider world; manager Pep Guardiola was among the first contacted but the vast majority of their employees, including players, only discovered via the media or messages from friends, family and team-mates.

The club took a couple of hours to get their house in order, but muscle memory eventually kicked in. After all, it’s nearly four years since they were informed of a UEFA investigation into alleged financial fair play irregularities and three since they were banned from the Champions League as a result. City always stated their innocence, privately and publicly, and were cleared by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

In short, they have been here before.

go-deeper
GO DEEPER
Man City charges explained: The accusations, possible punishments and what happens next
An official statement from City came first, issued two hours after the league’s. In it, the club expressed its “surprise” at the charges, “particularly given the extensive engagement and vast amount of detailed materials that the EPL has been provided with.

“The club welcomes the review of this matter by an independent commission, to impartially consider the comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence that exists in support of its position. As such, we look forward to this matter being put to rest once and for all.”

A couple of hours later, around 2pm (GMT), the club’s players and football staff were addressed after training in City’s first-team building. They had already heard about the charges, but senior figures, including Soriano, reiterated that the club had done nothing wrong and vowed to clear its name. It was the same message as last time.

Much has been made of Guardiola’s quote from May last year in which he said: “I said to them, ‘If you lie to me, I am not here. I will be out’,” but several sources (who, like other sources in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their relationships) suggested on Monday that this may not be resolved until after the manager leaves the club anyway.



Players’ agents have not been contacted by the club specifically regarding the charges because there is a feeling this is a case of ‘business as usual’, not least because this could take years to resolve, especially if appeals are launched by either City or the Premier League against the independent commission’s decision.

The message coming from the club is clear: if they are found guilty they will fight it with everything they have. City had already made a legal challenge against the Premier League’s investigation, with the club claiming the body had no jurisdiction to investigate and that the process is biased. Both were thrown out and City were denied the right to appeal, but the club sought the right from another judge, were successful, launched an appeal, and then saw that dismissed, too. Both City and the Premier League asked for the details of the challenges to be kept private, but they were unsuccessful. This is how things may play out in the months ahead.

Staff in the club’s non-playing departments received an email in the afternoon, directing them to the club’s statement.

Such is the sheer number of punishments that are on the table, however, some members of staff were concerned about their futures. With City’s expulsion from the league widely discussed in the media, it is only natural to fear the worst. Others simply said they would have to get on with their lives and hope for the best.

That was the general feeling among several former players consulted by The Athletic, who could potentially be stripped of their winners’ medals if City are found guilty. That is far from certain but, as with current employees, it is natural to wonder what the worst outcomes may be. Fernandinho, who won five Premier League medals with City between 2013 and 2022, tuned in to a Twitter space discussing the charges on Monday evening.

Although there was no further official comment beyond the statement, figures at the club spoke bullishly as Monday progressed, in much the same way as they did during the UEFA investigation: there were complaints about the procedures and, in some ways, almost excitement at another opportunity to clear their name.

While they always contested that UEFA’s investigation was biased and flawed, City sources now say the timing of the Premier League’s charges was no accident: the UK government had planned to release its white paper, thought to be in support of an independent regulator for football, this week.


Manchester City were beaten 1-0 at Tottenham on Sunday, at which point nobody at the club knew of the impending charges (Photo: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
City sources argue that a number of minor errors in the Premier League’s statement are a sign the league rushed out its charges to try to prove it can govern effectively without major changes to how the game is run in the UK.

There is also defiance relating to some of the differences between the Premier League’s charges and UEFA’s.

City overturned their Champions League ban partly because UEFA’s own rules state that alleged breaches that occurred more than five years previously cannot be investigated and punished: they were what is known as time-barred.

The Premier League does not have such restrictions, which could be taken as a sign of danger for City, but the club also overturned charges that were not time-barred and sources actually seemed to welcome the opportunity to clear their name without being accused of getting off on a technicality.

While City would not be able to appeal against any punishment to CAS this time around, in line with Premier League rules, there is an appeals process available to both the club and the league. A new independent panel would be called and evidence provided again — hence why this could take years.

There will inevitably be a period of uncertainty for City. Representatives of some players note that the club might find it difficult to enter into or continue contract negotiations with some players given the potential punishments on the horizon. Ilkay Gundogan’s deal expires this summer, for example, while those of Nathan Ake and Aymeric Laporte run out in 2025 and they would normally be in line for a renewal around now, should they be happy to stay.



However, City continued to press ahead with transfer plans while appealing against their UEFA punishments in 2020, communicating their confidence to players and their representatives that they had done nothing wrong and would eventually be cleared.

People involved in some of those deals say they were convinced by City’s message and were happy to proceed with negotiations and eventually complete a transfer. It was the same message they conveyed to Lionel Messi as they tried to sign him from Barcelona, a move that only collapsed later in the year for other reasons.

The club are likely to press ahead with contract and transfer plans in the coming months, just as they did last time. In fact, meetings continued on Monday.

Their targets this time will have to decide whether to commit their future to the club, and there is no doubt the charges represent a serious threat to City’s reputation and even their Premier League status.

Guardiola will speak to the media on Friday and only he will decide whether to go on the offensive, as he did last Friday when he recalled nine teams who co-signed a letter to CAS, or keep his counsel.

There will be huge interest in what he has to say and there will be a cloud over their upcoming matches, but City will try to carry on under awkward, yet familiar, circumstances.

(Top photo: Getty Images; design: Sam Richardson)

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like, pretty much anything having to do w/ FFP.

the real question out of all this at this point is what the punishments will be.

i'm guessing they'll be relatively soft in the grand scheme, as much as i wish that wasn't the case. i highly doubt they get relegated. doubtful they get stripped of titles though if they were cheating (hint: they were), they should. maybe they get a big points penalty, transfer bans, etc....that stuff seems most likely.

i just don't feel like the PL wants to bop one of their biggest clubs, currently, too hard.

problem is, if they don't, then they are basically signing off on these practices. will be interesting to see how it shakes out.

i think right now, the biggest thing, as mentioned, is the uncertainty as far as whether players would want to come and risk some bad club punishments down the road that hampers their personal money/success.

City are only big in the sense that a balloon is big. Inside is just air. They are nothing.

they are a manufactured club, with clearly manufactured books, lol.

You fuck up every thread with this bullshit. You don’t even have the
decency to not include the closing website remarks and credits that have
nothing to do with the subject.

You just copy and paste like a focking 5 year old.

You are a complete shit ass dude pretending to know something about
futbol. You just started posting in these threads just to get attention.

We have been posting and talking futbol, for me, since 2009 ( different username)

Focking bum. You’re a Grown ass man posting like a boy.

Edit Lmao at 2009, I been here since 1999 FUCKface

Dirty broke shithead typing from a dingy dirty sock smelling basement about why Eden hazard is better than Thierry fucking Henry lmao

I’m in England right now and attending a premier league match on Saturday

Fuck your and your gate keeping 😂,

Eat a shit sandwich and tear both ACLs , crumb bum bitch

I’m gonna KEEP doing this

You have nothing else in life to do.

Cheers!

Don’t beat any women or children .


>You have nothing else in life to do.
>
>Cheers!

id much rather read column headers than any "thought" youve ever had, or will have

No, your dumb ass don’t.

Why?

Other posters have sense and know how to post, and don’t
have time to do stupid stuff like that. I have respect for other posters
and wouldn’t post some long ass bullshit making the thread longer
than what it needs to be.

Most posters post what they have to post and keep it moving.

But not you two Fock wads.

>id much rather read column headers than any "thought" youve
>ever had, or will have

he's still a solid writer, and this is a good place to aggregate good writing about the off-field issues happening in the prem.

mfs need to be ready from kickoff

James Horncastle
Feb 7, 2023
115
Save Article
If English football needed proof of how hard it can be to dispel the clouds cast by a major financial scandal, they need only look at Italy.

While Manchester City are only beginning to confront over 100 claims that they breached financial regulations over a nine-season period, Juventus — the most successful club in the history of Serie A — have been under siege for almost two years.

ADVERTISEMENT

The scrutiny on the Turin giants has been four-pronged.

First, CONSOB, the Italian equivalent of the US securities and exchange commission, conducted inspections and audits of the club, which is listed on the stock exchange.

Second, public prosecutors in Turin wire-tapped executives, bugged a restaurant and carried out searches and seizures on premises owned by the club, alleging false corporate communications, false communications to the stock market, obstruction of a supervisory authority (CONSOB) and fraud. They have queried more than €170million (£150m, $184m) in booked transfer revenue between 2019 and 2021, alleging it has been artificially inflated.

Third, the federal prosecutor of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) brought disciplinary proceedings against Juventus and other teams last April. It lost an initial case into player trading and failed in an appeal but then, last week, dramatically got the appeal revoked on the grounds of new evidence.

That prompted a spate of severe punishments: a 15-point penalty for Juventus, a two-year ban from Italian football for Andrea Agnelli (the club’s former chairman and champion of the mooted Super League) and a 30-month ban for Fabio Paratici, the club’s former sporting director who is now managing director of football at Tottenham.

CONSOB’s request for information on Juventus’ transfer revenue came four months before Paratici’s appointment by Spurs, who declined to comment on the allegations facing him when contacted by The Athletic.

The FIGC plans to petition UEFA, European football’s governing body, and FIFA, which runs the global game, to extend the domestic bans to cover their competitions too.


The ‘black book’ of Fabio Paratici was revealed in a search of Juventus premises (Photo: Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images)
In the written reasons for its decision, released last Monday, the footballing Court of Appeal cited “the seriousness, and repeated and prolonged nature of the offence”.

And the fourth? That’s UEFA itself, which has opened its own investigation into potential breaches of club licensing and financial fair play regulations after granting Juventus a settlement agreement on the basis of accounts CONSOB and public prosecutors have challenged.

It is a storm that has battered the reputation of one of the European game’s true powerhouses, catching in its eye some of football’s biggest names, including Cristiano Ronaldo, the five-time Ballon d’Or winner and Serie A’s most expensive ever player who is now with Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia, and the captain of Italy’s European Championship-winning team two years ago, club legend Giorgio Chiellini. Neither is accused of any wrongdoing.

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Since the dramatic day in November when Stefano Bizzotto, the commentator for Italy’s state broadcaster RAI, interrupted coverage of the Portugal–Uruguay group game at the World Cup to break the news that Agnelli and the Juventus board had resigned, there has been a ‘stillicidio‘ — a drip, drip, drip — of allegations.

Details have emerged of the “black book of FP (Fabio Paratici)”, the WhatsApp group of the Juventus team, and payments due to Cristiano Ronaldo, all chronicled in a 544-page document compiled by public prosecutors last year.

When Report, a current affairs show on Italian TV, ran a programme that drew on the document, Juventus said it was partial and supports the accusatory hypothesis of the prosecution’s case. The club deny wrongdoing.

”Juventus remains convinced… to have acted in compliance with the laws and regulations governing the preparations of financial reports, in accordance with accounting principles and in line with the international practice in the football industry,” read a club statement.

What CONSOB, public prosecutors in Turin and the FIGC all have in common is an interest in revenues from transfers between 2019 and 2021, the salaries Juventus paid their players during the COVID-19 pandemic and when, and what, was publicly disclosed by a listed company.

It’s a complex story, but the ramifications — for Juventus, Italian football and the European club game — could be massive.

Confused? Let us explain.

‘Plusvalenze’… and why it’s a problem

In February 2021, CONSOB asked Juventus for information regarding their transfer revenue. The club had raised astonishing income from player trading in their last two sets of year-end accounts — €157million for 2018-19 and €172million for 2019-20. The last figure represented Juventus’ biggest revenue stream for the financial year and was 30 per cent of the total.

On the face of it, it seemed as if Paratici and his team in Juventus’ recruitment department — the ‘Area Sport’ — were due some credit. Player trading has always been an important part of a football club’s business. For clubs outside the Premier League, who make far less from domestic and international TV deals, it has become fundamental. When COVID-19 hit, it acted as a lifeline.

What made CONSOB curious, however, was the ‘plusvalenze’, or capital gains, accrued from cross-transactions — the criteria used to value the players involved and the effects on a listed company’s accounts. When public prosecutors in Turin subsequently opened their own investigation they referred to them as “mirror” operations. Colloquially, football fans and media alike have tended to think of them as swap deals.

A high volume of these transactions happened at Juventus. Some, as we’ll get to, involved a trio of Europe’s biggest clubs — Barcelona, Manchester City and Marseille. The FIGC opened its own disciplinary proceedings after COVISOC, a watchdog supervising Italian football, passed on a list to president Gabriele Gravina flagging 62 transfers involving 11 Italian clubs between 2019 and 2021. Leaping off the page was the number of these done by Juventus: 42, of which 36 included young players readers have probably never heard of.



The most high-profile cross-transaction happened in the summer of 2020 when the Juventus and Barcelona midfielders Miralem Pjanic and Arthur traded places. Juventus valued Pjanic, who had just turned 30, at €60million. Barcelona considered Arthur worth €72m. In the end, only €12m in actual money changed hands.

The reason this series of transfers attracted attention was the alleged “fictitious” effect the agreement had on both clubs’ accounts, to say nothing of the timing. The appeal of a plusvalenza — the positive difference between the sale value of a player and his purchase value, net of depreciation — is that the income from the player leaving can be booked immediately in the club’s accounts while the cost of the player joining can be amortised over the length of their contract.

This is not improper. It is legitimate under accounting rules and, as Juventus have repeatedly insisted in their defence, it is “an approach adopted by substantially all companies in the same industry (ie, the football industry)”.

But investigators looked at Pjanic’s remaining book value of €14.2million and scrutinised the valuation placed on him in the cross-transaction with Barcelona (€60m). It allowed Juventus to make €43.7m capital gain on Pjanic, which could be included in their year end financial results on June 30. Investigators considered a number of transfers were overvalued and that Juventus had created a misleading financial impression.

The Pjanic deal was done on June 29, pre-agreed at a time when the transfer window wasn’t open. As such, the players stayed at their respective clubs until a season disrupted and extended by the pandemic finally ended in the August.

In the same set of accounts, Juventus did two cross-transactions with Manchester City, making a €30.4m capital gain on Joao Cancelo for City’s Danilo, and €9.4m on Pablo Moreno for Felix Correia. That last deal was announced on June 30, 2020 and investigators queried how Moreno, a teenager with a book value of €500,000 who had made only one appearance for Juventus Under-23s, could be valued at €10million. It, again, struck them as a “fictitious” figure.

None of the other clubs involved are believed to have acted with “intentionality” and are therefore no longer being investigated.


Danilo was the subject of a ‘cross-transaction’ at Juventus (Photo: Isabella Bonotto//AFP via Getty Images)
The FIGC narrowed its focus to 17 cross-transactions involving Juventus, challenging the valuations given to young players.

Pulled up on the Moreno-Correia case, Paratici and Juventus’ men’s team director Federico Cherubini justified Moreno’s €10million valuation on his past at Barcelona’s academy. “In five years, he scored more than 200 goals — numbers comparable only to Lionel Messi in the Catalan club’s history,” they said.

As for Correia, City had already paid Portugal’s Sporting Lisbon €5million for the player a year earlier and he had since spent a season playing, on loan, in the Dutch second division for AZ Alkmaar’s B team.

One more example worth revisiting occurred in January 2021, when Juventus agreed to sign up-and-coming midfielder Nicolo Rovella from fellow Italians Genoa for €18m. Genoa simultaneously bought Manolo Portanova (€10m) and Elia Petrelli (€8m) from Juventus for the same amount. Cash-neutral, no money changed hands, but both clubs could book an €18m capital gain in their accounts with immediate effect. The two teams are happy, but not everyone was convinced, with Pippo Russo, the investigative journalist, calling it the “mother of all plusvalenze” in his blog.

Rovella was still a teenager at the time. An Italy youth international, he had made only 11 appearances in Serie A. That €18million valuation struck some people as high and begged the question: why commit to it when his Genoa contract was on course to expire that summer?


The performances of Nicolo Rovella (left) at Genoa persuaded Juventus to sign him, but the deal proved controversial (Photo: Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images)
Paratici explained the working behind the valuations.

First, Portanova had attracted interest from Atalanta the previous summer. He had since made first-team appearances for Juventus under Andrea Pirlo. As for Petrelli, he had played for Italy at every age group from under-16 to under-19 and was showing promise for Juventus Under-23s, scoring “six or seven goals” for them in the Italian third division by Christmas.

Rovella, on the other hand, was considered a big talent, an Italy Under-21 international, who Genoa’s then-owner Enrico Preziosi priced at €20million — a valuation that, in Paratici’s view, acknowledged the premium placed on the best Italian talent in light of UEFA and FIGC rules insisting that eight places in a 25-man squad be given to locally-trained players.

More generally, Paratici and Cherubini highlighted the market trend in young player valuations at the time.

Inter Milan, for example, paid Argentina’s Boca Juniors €9.6million for Facundo Colidio in 2017 before he had made a first-team appearance.

And then there was William Geubbels, the teenager Monaco acquired from fellow Ligue 1 side Lyon for €20m after a couple of first-team outings. “Clearly, he’d hinted at having such high potential that the French club made a major investment to acquire him,” Paratici and Cherubini argued.

Still, in Rovella’s case, why not wait a few months for his contract to expire?

“I contacted Rovella’s agent to find out about the player’s situation,” Paratici said. “The agent said that the player had attracted interest from leading national and international teams but that he and his family were grateful to Genoa and would never let his contract expire to the detriment of the club.”

The trouble with ‘Transfermarkt’

Acting on the list provided by COVISOC, the FIGC brought a case before the federal national tribunal in April 2022.

It turned on age-old questions: in the absence of a standardised algorithm or tool to make an objective calculation, what is any player worth? How do you settle on a valuation, given intangibles such as potential, experience, competition for the player’s signature, timing and urgency of need? How do you avoid the issue of over-valuing for the alleged ends of cooking the books?

The FIGC’s federal prosecutor, Giuseppe Chine, and his team made an argument partially based on cross-referencing the values of the deals in question with the website Transfermarkt. This was problematic because, as outlined in the site’s FAQs, the values it attributes to players depend on a set of factors including the input of the online community on its forums.

Transfermarkt was duly adjudged to be “a method of valuation” rather than “the method of valuation”. Juventus, the other clubs and executives were all acquitted “on the grounds of inexistence of any disciplinary offence”.

The appeal lodged by the FIGC to the federal court of appeal in May was turned down and, from a sporting perspective, that seemed to be that.

But at the end of October, prosecutors in Turin concluded their investigation, which had been named Prisma. A month later, they filed a request for a committal hearing to put Juventus on trial.

Ironically in a story about swaps, the bodies scrutinising the club swapped information.

Upon reviewing the work of Prisma, Chine applied to revoke the appeal he lost in May and reopen the sporting case against Juventus and the eight other teams embroiled in the initial case on the basis of new evidence. “The picture is radically different from what had been examined (last summer),” he said.

Juventus considered Chine’s motion inadmissible. The club’s lawyers cited ‘ne bis in idem’ — double jeopardy. They claimed Chine filed his motion late and reminded him they had been cleared in the April for the non-existence of any disciplinary offence.

But Chine pushed ahead. He argued the 14,000 pages of the Prisma investigation showed an “intentionality” on Juventus’ part and “the existence of a system, an organisation, a budgeting for the buying and selling of footballers not for technical reasons, but for reasons exclusively linked to the need to achieve, by artificial means, certain economic-financial results”.

After examining Juventus’ publicly-available accounts, the Prisma investigators obtained permission to wire-tap the phones of 12 of the club’s employees during the summer 2021 transfer window. Search and seizure warrants were then issued for Juventus’ premises in November and December of the same year.

When Chine began to use the wire-taps in his motion, Juventus protested, arguing that they could not be considered admissible “in proceedings other than those in which they were ordered”. The Court of Appeal did not agree.


Conversations involving Federico Cherubini, Juventus men’s team director, were intercepted by public prosecutors (Photo: Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images)
Barely a week into their surveillance, the Prisma investigators had placed microphones in Turin’s elegant Cornoler restaurant, where Federico Cherubini, Juventus men’s team director, and Stefano Bertola, the club’s chief financial officer, had agreed to meet. Lamenting the challenges the club faced, Bertola was intercepted saying: “In 15 years, I make only one comparison: Calciopoli.”

That was a seismic scandal about power and influence and how it was brought to bear on Italian football that led to Juventus losing two Serie A titles and being relegated for the only time in their history.

But here Bertola drew a distinction.

Back then, it seemed like the world wanted to bring Juventus down. This latest crisis, precipitated by the financial management of the club during COVID-19, was different. “We created this one ourselves,” Bertola mused.

‘It’s the “merda” that can’t be talked about…’

Juventus’ change in strategy was signalled by the signing of Cristiano Ronaldo in 2018 for a Serie A transfer-record €116million.

One day that summer, Paratici had knocked on the door of Agnelli’s office.

The super-agent Jorge Mendes had confided in Paratici the desire of Ronaldo to play for Juventus, so struck had his client been by the standing ovation he received at their Allianz Stadium after scoring a bicycle kick for Real Madrid against them earlier that year. Paratici told Agnelli to sign him.

Juventus’ executives locked themselves away in a villa on Lake Maggiore, north east of Turin, to crunch the numbers, and then Agnelli boarded a plane to the luxury resort where Ronaldo was holidaying on Greece’s Navarino coast. The deal was completed, and Ronaldo, Mendes and Agnelli toasted it with Champagne.

It was the zenith of Agnelli’s presidency. After losing Champions League finals in 2015 and 2017, it was surely only a matter of time before, with Ronaldo aboard, Juventus were kings of Europe again.

Juventus were becoming “more mainstream, more pop”, as Agnelli had hoped when the club revealed its new logo at Milan’s hip science and technology museum.

If plans to reform European football and the launch of a Super League came off, Juventus would be front and centre with Ronaldo, the most famous athlete in the world, in their colours. Matthijs de Ligt, hyped as the most promising young defender in the world, was signed from Ajax the following summer for €75million, while Juventus also launched a new ‘Next Generation’ team of under-23s registered in Italy’s third tier.

As an undertaking, it was like operating another club.

This “expansive investment plan” was daring. Juventus were taking on more costs and carried out a €300million capital increase in 2019 to support it. In retrospect, the pivot to a more aggressive strategy with Ronaldo as its poster boy feels like a hubristic moment.

Agnelli did not publicly regret it, even during the darkest days of the pandemic. Asked about the decision to sign Ronaldo, he said, “I’d do it all again,” even though the eye-watering annual cost of having him (€86million) contributed to mounting losses.


Cristiano Ronaldo waves to Juventus supporters as he arrives at the club in July 2018 (Photo: Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images)
Juventus have lost €557million in the last three years but Agnelli, speaking as a panellist at the Financial Times’ Business of Football summit in March 2022, first denied wrongdoing and then suggested Juventus had embarked on this expansive phase to remain competitive within the international environment. They had, he claimed, simply got unlucky when COVID-19 hit and caused “more than €300million of direct and indirect losses”.

But investigators allege Juventus were under financial strain even before the pandemic.

Sent out on loan to AC Milan and then Chelsea to make way for Ronaldo, the player formerly known as Serie A’s most expensive signing, Gonzalo Higuain, had not been sold. Nor had high earners such as Mario Mandzukic and Emre Can, both deemed surplus to requirements by head coach Maurizio Sarri.

As the club prepared to post a €50.3million loss in their half-yearly financial report in December 2019, Juventus projected the year-end figure to be even worse at €177m. On February 22, 2020, Agnelli sent an email to senior club executives stating “our objective has to be to contain losses to (less than) €50m”.

The club needed to bring in €100million, and the way to do it was through on-field performance (prize money) and, in Agnelli’s words, “corrective actions”. Prosecutors allege that plusvalenze raised by Paratici’s Area Sport and the alleged “artificial” effect they have on the accounts became a top-down corporate strategy to save the balance sheet.

This claim was supplemented by wire-tap evidence.

A scouting manager, Matteo Tognozzi, was recorded saying, “They’ve asked us to do plusvalenze… and we’ve bought good players. We’ve bought players without paying for them. This is the truth.” Prosecutors believe this supports their case that there was an alleged plan to systematically alter the balance sheet. Juventus countered Tognozzi was merely asserting an objective fact; that no cash was generated in the cross-transactions.

Confronted with evidence such as projections, income targets and “to-do” lists which included plusvalenze, Juventus offered this explanation as part of a 73-page document which formed their defence in the FIGC appeal hearing last week, and which also represented the defence of the executives implicated, including Paratici.

“Capital gains are one of the fully legitimate ways of obtaining revenue,” they said. “Just as an ordinary business projects revenue targets to be achieved, similarly, football clubs plan in their budget forecasts certain revenue targets including, with regard to the Area Sport, the capital gains generated by the disposal of players’ sports performance rights.”

Still, Chine said: “The pervasiveness at every level of the awareness of the artificiality of the company’s modus operandi is striking.”

Agnelli himself was intercepted telling his chief executive Maurizio Arrivabene on September 3, 2021: “It’s not only COVID, and we well know this! We have two fundamental elements: on the one hand, COVID, on the other, we have flooded the engine with amortisations. And above all the merda (s—), it’s all the s— that’s underneath that can’t be talked about.”


Juventus’s managing director Maurizio Arrivabene (left), with Andrea Agnelli (Photo: Marco Bertorello / AFP)
When the Prisma investigators interviewed Arrivabene as a person informed of the facts, he explained that during the aforementioned conversation, Agnelli “referred to expenses made in previous years” and that “by ‘amortisation’ we refer to the purchase of capital and the related depreciation. To footballers. Or to real estate. I was referring to everything, to all the assets of the company. By ‘s—‘, I was referring to the costs that you see on the balance sheet. By ‘s—‘, my idea was that it referred to the economic-financial situation of the company and the costs that had been generated”, thus not alluding to any illegal or irregular behaviour.

Days after talking to Arrivabene, Agnelli also spoke to his cousin John Elkann, the scion of the Agnelli dynasty and CEO of EXOR, Juventus’ majority shareholder.

Juventus had already been through one capital increase (namely, the sale of shares, which raised €300million in 2019), but that had been burned through. In the autumn of 2021, they were having to organise another one for €400million.

Elkann reminded Agnelli of a conversation about Paratici’s recruitment department and how it had stretched itself. Agnelli said: “Exactly, making excessive recourse to the instrument of plusvalenze.”

In clarification, Juventus’ legal team contended: “Again, the subject of the conversation relates to the subject of depreciation determined by the exchange transactions and there is no evidence of fraudulence or artificiality of the values involved in those transactions.”

The Paratici ‘black book’

As Juventus challenged the admissibility of the wiretaps on a series of grounds, professing them to be incomplete and raising the potential for misrepresentation, Chine stuck to his guns and argued they were not the only “decisive element” to justify reopening the case.

Of particular interest to investigators was a piece of paper that turned up during the search of Juventus’ premises. Called a “disturbing” document in the written reasons for the 15-point penalty that the footballing Court of Appeal handed out to Juventus, it was found among Cherubini’s things and was entitled ‘Libro Nero FP’ – ‘Black Book FP’, the initials of Fabio Paratici, then-chief football officer and Cherubini’s boss.

A sheet of paper rather than an actual book, Cherubini recalled making the notes on it around the March and April of 2021, while preparing to discuss his future with Paratici. By then, he had been at Juventus for nine years and was considering leaving. Cherubini owed his career at the club to Paratici but unless they clarified “a series of things”, he did not intend to renew his contract.

Investigators had already intercepted Cherubini lamenting that “at the first meetings in March, we were talking about €300million of those, eh! I swear I had nights when I’d go home and feel sick thinking about it.” In another, he said: “I felt like I was selling my soul because, at a certain point, I was doing some things, I was complicit in some things… also for a question of my position I should have told Fabio, ‘I don’t agree’. But then if he said, ‘Go’, you go.”

On that piece of paper, Cherubini lists four sections: management, strategy, relationships, behaviour. “How did we get here?” he wrote. “Senseless signings.” Dejan Kulusevski’s name is in brackets after this, as an example of a player for whom, in Cherubini’s opinion, Juventus paid over the odds, agreeing a deal worth €44million on the back of four pulsating months at Parma.

Further down, under the header ‘Strategy’, is a line with ‘Excessive use artificial plusvalenze’ with an arrow pointing to ‘Immediate benefit’ and ‘Amortisation load’.



The Fabio Paratici ‘black book’, written by Juventus director Federico Cherubini, that was found in a search of Juventus premises by prosecutors

During the appeal hearing that ended in a 15-point penalty, Juventus’ legal team protested that Chine did not include Cherubini’s explanation for the word ‘artificial’ when raising the black book in his argument to reopen the case.

As Cherubini sees it, a plusvalenza, in itself legitimate under accounting rules, becomes ‘artificial’ when it is linked to the sale of one of their own — a player who has come through the academy only to be cashed in on prematurely, all for profit, so as not to have to sacrifice the competitiveness of the first team in order to help support the objectives of the Finance Area, the club’s finance department.

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As the head of Juventus’ men’s teams, which included the younger age groups, Juventus’ legal team argued that Cherubini’s concern was about the short-termism of cashing in on kids early when they had yet to reach their full potential and, by the same token, a “vastly superior” value.

When TV show Report reached Paratici for comment regarding the accusatory hypothesis laid out by public prosecutors in Turin, he said: “Everyone has their own view of course, but as you say, now it’s really one-sided. There’s someone on the attack and someone else who can only defend and can’t pass the halfway line.”

As CONSOB and public prosecutors dug deeper into Juventus’ affairs, the focus turned to how the club accounted for paying its players during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic — when clubs lost fortunes as there either were no games to generate revenue or, later, paying fans could not attend them — and the effects this had on the balance sheet at the end of June in the years 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Salary ‘manoeuvres’ and Chiellini’s WhatsApps

Juventus’ wage bill of €262million was the highest in Serie A when the league went into what became months of lockdown on March 14, 2020.

For a club already looking to contain losses, the pandemic came at the worst time. But by the end of the month, Juventus announced they had reached an agreement with its players and coach Maurizio Sarri to reduce their pay “equal to the monthly wages of March, April, May and June 2020”. It was publicly disclosed that this agreement would help the club save around €90million in the 2019-20 financial year.

As the first club in Italy to come to such an arrangement, Juventus and the players were lauded for showing responsibility. But investigators allege the agreement disclosed to the public was not the same as the one struck in private and that the statement the club issued misled the stock market.

When Prisma investigators interviewed the players, De Ligt and fellow defender Mattia De Sciglio handed over their phones, allowing the investigators to see what was written in the team’s WhatsApp group chat.

It showed that Chiellini had sent a message outlining the structure of the agreement and told his team-mates “NOT TO SPEAK IN INTERVIEWS” about the specifics because of stock-market regulations. The players gave up one month’s salary and received guarantees that three months’ money would be repaid, even if they left the club in the meantime.



The WhatsApp group chat of Juventus’ squad, including messages from Giorgio Chiellini, was publicised in the Italian media

“What I remember,” forward Paulo Dybala told investigators, “was that a press release had gone out. A lot of people thought we had given up four months and nobody knew at the time that we would take three months but (be) paid later. Reading the press release, that’s not the agreement we reached. It says that we give up four months but it does not say that we already had the agreement on the three months’ pay, which was certain.”

This was the first of two so-called “salary manoeuvres” — the deferral of wage payments to alleviate the strain on the club’s accounts. There was another the following season when the players were once again asked to help the club as a new COVID-19 variant, Omicron, swept across the world. Stadiums were still closed to fans as the season continued and in that context, in April and May 2021, Juventus began striking individual agreements for salary reductions with 17 of its 24 first-team players worth €59.8million.

Last season, considering the prospect of a gradual relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions (stadiums in Italy only began operating again at 100 per cent capacity in March 2022), Juventus and 11 of the 17 players who had accepted a reduction in their fixed salaries entered into agreements to increase their salaries for subsequent seasons, subject to each player remaining registered with the club for specific periods, through “loyalty bonuses” for a total of €30.7million.

Unlike in the first salary manoeuvre, no price-sensitive press release was put out to the market.



The €19m Ronaldo problem

Throughout the pandemic, one player weighed more on the balance sheet than any other.

Ronaldo’s annual cost was €86million, his salary before tax €57m, and while Juventus negotiated his sale to Manchester United at the end of the summer transfer window in 2021, investigators tapping the phones of the club’s executives learned he was owed back-pay.

After that window closed, Juventus’ legal counsel Cesare Gabasio was heard talking to Cherubini about an agreement “signed by Fabio (Paratici)”, a “famous document that shouldn’t theoretically exist” because if it came out the auditors would “jump down our throats”. It is alleged that this document is a recognition of the money Ronaldo was due — €19million.

During the recent World Cup, it was reported that lawyers representing the Portuguese forward in Italy made a request to public prosecutors in Turin to see the documents gathered by the investigation and that they were ready to take legal action to ensure Juventus honoured the payment.

Andrea Agnelli Juventus president
Ronaldo poses with Agnelli to celebrate his 770th career goal in 2021 (Photo: Getty Images)
In general, upon reviewing the salary manoeuvres, CONSOB contended Juventus should have recognised a liability in its 2020 books and made a provision for liability relating to the loyalty bonuses in its 2021 results.

Lost amid the shock caused by Agnelli’s resignation in November was the simultaneous announcement by the club that while the accounting treatment used in preparing those statements “falls within those allowed by applicable accounting principles”, a more prudent approach would be appropriate.

It meant restating their accounts for the last three years.

What next?

Juventus intend to appeal before the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI), the country’s sporting governing body, and believe they have strong grounds to reverse the outcome. However, the 15-point deduction cannot be reduced, only upheld or annulled. The club called the court of appeal’s written reasons for the sanction “predictable in terms of content” and claimed it was impaired “by obvious illogicalities, motivational deficiencies and unfounded in terms of law”.

CONI’s ‘board of guarantors’ will not get into the merit of the sporting case, which limited itself to alleged artificially inflated cross-transactions. It will, instead, assess whether the FIGC’s federal prosecutor and the court of appeal followed procedure. Juventus believe a “clear injustice” has been done.

Claudio Marchisio, the former Juventus midfielder, wasn’t alone in wondering why, in a case about cross-transactions, his old club were the only one punished when it takes two parties to do such deals. On that point, the court of appeal cited a lack of “specific demonstrative evidence” to “effectively support” claims against Sampdoria, Pro Vercelli, Genoa, Parma, Pisa, Empoli, Novara and Pescara. The interceptions, manuscripts (including the ‘Black Book of FP’) and other documentation gathered by the Turin public prosecutor’s office “do not directly involve these clubs”.

In the meantime, the FIGC’s federal prosecutor has also asked for 40 more days to review the evidence after opening a separate case into salary manoeuvres, which could bring more sporting penalties.

A committal hearing for the criminal trial is scheduled for the end of March, which is not how the club would have liked to celebrate the centenary of the Agnellis’ ownership of Juventus. Speaking on the anniversary of the death of his grandfather, Gianni Agnelli, Elkann denied rumours the club are up for sale. Elkann has no intention of letting go of one of “nonno’s strong passions”.

Juventus have a new board — dubbed a ‘war cabinet’ — with a new chairman, Gianluca Ferrero, and chief executive, Maurizio Scanavino, who said he had been encouraged by the solidarity shown to the club after the 15-point penalty.

Railing against the “unfairness” of the decision, he said the club had received support from the world of football and beyond. “It creates concern because today it can happen to Juventus, tomorrow it can happen to any other team,” he said.

Sympathy has not been universal. Fiorentina owner Rocco Commisso seethed: “I hope someone wakes up. What I said a few years ago (to the Financial Times)… on the fact that football is sick, that there are teams playing without being compliant with the finances… we’ve seen what has happened… with Juventus.”

In the meantime, the club reacted hastily to Cherubini’s 16-month suspension by bringing Francesco Calvo, their former commercial director and then chief revenue officer, back into the organisation as head of Area Sport. It comes after the board asked the club’s internal departments, “particularly with regard to Area Sport”, to proceed with the “implementation and strengthening of accounting practices”.

As for Agnelli, at the shareholders’ assembly to announce the new board on January 18, he reiterated the need to reform the European game. “There was an unsustainable system, a non-profitability for clubs, a vertical and horizontal polarisation, extremely risky mechanisms of access (to competitions) that caused disaffection among fans,” he said.

The Super League idea was a response to that, to COVID-19, and its launch and collapse over 48 hours in April 2021 came in the same spring CONSOB and public prosecutors in Turin began taking a closer look at Juventus’ affairs.


Graffiti by Italian artist Laika, featuring Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli, near the Italian Football Federation in Rome (Photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images)
Addressing shareholders for the last time, Agnelli revealed his intention to take a “step back”. He stood down from his positions on the board of EXOR and Stellantis (the car conglomerate comprising Fiat-Chrysler and the French PSA group). Both of them are listed companies. “I want to face the future as a blank page,” Agnelli said. “I can’t wait to start this new chapter of my life.”

His last words as Juventus chairman were those from the club motto, “Fino alla Fine” — a willingness to fight “until the end” with backs against the wall and a ‘this ain’t over yet” mentality that distinguishes the team.

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GO DEEPER
The Juventus scandal is awful for the whole of Serie A. It could be crippling
Juventus battle on and reached the Coppa Italia semi-finals in midweek. Winning the Europa League — they face French club Nantes this month in a two-leg play-off to see who advances to the last 16 — perhaps now represents their best chance of qualifying for next year’s Champions League. Juventus were still in the Serie A title race at the turn of the year, but the psychological impact on the team of that 15-point penalty cannot be underestimated.

That much became clear in a 2-0 home loss to Monza in their most recent league game on January 29. It meant Juventus had taken one point from the last nine available and were 13th in the 20-team table, and the risk of a further penalty means nothing can be taken for granted.

“We need to get the points for survival,” Allegri said, matter of factly. “This is the reality.”

(Top photo, from left: Giorgio Chiellini, Andrea Agnelli, Fabio Paratici, Cristiano Ronaldo/design: Eamonn Dalton)

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James Horncastle covers Serie A for The Athletic. He joins from ESPN and is working on a book about Roberto Baggio.

There must be something floating around out there...

>
>
>James Horncastle
>Feb 7, 2023
>115
>Save Article
>If English football needed proof of how hard it can be to
>dispel the clouds cast by a major financial scandal, they need
>only look at Italy.
>
>While Manchester City are only beginning to confront over 100
>claims that they breached financial regulations over a
>nine-season period, Juventus — the most successful club in
>the history of Serie A — have been under siege for almost
>two years.
>
>ADVERTISEMENT
>
>The scrutiny on the Turin giants has been four-pronged.
>
>First, CONSOB, the Italian equivalent of the US securities and
>exchange commission, conducted inspections and audits of the
>club, which is listed on the stock exchange.
>
>Second, public prosecutors in Turin wire-tapped executives,
>bugged a restaurant and carried out searches and seizures on
>premises owned by the club, alleging false corporate
>communications, false communications to the stock market,
>obstruction of a supervisory authority (CONSOB) and fraud.
>They have queried more than €170million (£150m, $184m) in
>booked transfer revenue between 2019 and 2021, alleging it has
>been artificially inflated.
>
>Third, the federal prosecutor of the Italian Football
>Federation (FIGC) brought disciplinary proceedings against
>Juventus and other teams last April. It lost an initial case
>into player trading and failed in an appeal but then, last
>week, dramatically got the appeal revoked on the grounds of
>new evidence.
>
>That prompted a spate of severe punishments: a 15-point
>penalty for Juventus, a two-year ban from Italian football for
>Andrea Agnelli (the club’s former chairman and champion of
>the mooted Super League) and a 30-month ban for Fabio
>Paratici, the club’s former sporting director who is now
>managing director of football at Tottenham.
>
>CONSOB’s request for information on Juventus’ transfer
>revenue came four months before Paratici’s appointment by
>Spurs, who declined to comment on the allegations facing him
>when contacted by The Athletic.
>
>The FIGC plans to petition UEFA, European football’s
>governing body, and FIFA, which runs the global game, to
>extend the domestic bans to cover their competitions too.
>
>
>The ‘black book’ of Fabio Paratici was revealed in a
>search of Juventus premises (Photo: Alessandro Sabattini/Getty
>Images)
>In the written reasons for its decision, released last Monday,
>the footballing Court of Appeal cited “the seriousness, and
>repeated and prolonged nature of the offence”.
>
>And the fourth? That’s UEFA itself, which has opened its own
>investigation into potential breaches of club licensing and
>financial fair play regulations after granting Juventus a
>settlement agreement on the basis of accounts CONSOB and
>public prosecutors have challenged.
>
>It is a storm that has battered the reputation of one of the
>European game’s true powerhouses, catching in its eye some
>of football’s biggest names, including Cristiano Ronaldo,
>the five-time Ballon d’Or winner and Serie A’s most
>expensive ever player who is now with Al Nassr in Saudi
>Arabia, and the captain of Italy’s European
>Championship-winning team two years ago, club legend Giorgio
>Chiellini. Neither is accused of any wrongdoing.
>
>go-deeper
>GO DEEPER
>Rejection, revenge and soft power: Inside Cristiano Ronaldo's
>move to Saudi Arabia's Al Nassr
>Since the dramatic day in November when Stefano Bizzotto, the
>commentator for Italy’s state broadcaster RAI, interrupted
>coverage of the Portugal–Uruguay group game at the World Cup
>to break the news that Agnelli and the Juventus board had
>resigned, there has been a ‘stillicidio‘ — a drip, drip,
>drip — of allegations.
>
>Details have emerged of the “black book of FP (Fabio
>Paratici)”, the WhatsApp group of the Juventus team, and
>payments due to Cristiano Ronaldo, all chronicled in a
>544-page document compiled by public prosecutors last year.
>
>When Report, a current affairs show on Italian TV, ran a
>programme that drew on the document, Juventus said it was
>partial and supports the accusatory hypothesis of the
>prosecution’s case. The club deny wrongdoing.
>
>”Juventus remains convinced… to have acted in compliance
>with the laws and regulations governing the preparations of
>financial reports, in accordance with accounting principles
>and in line with the international practice in the football
>industry,” read a club statement.
>
>What CONSOB, public prosecutors in Turin and the FIGC all have
>in common is an interest in revenues from transfers between
>2019 and 2021, the salaries Juventus paid their players during
>the COVID-19 pandemic and when, and what, was publicly
>disclosed by a listed company.
>
>It’s a complex story, but the ramifications — for
>Juventus, Italian football and the European club game —
>could be massive.
>
>Confused? Let us explain.
>
>‘Plusvalenze’… and why it’s a problem
>
>In February 2021, CONSOB asked Juventus for information
>regarding their transfer revenue. The club had raised
>astonishing income from player trading in their last two sets
>of year-end accounts — €157million for 2018-19 and
>€172million for 2019-20. The last figure represented
>Juventus’ biggest revenue stream for the financial year and
>was 30 per cent of the total.
>
>On the face of it, it seemed as if Paratici and his team in
>Juventus’ recruitment department — the ‘Area Sport’
>— were due some credit. Player trading has always been an
>important part of a football club’s business. For clubs
>outside the Premier League, who make far less from domestic
>and international TV deals, it has become fundamental. When
>COVID-19 hit, it acted as a lifeline.
>
>What made CONSOB curious, however, was the ‘plusvalenze’,
>or capital gains, accrued from cross-transactions — the
>criteria used to value the players involved and the effects on
>a listed company’s accounts. When public prosecutors in
>Turin subsequently opened their own investigation they
>referred to them as “mirror” operations. Colloquially,
>football fans and media alike have tended to think of them as
>swap deals.
>
>A high volume of these transactions happened at Juventus.
>Some, as we’ll get to, involved a trio of Europe’s biggest
>clubs — Barcelona, Manchester City and Marseille. The FIGC
>opened its own disciplinary proceedings after COVISOC, a
>watchdog supervising Italian football, passed on a list to
>president Gabriele Gravina flagging 62 transfers involving 11
>Italian clubs between 2019 and 2021. Leaping off the page was
>the number of these done by Juventus: 42, of which 36 included
>young players readers have probably never heard of.
>
>
>
>The most high-profile cross-transaction happened in the summer
>of 2020 when the Juventus and Barcelona midfielders Miralem
>Pjanic and Arthur traded places. Juventus valued Pjanic, who
>had just turned 30, at €60million. Barcelona considered
>Arthur worth €72m. In the end, only €12m in actual money
>changed hands.
>
>The reason this series of transfers attracted attention was
>the alleged “fictitious” effect the agreement had on both
>clubs’ accounts, to say nothing of the timing. The appeal of
>a plusvalenza — the positive difference between the sale
>value of a player and his purchase value, net of depreciation
>— is that the income from the player leaving can be booked
>immediately in the club’s accounts while the cost of the
>player joining can be amortised over the length of their
>contract.
>
>This is not improper. It is legitimate under accounting rules
>and, as Juventus have repeatedly insisted in their defence, it
>is “an approach adopted by substantially all companies in
>the same industry (ie, the football industry)”.
>
>But investigators looked at Pjanic’s remaining book value of
>€14.2million and scrutinised the valuation placed on him in
>the cross-transaction with Barcelona (€60m). It allowed
>Juventus to make €43.7m capital gain on Pjanic, which could
>be included in their year end financial results on June 30.
>Investigators considered a number of transfers were overvalued
>and that Juventus had created a misleading financial
>impression.
>
>The Pjanic deal was done on June 29, pre-agreed at a time when
>the transfer window wasn’t open. As such, the players stayed
>at their respective clubs until a season disrupted and
>extended by the pandemic finally ended in the August.
>
>In the same set of accounts, Juventus did two
>cross-transactions with Manchester City, making a €30.4m
>capital gain on Joao Cancelo for City’s Danilo, and €9.4m
>on Pablo Moreno for Felix Correia. That last deal was
>announced on June 30, 2020 and investigators queried how
>Moreno, a teenager with a book value of €500,000 who had
>made only one appearance for Juventus Under-23s, could be
>valued at €10million. It, again, struck them as a
>“fictitious” figure.
>
>None of the other clubs involved are believed to have acted
>with “intentionality” and are therefore no longer being
>investigated.
>
>
>Danilo was the subject of a ‘cross-transaction’ at
>Juventus (Photo: Isabella Bonotto//AFP via Getty Images)
>The FIGC narrowed its focus to 17 cross-transactions involving
>Juventus, challenging the valuations given to young players.
>
>Pulled up on the Moreno-Correia case, Paratici and Juventus’
>men’s team director Federico Cherubini justified Moreno’s
>€10million valuation on his past at Barcelona’s academy.
>“In five years, he scored more than 200 goals — numbers
>comparable only to Lionel Messi in the Catalan club’s
>history,” they said.
>
>As for Correia, City had already paid Portugal’s Sporting
>Lisbon €5million for the player a year earlier and he had
>since spent a season playing, on loan, in the Dutch second
>division for AZ Alkmaar’s B team.
>
>One more example worth revisiting occurred in January 2021,
>when Juventus agreed to sign up-and-coming midfielder Nicolo
>Rovella from fellow Italians Genoa for €18m. Genoa
>simultaneously bought Manolo Portanova (€10m) and Elia
>Petrelli (€8m) from Juventus for the same amount.
>Cash-neutral, no money changed hands, but both clubs could
>book an €18m capital gain in their accounts with immediate
>effect. The two teams are happy, but not everyone was
>convinced, with Pippo Russo, the investigative journalist,
>calling it the “mother of all plusvalenze” in his blog.
>
>Rovella was still a teenager at the time. An Italy youth
>international, he had made only 11 appearances in Serie A.
>That €18million valuation struck some people as high and
>begged the question: why commit to it when his Genoa contract
>was on course to expire that summer?
>
>
>The performances of Nicolo Rovella (left) at Genoa persuaded
>Juventus to sign him, but the deal proved controversial
>(Photo: Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images)
>Paratici explained the working behind the valuations.
>
>First, Portanova had attracted interest from Atalanta the
>previous summer. He had since made first-team appearances for
>Juventus under Andrea Pirlo. As for Petrelli, he had played
>for Italy at every age group from under-16 to under-19 and was
>showing promise for Juventus Under-23s, scoring “six or
>seven goals” for them in the Italian third division by
>Christmas.
>
>Rovella, on the other hand, was considered a big talent, an
>Italy Under-21 international, who Genoa’s then-owner Enrico
>Preziosi priced at €20million — a valuation that, in
>Paratici’s view, acknowledged the premium placed on the best
>Italian talent in light of UEFA and FIGC rules insisting that
>eight places in a 25-man squad be given to locally-trained
>players.
>
>More generally, Paratici and Cherubini highlighted the market
>trend in young player valuations at the time.
>
>Inter Milan, for example, paid Argentina’s Boca Juniors
>€9.6million for Facundo Colidio in 2017 before he had made a
>first-team appearance.
>
>And then there was William Geubbels, the teenager Monaco
>acquired from fellow Ligue 1 side Lyon for €20m after a
>couple of first-team outings. “Clearly, he’d hinted at
>having such high potential that the French club made a major
>investment to acquire him,” Paratici and Cherubini argued.
>
>Still, in Rovella’s case, why not wait a few months for his
>contract to expire?
>
>“I contacted Rovella’s agent to find out about the
>player’s situation,” Paratici said. “The agent said that
>the player had attracted interest from leading national and
>international teams but that he and his family were grateful
>to Genoa and would never let his contract expire to the
>detriment of the club.”
>
>The trouble with ‘Transfermarkt’
>
>Acting on the list provided by COVISOC, the FIGC brought a
>case before the federal national tribunal in April 2022.
>
>It turned on age-old questions: in the absence of a
>standardised algorithm or tool to make an objective
>calculation, what is any player worth? How do you settle on a
>valuation, given intangibles such as potential, experience,
>competition for the player’s signature, timing and urgency
>of need? How do you avoid the issue of over-valuing for the
>alleged ends of cooking the books?
>
>The FIGC’s federal prosecutor, Giuseppe Chine, and his team
>made an argument partially based on cross-referencing the
>values of the deals in question with the website
>Transfermarkt. This was problematic because, as outlined in
>the site’s FAQs, the values it attributes to players depend
>on a set of factors including the input of the online
>community on its forums.
>
>Transfermarkt was duly adjudged to be “a method of
>valuation” rather than “the method of valuation”.
>Juventus, the other clubs and executives were all acquitted
>“on the grounds of inexistence of any disciplinary
>offence”.
>
>The appeal lodged by the FIGC to the federal court of appeal
>in May was turned down and, from a sporting perspective, that
>seemed to be that.
>
>But at the end of October, prosecutors in Turin concluded
>their investigation, which had been named Prisma. A month
>later, they filed a request for a committal hearing to put
>Juventus on trial.
>
>Ironically in a story about swaps, the bodies scrutinising the
>club swapped information.
>
>Upon reviewing the work of Prisma, Chine applied to revoke the
>appeal he lost in May and reopen the sporting case against
>Juventus and the eight other teams embroiled in the initial
>case on the basis of new evidence. “The picture is radically
>different from what had been examined (last summer),” he
>said.
>
>Juventus considered Chine’s motion inadmissible. The
>club’s lawyers cited ‘ne bis in idem’ — double
>jeopardy. They claimed Chine filed his motion late and
>reminded him they had been cleared in the April for the
>non-existence of any disciplinary offence.
>
>But Chine pushed ahead. He argued the 14,000 pages of the
>Prisma investigation showed an “intentionality” on
>Juventus’ part and “the existence of a system, an
>organisation, a budgeting for the buying and selling of
>footballers not for technical reasons, but for reasons
>exclusively linked to the need to achieve, by artificial
>means, certain economic-financial results”.
>
>After examining Juventus’ publicly-available accounts, the
>Prisma investigators obtained permission to wire-tap the
>phones of 12 of the club’s employees during the summer 2021
>transfer window. Search and seizure warrants were then issued
>for Juventus’ premises in November and December of the same
>year.
>
>When Chine began to use the wire-taps in his motion, Juventus
>protested, arguing that they could not be considered
>admissible “in proceedings other than those in which they
>were ordered”. The Court of Appeal did not agree.
>
>
>Conversations involving Federico Cherubini, Juventus men’s
>team director, were intercepted by public prosecutors (Photo:
>Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images)
>Barely a week into their surveillance, the Prisma
>investigators had placed microphones in Turin’s elegant
>Cornoler restaurant, where Federico Cherubini, Juventus
>men’s team director, and Stefano Bertola, the club’s chief
>financial officer, had agreed to meet. Lamenting the
>challenges the club faced, Bertola was intercepted saying:
>“In 15 years, I make only one comparison: Calciopoli.”
>
>That was a seismic scandal about power and influence and how
>it was brought to bear on Italian football that led to
>Juventus losing two Serie A titles and being relegated for the
>only time in their history.
>
>But here Bertola drew a distinction.
>
>Back then, it seemed like the world wanted to bring Juventus
>down. This latest crisis, precipitated by the financial
>management of the club during COVID-19, was different. “We
>created this one ourselves,” Bertola mused.
>
>‘It’s the “merda” that can’t be talked about…’
>
>Juventus’ change in strategy was signalled by the signing of
>Cristiano Ronaldo in 2018 for a Serie A transfer-record
>€116million.
>
>One day that summer, Paratici had knocked on the door of
>Agnelli’s office.
>
>The super-agent Jorge Mendes had confided in Paratici the
>desire of Ronaldo to play for Juventus, so struck had his
>client been by the standing ovation he received at their
>Allianz Stadium after scoring a bicycle kick for Real Madrid
>against them earlier that year. Paratici told Agnelli to sign
>him.
>
>Juventus’ executives locked themselves away in a villa on
>Lake Maggiore, north east of Turin, to crunch the numbers, and
>then Agnelli boarded a plane to the luxury resort where
>Ronaldo was holidaying on Greece’s Navarino coast. The deal
>was completed, and Ronaldo, Mendes and Agnelli toasted it with
>Champagne.
>
>It was the zenith of Agnelli’s presidency. After losing
>Champions League finals in 2015 and 2017, it was surely only a
>matter of time before, with Ronaldo aboard, Juventus were
>kings of Europe again.
>
>Juventus were becoming “more mainstream, more pop”, as
>Agnelli had hoped when the club revealed its new logo at
>Milan’s hip science and technology museum.
>
>If plans to reform European football and the launch of a Super
>League came off, Juventus would be front and centre with
>Ronaldo, the most famous athlete in the world, in their
>colours. Matthijs de Ligt, hyped as the most promising young
>defender in the world, was signed from Ajax the following
>summer for €75million, while Juventus also launched a new
>‘Next Generation’ team of under-23s registered in
>Italy’s third tier.
>
>As an undertaking, it was like operating another club.
>
>This “expansive investment plan” was daring. Juventus were
>taking on more costs and carried out a €300million capital
>increase in 2019 to support it. In retrospect, the pivot to a
>more aggressive strategy with Ronaldo as its poster boy feels
>like a hubristic moment.
>
>Agnelli did not publicly regret it, even during the darkest
>days of the pandemic. Asked about the decision to sign
>Ronaldo, he said, “I’d do it all again,” even though the
>eye-watering annual cost of having him (€86million)
>contributed to mounting losses.
>
>
>Cristiano Ronaldo waves to Juventus supporters as he arrives
>at the club in July 2018 (Photo: Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty
>Images)
>Juventus have lost €557million in the last three years but
>Agnelli, speaking as a panellist at the Financial Times’
>Business of Football summit in March 2022, first denied
>wrongdoing and then suggested Juventus had embarked on this
>expansive phase to remain competitive within the international
>environment. They had, he claimed, simply got unlucky when
>COVID-19 hit and caused “more than €300million of direct
>and indirect losses”.
>
>But investigators allege Juventus were under financial strain
>even before the pandemic.
>
>Sent out on loan to AC Milan and then Chelsea to make way for
>Ronaldo, the player formerly known as Serie A’s most
>expensive signing, Gonzalo Higuain, had not been sold. Nor had
>high earners such as Mario Mandzukic and Emre Can, both deemed
>surplus to requirements by head coach Maurizio Sarri.
>
>As the club prepared to post a €50.3million loss in their
>half-yearly financial report in December 2019, Juventus
>projected the year-end figure to be even worse at €177m. On
>February 22, 2020, Agnelli sent an email to senior club
>executives stating “our objective has to be to contain
>losses to (less than) €50m”.
>
>The club needed to bring in €100million, and the way to do
>it was through on-field performance (prize money) and, in
>Agnelli’s words, “corrective actions”. Prosecutors
>allege that plusvalenze raised by Paratici’s Area Sport and
>the alleged “artificial” effect they have on the accounts
>became a top-down corporate strategy to save the balance
>sheet.
>
>This claim was supplemented by wire-tap evidence.
>
>A scouting manager, Matteo Tognozzi, was recorded saying,
>“They’ve asked us to do plusvalenze… and we’ve bought
>good players. We’ve bought players without paying for them.
>This is the truth.” Prosecutors believe this supports their
>case that there was an alleged plan to systematically alter
>the balance sheet. Juventus countered Tognozzi was merely
>asserting an objective fact; that no cash was generated in the
>cross-transactions.
>
>Confronted with evidence such as projections, income targets
>and “to-do” lists which included plusvalenze, Juventus
>offered this explanation as part of a 73-page document which
>formed their defence in the FIGC appeal hearing last week, and
>which also represented the defence of the executives
>implicated, including Paratici.
>
>“Capital gains are one of the fully legitimate ways of
>obtaining revenue,” they said. “Just as an ordinary
>business projects revenue targets to be achieved, similarly,
>football clubs plan in their budget forecasts certain revenue
>targets including, with regard to the Area Sport, the capital
>gains generated by the disposal of players’ sports
>performance rights.”
>
>Still, Chine said: “The pervasiveness at every level of the
>awareness of the artificiality of the company’s modus
>operandi is striking.”
>
>Agnelli himself was intercepted telling his chief executive
>Maurizio Arrivabene on September 3, 2021: “It’s not only
>COVID, and we well know this! We have two fundamental
>elements: on the one hand, COVID, on the other, we have
>flooded the engine with amortisations. And above all the merda
>(s—), it’s all the s— that’s underneath that can’t
>be talked about.”
>
>
>Juventus’s managing director Maurizio Arrivabene (left),
>with Andrea Agnelli (Photo: Marco Bertorello / AFP)
>When the Prisma investigators interviewed Arrivabene as a
>person informed of the facts, he explained that during the
>aforementioned conversation, Agnelli “referred to expenses
>made in previous years” and that “by ‘amortisation’ we
>refer to the purchase of capital and the related depreciation.
> To footballers. Or to real estate. I was referring to
>everything, to all the assets of the company. By
>‘s—‘, I was referring to the costs that you see on the
>balance sheet. By ‘s—‘, my idea was that it referred to
>the economic-financial situation of the company and the costs
>that had been generated”, thus not alluding to any illegal
>or irregular behaviour.
>
>Days after talking to Arrivabene, Agnelli also spoke to his
>cousin John Elkann, the scion of the Agnelli dynasty and CEO
>of EXOR, Juventus’ majority shareholder.
>
>Juventus had already been through one capital increase
>(namely, the sale of shares, which raised €300million in
>2019), but that had been burned through. In the autumn of
>2021, they were having to organise another one for
>€400million.
>
>Elkann reminded Agnelli of a conversation about Paratici’s
>recruitment department and how it had stretched itself.
>Agnelli said: “Exactly, making excessive recourse to the
>instrument of plusvalenze.”
>
>In clarification, Juventus’ legal team contended: “Again,
>the subject of the conversation relates to the subject of
>depreciation determined by the exchange transactions and there
>is no evidence of fraudulence or artificiality of the values
>involved in those transactions.”
>
>The Paratici ‘black book’
>
>As Juventus challenged the admissibility of the wiretaps on a
>series of grounds, professing them to be incomplete and
>raising the potential for misrepresentation, Chine stuck to
>his guns and argued they were not the only “decisive
>element” to justify reopening the case.
>
>Of particular interest to investigators was a piece of paper
>that turned up during the search of Juventus’ premises.
>Called a “disturbing” document in the written reasons for
>the 15-point penalty that the footballing Court of Appeal
>handed out to Juventus, it was found among Cherubini’s
>things and was entitled ‘Libro Nero FP’ – ‘Black Book
>FP’, the initials of Fabio Paratici, then-chief football
>officer and Cherubini’s boss.
>
>A sheet of paper rather than an actual book, Cherubini
>recalled making the notes on it around the March and April of
>2021, while preparing to discuss his future with Paratici. By
>then, he had been at Juventus for nine years and was
>considering leaving. Cherubini owed his career at the club to
>Paratici but unless they clarified “a series of things”,
>he did not intend to renew his contract.
>
>Investigators had already intercepted Cherubini lamenting that
>“at the first meetings in March, we were talking about
>€300million of those, eh! I swear I had nights when I’d go
>home and feel sick thinking about it.” In another, he said:
>“I felt like I was selling my soul because, at a certain
>point, I was doing some things, I was complicit in some
>things… also for a question of my position I should have
>told Fabio, ‘I don’t agree’. But then if he said,
>‘Go’, you go.”
>
>On that piece of paper, Cherubini lists four sections:
>management, strategy, relationships, behaviour. “How did we
>get here?” he wrote. “Senseless signings.” Dejan
>Kulusevski’s name is in brackets after this, as an example
>of a player for whom, in Cherubini’s opinion, Juventus paid
>over the odds, agreeing a deal worth €44million on the back
>of four pulsating months at Parma.
>
>Further down, under the header ‘Strategy’, is a line with
>‘Excessive use artificial plusvalenze’ with an arrow
>pointing to ‘Immediate benefit’ and ‘Amortisation
>load’.
>
>
>
>The Fabio Paratici ‘black book’, written by Juventus
>director Federico Cherubini, that was found in a search of
>Juventus premises by prosecutors
>
>During the appeal hearing that ended in a 15-point penalty,
>Juventus’ legal team protested that Chine did not include
>Cherubini’s explanation for the word ‘artificial’ when
>raising the black book in his argument to reopen the case.
>
>As Cherubini sees it, a plusvalenza, in itself legitimate
>under accounting rules, becomes ‘artificial’ when it is
>linked to the sale of one of their own — a player who has
>come through the academy only to be cashed in on prematurely,
>all for profit, so as not to have to sacrifice the
>competitiveness of the first team in order to help support the
>objectives of the Finance Area, the club’s finance
>department.
>
>go-deeper
>GO DEEPER
>Fabio Paratici - the story of the man who has hired Nuno and
>is Tottenham's future
>As the head of Juventus’ men’s teams, which included the
>younger age groups, Juventus’ legal team argued that
>Cherubini’s concern was about the short-termism of cashing
>in on kids early when they had yet to reach their full
>potential and, by the same token, a “vastly superior”
>value.
>
>When TV show Report reached Paratici for comment regarding the
>accusatory hypothesis laid out by public prosecutors in Turin,
>he said: “Everyone has their own view of course, but as you
>say, now it’s really one-sided. There’s someone on the
>attack and someone else who can only defend and can’t pass
>the halfway line.”
>
>As CONSOB and public prosecutors dug deeper into Juventus’
>affairs, the focus turned to how the club accounted for paying
>its players during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic — when
>clubs lost fortunes as there either were no games to generate
>revenue or, later, paying fans could not attend them — and
>the effects this had on the balance sheet at the end of June
>in the years 2020, 2021 and 2022.
>
>Salary ‘manoeuvres’ and Chiellini’s WhatsApps
>
>Juventus’ wage bill of €262million was the highest in
>Serie A when the league went into what became months of
>lockdown on March 14, 2020.
>
>For a club already looking to contain losses, the pandemic
>came at the worst time. But by the end of the month, Juventus
>announced they had reached an agreement with its players and
>coach Maurizio Sarri to reduce their pay “equal to the
>monthly wages of March, April, May and June 2020”. It was
>publicly disclosed that this agreement would help the club
>save around €90million in the 2019-20 financial year.
>
>As the first club in Italy to come to such an arrangement,
>Juventus and the players were lauded for showing
>responsibility. But investigators allege the agreement
>disclosed to the public was not the same as the one struck in
>private and that the statement the club issued misled the
>stock market.
>
>When Prisma investigators interviewed the players, De Ligt and
>fellow defender Mattia De Sciglio handed over their phones,
>allowing the investigators to see what was written in the
>team’s WhatsApp group chat.
>
>It showed that Chiellini had sent a message outlining the
>structure of the agreement and told his team-mates “NOT TO
>SPEAK IN INTERVIEWS” about the specifics because of
>stock-market regulations. The players gave up one month’s
>salary and received guarantees that three months’ money
>would be repaid, even if they left the club in the meantime.
>
>
>
>The WhatsApp group chat of Juventus’ squad, including
>messages from Giorgio Chiellini, was publicised in the Italian
>media
>
>“What I remember,” forward Paulo Dybala told
>investigators, “was that a press release had gone out. A lot
>of people thought we had given up four months and nobody knew
>at the time that we would take three months but (be) paid
>later. Reading the press release, that’s not the agreement
>we reached. It says that we give up four months but it does
>not say that we already had the agreement on the three
>months’ pay, which was certain.”
>
>This was the first of two so-called “salary manoeuvres”
>— the deferral of wage payments to alleviate the strain on
>the club’s accounts. There was another the following season
>when the players were once again asked to help the club as a
>new COVID-19 variant, Omicron, swept across the world.
>Stadiums were still closed to fans as the season continued and
>in that context, in April and May 2021, Juventus began
>striking individual agreements for salary reductions with 17
>of its 24 first-team players worth €59.8million.
>
>Last season, considering the prospect of a gradual relaxation
>of COVID-19 restrictions (stadiums in Italy only began
>operating again at 100 per cent capacity in March 2022),
>Juventus and 11 of the 17 players who had accepted a reduction
>in their fixed salaries entered into agreements to increase
>their salaries for subsequent seasons, subject to each player
>remaining registered with the club for specific periods,
>through “loyalty bonuses” for a total of €30.7million.
>
>Unlike in the first salary manoeuvre, no price-sensitive press
>release was put out to the market.
>
>
>
>The €19m Ronaldo problem
>
>Throughout the pandemic, one player weighed more on the
>balance sheet than any other.
>
>Ronaldo’s annual cost was €86million, his salary before
>tax €57m, and while Juventus negotiated his sale to
>Manchester United at the end of the summer transfer window in
>2021, investigators tapping the phones of the club’s
>executives learned he was owed back-pay.
>
>After that window closed, Juventus’ legal counsel Cesare
>Gabasio was heard talking to Cherubini about an agreement
>“signed by Fabio (Paratici)”, a “famous document that
>shouldn’t theoretically exist” because if it came out the
>auditors would “jump down our throats”. It is alleged that
>this document is a recognition of the money Ronaldo was due
>— €19million.
>
>During the recent World Cup, it was reported that lawyers
>representing the Portuguese forward in Italy made a request to
>public prosecutors in Turin to see the documents gathered by
>the investigation and that they were ready to take legal
>action to ensure Juventus honoured the payment.
>
>Andrea Agnelli Juventus president
>Ronaldo poses with Agnelli to celebrate his 770th career goal
>in 2021 (Photo: Getty Images)
>In general, upon reviewing the salary manoeuvres, CONSOB
>contended Juventus should have recognised a liability in its
>2020 books and made a provision for liability relating to the
>loyalty bonuses in its 2021 results.
>
>Lost amid the shock caused by Agnelli’s resignation in
>November was the simultaneous announcement by the club that
>while the accounting treatment used in preparing those
>statements “falls within those allowed by applicable
>accounting principles”, a more prudent approach would be
>appropriate.
>
>It meant restating their accounts for the last three years.
>
>What next?
>
>Juventus intend to appeal before the Italian National Olympic
>Committee (CONI), the country’s sporting governing body, and
>believe they have strong grounds to reverse the outcome.
>However, the 15-point deduction cannot be reduced, only upheld
>or annulled. The club called the court of appeal’s written
>reasons for the sanction “predictable in terms of content”
>and claimed it was impaired “by obvious illogicalities,
>motivational deficiencies and unfounded in terms of law”.
>
>CONI’s ‘board of guarantors’ will not get into the merit
>of the sporting case, which limited itself to alleged
>artificially inflated cross-transactions. It will, instead,
>assess whether the FIGC’s federal prosecutor and the court
>of appeal followed procedure. Juventus believe a “clear
>injustice” has been done.
>
>Claudio Marchisio, the former Juventus midfielder, wasn’t
>alone in wondering why, in a case about cross-transactions,
>his old club were the only one punished when it takes two
>parties to do such deals. On that point, the court of appeal
>cited a lack of “specific demonstrative evidence” to
>“effectively support” claims against Sampdoria, Pro
>Vercelli, Genoa, Parma, Pisa, Empoli, Novara and Pescara. The
>interceptions, manuscripts (including the ‘Black Book of
>FP’) and other documentation gathered by the Turin public
>prosecutor’s office “do not directly involve these
>clubs”.
>
>In the meantime, the FIGC’s federal prosecutor has also
>asked for 40 more days to review the evidence after opening a
>separate case into salary manoeuvres, which could bring more
>sporting penalties.
>
>A committal hearing for the criminal trial is scheduled for
>the end of March, which is not how the club would have liked
>to celebrate the centenary of the Agnellis’ ownership of
>Juventus. Speaking on the anniversary of the death of his
>grandfather, Gianni Agnelli, Elkann denied rumours the club
>are up for sale. Elkann has no intention of letting go of one
>of “nonno’s strong passions”.
>
>Juventus have a new board — dubbed a ‘war cabinet’ —
>with a new chairman, Gianluca Ferrero, and chief executive,
>Maurizio Scanavino, who said he had been encouraged by the
>solidarity shown to the club after the 15-point penalty.
>
>Railing against the “unfairness” of the decision, he said
>the club had received support from the world of football and
>beyond. “It creates concern because today it can happen to
>Juventus, tomorrow it can happen to any other team,” he
>said.
>
>Sympathy has not been universal. Fiorentina owner Rocco
>Commisso seethed: “I hope someone wakes up. What I said a
>few years ago (to the Financial Times)… on the fact that
>football is sick, that there are teams playing without being
>compliant with the finances… we’ve seen what has
>happened… with Juventus.”
>
>In the meantime, the club reacted hastily to Cherubini’s
>16-month suspension by bringing Francesco Calvo, their former
>commercial director and then chief revenue officer, back into
>the organisation as head of Area Sport. It comes after the
>board asked the club’s internal departments, “particularly
>with regard to Area Sport”, to proceed with the
>“implementation and strengthening of accounting
>practices”.
>
>As for Agnelli, at the shareholders’ assembly to announce
>the new board on January 18, he reiterated the need to reform
>the European game. “There was an unsustainable system, a
>non-profitability for clubs, a vertical and horizontal
>polarisation, extremely risky mechanisms of access (to
>competitions) that caused disaffection among fans,” he
>said.
>
>The Super League idea was a response to that, to COVID-19, and
>its launch and collapse over 48 hours in April 2021 came in
>the same spring CONSOB and public prosecutors in Turin began
>taking a closer look at Juventus’ affairs.
>
>
>Graffiti by Italian artist Laika, featuring Juventus chairman
>Andrea Agnelli, near the Italian Football Federation in Rome
>(Photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images)
>Addressing shareholders for the last time, Agnelli revealed
>his intention to take a “step back”. He stood down from
>his positions on the board of EXOR and Stellantis (the car
>conglomerate comprising Fiat-Chrysler and the French PSA
>group). Both of them are listed companies. “I want to face
>the future as a blank page,” Agnelli said. “I can’t wait
>to start this new chapter of my life.”
>
>His last words as Juventus chairman were those from the club
>motto, “Fino alla Fine” — a willingness to fight
>“until the end” with backs against the wall and a ‘this
>ain’t over yet” mentality that distinguishes the team.
>
>go-deeper
>GO DEEPER
>The Juventus scandal is awful for the whole of Serie A. It
>could be crippling
>Juventus battle on and reached the Coppa Italia semi-finals in
>midweek. Winning the Europa League — they face French club
>Nantes this month in a two-leg play-off to see who advances to
>the last 16 — perhaps now represents their best chance of
>qualifying for next year’s Champions League. Juventus were
>still in the Serie A title race at the turn of the year, but
>the psychological impact on the team of that 15-point penalty
>cannot be underestimated.
>
>That much became clear in a 2-0 home loss to Monza in their
>most recent league game on January 29. It meant Juventus had
>taken one point from the last nine available and were 13th in
>the 20-team table, and the risk of a further penalty means
>nothing can be taken for granted.
>
>“We need to get the points for survival,” Allegri said,
>matter of factly. “This is the reality.”
>
>(Top photo, from left: Giorgio Chiellini, Andrea Agnelli,
>Fabio Paratici, Cristiano Ronaldo/design: Eamonn Dalton)
>
>What did you think of this story?
>Rate as MEH
>MEH
>Rate as SOLID
>SOLID
>Rate as AWESOME
>AWESOME
>
>James Horncastle covers Serie A for The Athletic. He joins
>from ESPN and is working on a book about Roberto Baggio.
>

Wouldn't be shocked to see Leão end up in England this summer. Maybe as the latest attempt to replace Mane's output in Liverpool, or Billionaire Todd's newest attempt to hit that Catherine Zeta-Jones through the FFP tripwires.

But how do you go from the darlings of Italy to such a mess so quickly? Pioli looks to be getting his Tuchel on.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2023/feb/06/milan-take-another-step-backwards-in-derby-as-pioli-scrambles-for-answers

Milan take another step backwards in derby as Pioli scrambles for answers

A tactical reshuffle failed to pay off for Milan’s manager, leaving recent calls, not least regarding Rafael Leão, open to question

At the southern end of San Siro, Milan’s Ultras did their best to set a tone. “The champions of Italy welcome the champions of Arabia,” read the banner hung from the dizzyingly vertical second tier, reminding Inter counterparts at the far end that a Supercoppa victory in Riyadh could never mean as much as a scudetto.

There was just one problem: nobody has seen Milan’s title-winning side since before the World Cup. The team who have taken the pitch in 2023 are the palest of imitations, familiar faces playing unrecognisable football. They had won one out of seven games this calendar year and lost the past three by a combined score of 12-2.

In the lead-up to the derby, Stefano Pioli sequestered his squad for a behind-closed-doors training retreat. He needed to shake things up, though not everyone may have shared his conviction that sidelining his best player was the way to do so.

Rafael Leão was Serie A’s player of the year last season and has been Milan’s top scorer and leading assist provider in this campaign. Just like his teammates, he had struggled to find his best form in 2023, but he still bagged a goal in the only win of the year, away to Salernitana, and another in the 2-2 draw at Lecce.

Pioli had already dropped Leão to the bench for the preceding game, which ended in a 5-2 home defeat to Sassuolo. Instead of restoring him to the starting XI against Inter, as most expected, the manager responded by abandoning the 4-2-3-1 formation that carried them to first place last season.

On paper, Sunday’s team looked like a 3-5-2. In practice, with wing-backs Davide Calabria and Theo Hernández showing little adventure, Milan had a five-man defence. A team whose winning identity under Pioli had been built on possession football and a high press chose to approach the derby in an unfamiliar low block.

The result, in the first half, was a non-contest. Inter held the ball for almost three-quarters of the time it was in play, taking nine shots to Milan’s zero. They were not especially creative, but did not need to be, breaking the deadlock with a Lautaro Martínez header from a corner in the 34th minute.

It was not just Milan’s new formation holding them back, but also the personnel. Instead of Leão, Pioli started Divock Origi up front alongside Olivier Giroud. Neither player had the pace to unsettle Inter’s defence, leaving Milan with no threat on the counter.

Only in the second half, as Pioli gradually adjusted his team back into a more familiar shape, did Milan show signs of life. Brahim Díaz came on for Junior Messias, Alexis Saelemaekers for Calabria and Leão for Origi. It was the Portuguese who created their best chance at an equaliser, playing Giroud through on goal in the 75th minute.

It felt like one of those moments written in the stars. Almost exactly one year ago, at almost exactly the same moment of the derby, Giroud rescued Milan’s title bid. They were a goal down back then, too, and had dropped five points in the preceding two games, but Giroud scored twice in three minutes to set them on course for the title.

There would be no repeat on Sunday. Giroud got his touch all wrong and Milan finished without a single attempt on target. Inter won 1-0 and the margin could have been wider, with Lautaro and Romelu Lukaku having goals disallowed late on.

Pioli struck a defiant tone, insisting he would choose the same team again. His assertion Milan needed to change something to stop conceding so many goals – 19 in seven games in all competitions in 2023 – rang true, but a team that creates no chances at the other end is unlikely to go very far either.

How did we reach this point? Among the most celebrated aspects of Milan’s title win was that they had achieved it with one of the youngest squads in Serie A, suggesting an opportunity to build even further. Napoli’s scintillating form this season has left all other teams in the dust, but Milan ended 2022 in second place with a solid 33 points from 15 games.

With hindsight, it is easy to say the club did not do enough to build on last season’s success. A thin squad has been stretched by a combination of injuries – starting goalkeeper Mike Maignan has made seven league appearances – and departures such as Franck Kessié’s move to Barcelona.

None of the players brought in last summer have made a positive impact. Charles De Ketelaere, Malick Thiaw, Aster Vranckx and Divock Origi have started 13 games between them. The first three of those are 21, 21 and 20 years old respectively and may have bright futures, but that will be scant consolation for a team that is slipping out of the Champions League places.

Defeat on Sunday left Milan joint-fourth, level on points with Lazio and Atalanta, pending the Rome club’s game away to Verona on Monday night. As Pioli acknowledged on Sunday, missing out on Europe’s top club competition would be very bad news indeed.

His accompanying statement that he plans to persist with the new back three may not encourage supporters. None of Milan’s defenders have avoided high-profile mistakes in recent weeks but Fikayo Tomori’s hip injury means such a formation would certainly bring more starts for the struggling Matteo Gabbia.

The most pressing question for many, though, will revolve around Leão. Pioli defended his team selection against Inter by saying that he wanted to play with a pair of closely connected centre-forwards and that Leão was not suited to such a role. It is hard to shake a sense of something deeper going on.

Leão’s contract expires in 2024, and optimism for a new deal has faded with reported disagreements over the release clause. Even in happier times, Pioli had gently accused the player of failing to tap into all of his potential, suggesting more application could take him to new heights. Are the two not be seeing eye to eye?

One way or another, the pressure is on to find answers quickly. “Pioli’s on fire,” was the chant as he led Milan to glory in the spring. But as those supporters in the Curva Sud mocked their rivals’ Supercoppa success, a pair of Inter fans responded by raising up a smaller banner at the far end. “Pioli is on ferie,” it read – “on his hols” – goading the manager with the possibility that such poor form could finish in enforced break.

is a lot. They now have zero defenders and avg 3pt shooting.

Paul/booker/warren/KD/Ayton.


Bench: Payne,Lee,Craig?

Yuck

Now look at this reply. Back up thread. Now at this reply. You cretin.

You don’t have to reply to everything.

It clearly was a mistake.

You enjoy your day.

Everything's cool and sweet when you do it but god forbid someone call you on your shit.

There is a difference between accidentally making a short post and constantly flooding
a thread with enormously long posts just to do it.

WTF is wrong with you, dude?

All jokes and snark aside. You can’t be this focking stupid.

Put down the silly shit for one minute.

and he's right. youre being a bitch. "oh shit my bad" is the appropriate response, not your histrionic weirdo defensiveness

Sharing their articles is a part of discussing world football- especially the top European leagues, which tends to be what we're about in this post. If anything, YOU fucked up the thread by complaining about how other people are posting. And then you come in here with some random NBA chat, don't catch the edit window and you have the GALL to be salty about it?

Get right the fuck out of here. Log off, go touch grass and never come back.

His club sits top of the league, and he bagged all 4 goals in the game.

England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Middle East….He has excelled in 5 different
leagues spanning 2 decades.

Hahahahaha

>His club sits top of the league, and he bagged all 4 goals in
>the game.
>
>England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Middle East….He has
>excelled in 5 different
>leagues spanning 2 decades.
>
>

You get ignored in the NBA threads and you just started posting here
messing up the soccer threads.

These threads were always civilized with friendly banter before you got here….

everyone here has a history of talking about their teams and playfully making fun
of other teams.

Go look at the archives. YOU ARE NOT IN THEM.

So continue with your actions, while others post meaningfully.

You will not get another response from me.

friendly banter but for guru? you're the one constant in piss wars on the futbol posts.

i would rather scroll through 100 swipes than listen to you blame others for supposedly messing up threads that they didn't mess up.

-----------
you think we playing chess, but i'm playing mad-making. Basaglia

I remember making a friendly post about Chelsea getting Jules Kounde, after
an agreement had been reached.

Barca intercepted the deal, which is fine.

But you came at me on some infantile shit talking about keep Barca player’s name
out your mouth, and other silly ass posting and piss stuff that you did. It’s in
the archives. You remember that?

You’re a hypocrite, because you do the same shit.

You want to look at long 50 page posts ( that never used to happen), then
go right ahead….but don’t sit up here and pretend that you don’t start mad shit talking,
when history says otherwise.

So stop the lying, and the dumb shit.

Run along , don’t beat any women in your way out

he goes after the season is over.

PSG is rumored, as well as Brasil who he turned down in the past. I wonder if Todd will
make an offer if Potter continues to coach horribly, but Pep has a personality that’s
just as strong as Tuchel’s, so I can see him being intimidated by that and staying away.

to Felix. That one/two was glorious…looked like Fabregas to
Hazard. Great goal.

We can’t afford a draw though…

Emerson scored against us…former players have been getting the best of us.

Chelsea should have been awarded a penalty

Defender went to the ground for no reason and stopped the ball with his
hand.

definite handball late in the game. somehow the ref missed it and VAR didnt even look at it. this league needs a whole new set of refs

And how does VAR not look at it?

And if they did look at it, and I’m pretty sure they did, how do they
not give the penalty?

and when it happened, i expected the next part of the video to be the PK, but instead it was the few seconds before the final whistle which they always show. i was like "ok?" and i mean, i hate Chelsea, but fair is fair.

super weird.

The passing, the possession, everything was brilliant up until the final
third. We need a striker badly!

I don’t understand why Auba can’t get a start. Havertz can’t finish, so might as well see
what Auba can do. I don’t understand why Potter refuses to play him.

Getting a draw sucks, we should have won. Ref missed a penalty

We could easily be sitting in the top 4 with a proper striker….

MOTM: Enzo

Great games by RLC, Reece, Felix and Chilwell as well as the backline
in general.

Super fun experience , I found a new team to cheer for and to fill these posts with long swipes about FULHAM FC much to the chagrin of the resident OKsports shithead

Fulham supporters are die hard but Nottingham Forrest was on another level with their singing and chanting


They played some beautiful football and took home a 2 nil win

Check out this strike from Willian… top bins

https://imgur.com/a/tNgnmN4

And holding a banner celebrating a lawyer. Man gtfo.

>And holding a banner celebrating a lawyer. Man gtfo.

Wednesday night will be entertaining AF for the neutral

played 87 minutes and it seems as tho hes doing a pretty good job

how odd

https://twitter.com/business/status/1625129402324471810?s=46&t=JXWHEJv62AiEEQ7mKGpKTQ

The full might of Manchester United is about to be unleashed. Mbappe coming to the Theater of Dreams

to own a club this big feels "good" so as long as they don't play around with the good things going, and provide death star spending?

i guess i'll take it, lol.

financial might instead of being handcuffed w/ leech owners and debt payments. i see nothing wrong w/ it

It doesn’t have the same spirit and energy like years past. Both teams
are in bad form, with Everton sitting in the basement. I’m sure Liverpool fans
would like to add to Everton’s misery, and see them get relegated. Everton is fighting
for their future, so each game is critical.

There were several games over the weekend that ended in a draw. I would not be
surprised if this game ends that way.

due to making massive officiating blunders which cost Chelsea and
Arsenal points.

https://worldsoccertalk.com/amp/news/premier-league-referees-to-meet-after-weekend-of-var-mistakes-20230213-WST-419626.html

This is after the fact, and it doesn’t help Chelsea or Arsenal one bit.
If you really want to make a change, change the results.

What’s the purpose of VAR if the system is being improperly used
by the refs?

Check his bank account ( sort of joking).

That bottom six is stupidly tight, and Marsch has to be an upgrade on Nathan Jones, but they have some of the same problems that Leeds had leading to Marsch getting the sack- no identifiable goal scorer (at least for Leeds while Bamford was out), a lackluster backline - though Marsch had presumably bought well to address those issues with Wober and Rutter, while Southampton did not.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/feb/14/jesse-marsch-southampton-manager-leeds

can’t front, but no goal. Offside

The props they come up with are amazing.

Anyway, up the Blues!

KTBFFH!

Let’s go

That’s a tap in!

We have no finishers…great build up.

And Havertz as a striker needs to be put to bed. He isn’t a
9

You miss a second tap?

You’re too talented for that.

We should be up 0-2

Oh well

You guys are falling fast!

City top of the table on 10 pt GD!

It was all good a month ago.

God damn he got flamed. That was Hazard like.

That’s what happens when you can’t finish on one end, and get hit with the counter.

100 million dollar players should not get killed like that ..he isn’t worth 100 million

Fock!

And Kepa’s weak ass had a chance to stop it as we’ll be committed
way too early ..80 million dollar keeper.

We are by far the better team on the pitch, but the score doesn’t reflect that.

Why are we so unlucky today?

That should have been a goal.. focker saved it off the line

We should have 3 goals now

and then the forward backflip!

Adeyemi’s goal …I’ve watched it over and over.

Now that’s a focking striker!

Dude just got to BVB…and now the whole world is going to come for him off
that score ….he is about to get paid.

Germany got another baller on their hands

Shit drives me mad that Auba can’t get any time…dude playing with the
reserves or something like that. He is just on the shelf..makes zero sense

But Ziyech, Cucurella and Havertz can run around doing nothing all day long


Bro, what’s going at Arsenal?

Kounde out there scoring for the other squad…that hijack was a blessing
in disguise.

casemiro is amazing but he isn't a controller.
bruno will always play timebomb ball.
rashford is always on go mode

when he was healthy eriksen tried but he didnt have the legs to do it deep in games.

lol.

good game tho.

Christian Atsu was misidentified last week as being rescued and rushed to the
hospital. It has not been discovered that his body was found dead underneath
earthquake rubble.

https://www.espn.com/soccer/hatayspor/story/4880197/christian-atsu-found-dead-under-rubble-in-turkey-earthquakes.

Damn. RIP

* It has now*

Happy for him.

What a strike.

LolVillaLol

(yes i’m still bitter)

Insane that Ramsdale puts it onto the bar at one end and then the bar puts it onto emi at the other.

Potter might have to go

in the league.

But Tuchel had to go?

We are shit.

Need Partey and Jesus back quick though. Or two most important players with Saka.

>Need Partey and Jesus back quick though. Or two most
>important players with Saka.

we were playing like hot ass the first 30 but now we are cooking.

https://dubz.co/c/qh97hr

MU is actually good.

Maybe they will finally win something after 13 years …and 1 trophy.

The “disgrace game “ now makes sense…those refs were paid to cheat
Chelsea!

Fock Barca and I hope they get banned from futbol.

And stripped them of their 2009 CL title

Crazy game thus far

very entertaining game

like, some of the worst you'll see.

crazy.

Wow

i forgot they came back from halftime, went to look at the score...and, yeah.

if you're a Liverpool fan, don't look.

had to work during the day, so no access to watch the game and I can’t watch at work.

Missed a heater. Real Madrid shredded them reds.

Wonder if Smutboy is somewhere under his comforter with
a heating pad on trying to get over the pain.

Not a single win in the leg of 16?

SPENDERE E SPANDERE eppure ancora

I live in England now so watching them fail on the champions league stage brings a smile to my face


https://theathletic.com/4242850/2023/02/23/romelu-lukaku-inter-milan-chelsea/

Serie A
Romelu Lukaku has given Inter Milan little bang for their buck – could he return to Chelsea?

By James Horncastle

On the roof of Inter’s headquarters in Milan’s regenerated Porta Nuova district, the club’s chairman, metaverse fashionista, Steven Zhang opened TikTok and announced Romelu Lukaku’s improbable return less than a year after his €115million sale to Chelsea.

“The big boss is back again,” Zhang excitedly declared. It was like deja vu. “Remember three years ago when we were here?” Lukaku smiled, giving a thumbs up. “It was like yesterday,” Zhang said, suddenly at a loss for words. “We’re going to score lots of goals this year,” he hoped. Lukaku insisted: “That’s what I’m here for,”

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“You promise?” Zhang wagered, holding out his hand for Lukaku to shake on it.

Lukaku scored 64 times in 95 appearances in his first spell at Inter (2019-2021). He left as the league’s MVP. The assumption was Lukaku would pick up where he left off and he did. Within minutes of making his second Serie A debut for Inter, Lukaku scored in Lecce and all the forecasts were sunny in their optimism. Inter had relinquished their title — the one Lukaku won — on the final day of the season in May. Who would stop them reclaiming it from AC Milan now Rom was in town again? The King of Milan seemed poised to take back his crown and make Inter rule again.

If you tuned into their round-of-16 tie against Porto in the Champions League at San Siro, you could be forgiven for thinking the reign has been uninterrupted. Lukaku was the matchwinner, hitting the post before careening the only goal of the game past Diogo Costa on the rebound. It was a huge goal for him and not just because it gives Inter a strong chance of reaching the Champions League quarter-finals for the first time in 12 years. The significance it assumed came down to the past six months not going as planned for Lukaku.


In Serie A, he has not found the back of the net from open play since the opening weekend of the season and he started the Porto game on the bench. His famous LuLa duet with Lautaro Martinez has not had much opportunity to flourish and, once the junior partner in that tandem, Martinez, a world champion, is now the player Inter fans look to most for big moments.

In Italy more broadly, the striker everyone talks about is Victor Osimhen, who stands miles out in front at the top of the scoring charts while his team Napoli are 15 points clear of Inter at the top of the table and in a league of their own.

Napoli, the anti-Italian football team on a glorious ride under Spalletti
Pundits have even gone so far as to wonder whether Inter would have been better off signing Paulo Dybala on a free transfer from rivals Juventus last summer rather than taking back Lukaku. Talks were advanced enough and only broke off when emotion drove through Lukaku’s loan. Inter, still ailing from the squeeze on owner Suning’s core business and the pandemic, could not afford to take on both players’ wages simultaneously.

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Even at a discount on his Chelsea salary, Lukaku is Serie A’s highest-paid footballer and Inter have got surprisingly little bang for their buck on the combined €20million it is costing to rent the player from Stamford Bridge.

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GO DEEPER
The players our experts can't wait to watch in the Champions League last 16
“Romelu loves Inter,” Inter’s chief executive Beppe Marotta said outside the club’s Christmas party. But for love nor money, is it enough? Cash is what Inter have been short of these past couple of years and, as with the €30million price paid for Joaquin Correa, they cannot afford to waste it. “He knows full well that he’s in our debt,” Marotta’s deputy, Pier Ausilio, said this week.

A penalty in the 3-1 win against Udinese at the weekend was a step towards repaying it (although Lukaku got a little lucky after seeing his first effort saved by Marco Silvestri only for the referee to order a retake upon catching Adam Masina encroaching in the area).


At least he is starting regularly in Serie A again.

Lukaku snapped a microtendon in his flexor over the autumn, an injury he considers the worst he has suffered in 13 years. The World Cup in November, probably the 29-year-old’s last for Belgium, meant he could not afford take any chances and the manner in which his country were eliminated not to mention his miss against Croatia weighed heavy.

Romelu Lukaku
Lukaku scored 64 times in 95 appearances in his first spell at Inter (Photo: MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images)
As comebacks go in Serie A this season arguably only Paul Pogba’s second spell at Juventus has been more underwhelming. Lukaku has been limited to 571 minutes in the league — which is still 571 minutes more than Pogba.

It is a stark contrast to his first spell when Antonio Conte, his fitness coach Antonio Pintus and nutritionist Matteo Pincella were able to transform his body and get the best out of Lukaku. Alas, Conte is now at Tottenham and Pintus back at Real Madrid.

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“If you come over to my house, it looks like a hospital,” Lukaku told Sky Italia, full of state-of-the-art machines to help him recover as soon as possible. But the contraption in need of most attention is the clock. After missing nearly half of Inter’s league games, time is running out for Lukaku.

“We expect big things from him,” Marotta said. Otherwise, keeping him is hard to justify. Last night’s goal against Porto could represent a turning point. Lukaku looked sharp when he came on, teeing up Martinez with a good chance before the winning goal arrived.

But even if he suddenly hits form and scores in every game from now to the end of the season, does his future lie at Inter beyond June?

Inter cut their losses from €245.6million to €140million last year. But they still have a €407m bond to service and, more pressingly, a €292m loan from Oaktree Capital Management with 12 per cent annual interest to pay off in 2024.


Inter Milan: Is it too much to ask for one normal day?
The departure of Ivan Perisic last summer and Milan Skriniar this coming June hurt as both ran down their contracts and left or will leave for nothing. Throw in the problems Inter have had with front-of-shirt sponsor DigitalBits and love alone won’t keep Lukaku. The strict financial fair play settlement agreement imposed by UEFA and the prospect of Serie A’s next domestic TV deal from 2024 shrinking gives Inter even less room for manoeuvre.

“At times (the FFP parameters) impede us from letting our imagination loose and working as all sporting directors would like,” Ausilio said, “which is going out and signing the best players in the world.”

Only a handful of peers can do that now and many of them operate in the Premier League. “We can’t do what some of our competitors in England are doing,” Ausilio noted. “It’s enough to see what the ‘smaller’ clubs are doing. They spent €100m in the last window. We can’t do that but it doesn’t mean we can’t build a competitive team.” Lukaku is still worth around €70million on Chelsea books and financial practicalities mean Inter will balk at stumping up that sort of money for him, especially considering his age and recent injury history. Even rolling the loan over for another year looks a challenge.

“I want to stay here and do good,” Lukaku said. “I hope to do well, give my all, then we’ll talk to Chelsea and hopefully find a solution.” What that is remains to be seen. Thomas Tuchel is no longer coach of Chelsea and the team are in desperate need of a striker. Nothing is apparently off the table, not even a return to Stamford Bridge although building bridges with the fanbase there may be harder than it has been at San Siro.

Initially indifferent, the Curva Nord appreciated Lukaku’s mea culpa celebration after a goal in the Champions League against Viktoria Plzen in October. Todd Boehly granted Lukaku his wish to move back to Inter last summer, listening to him and his representatives after Belgium’s Nations League game against the Netherlands. But what if, as seems likely, he is returned to sender? Lukaku has, after all, now scored more goals (two) in February than Chelsea (one).

“Damn, look how in shape I am,” he joked, without realising he was on air after Wednesday’s game. Inter now hope Lukaku can stay fit until the end of the season and that more is to come from him. The question is: for how long?

(Photo: MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images)

James Horncastle covers Serie A for The Athletic. He joins from ESPN and is working on a book about Roberto Baggio.
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The athletic of course

Napoli, the anti-Italian football team on a glorious ride under Spalletti

napoli-football
By James Horncastle
Feb 22, 2023


It was the night before Christmas. At least that was how Luciano Spalletti felt before Napoli played Eintracht Frankfurt on Tuesday night. “It’s like when you leave some milk and biscuits out for Santa’s reindeer for when they pass by,” he said. “Playing a Champions League game is a celebration.”

One that Napoli glumly missed for two years until Spalletti’s appointment. How quickly has that absence been forgotten now everyone’s tipping them to win the thing? On the sidelines at Deutsche Bank Park, Cristiano Giuntoli, the sporting director who put together the team Pep Guardiola promised to watch last night, claimed to see “some tense faces” among the players he signed. “But it’s normal,” he said. “Some of them are almost making their debut (in the knock-out stages).”

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Nobody knew how they’d react. After all, Cremonese, the only winless team in Europe’s top five leagues, knocked Napoli out of the Coppa Italia. Spalletti heavily rotated his team that night and not even the big guns could turn it around in 11 v 10 in extra time.

Frankfurt represented an altogether different proposition. The reigning Europa League champions have made a habit of going far in UEFA competitions over the last four years, as Spalletti knows only too well. Frankfurt eliminated his Inter Milan side at this stage of the Europa League in 2019 and they have a formidable reputation in knockout ties. Far more experience than Napoli who, as their captain Giovanni Di Lorenzo underlined, “have never been in the quarter-finals” of the Champions League.

Nevertheless, Giuntoli trusted in his players. “It’s the group that’s making the difference,” he said. “No one gets jealous. We’ve got a load of starters, hardly any reserves.” Napoli played hungrier than a herd of reindeer pulling Santa Spalletti’s sleigh in the hope of some milk and biscuits. Every game brings Napoli fans and football lovers like Pep, who already used to tune in to their fixtures when Maurizio Sarri was in charge, an overflowing sack of presents.

“Napoli play anti-Italian football,” Frankfurt head coach Oliver Glasner said. “They always have great intensity. Without the ball they play aggressively, pressing very high with a very intense counter-pressing. They are very different from other Italian teams.” And yet Spalletti has been proposing these ideas for a quarter of a century, often to spectacular effect. Beyond the granular, what distinguishes this Napoli team though is a trait associated with the proper football man of yesteryear: Desire.

spalletti-napoli
Spalletti watches his team from the sidelines last night (Photo: DANIEL ROLAND/AFP via Getty Images)
It has been evident for weeks. Napoli’s fixture list has, on paper, looked easy of late. Games against Spezia, Cremonese and Sassuolo could have been taken lightly. The temptation to rotate or relax must have been great considering the 15-point gap between the league leaders and the rest in Serie A. But Napoli have been relentless and that doesn’t just mean by winning and scoring plenty of goals. It’s going full pelt in every game.

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“They fielded their strongest team,” Sassuolo’s head coach Alessio Dionisi said, incredulously on Friday. It’s seeing what Spalletti calls comportamenti giusti — the right behaviour. At Roma, the Tuscan trainer once used ‘Momo’ Salah as an example, flashing up a clip of him making a recovery run to stop an opponent’s attack. “This is crazy in its beauty in my opinion,” Spalletti said.

Moments like these leap out of Napoli games. It’s Hirving Lozano, the diminutive winger, tracking back against Cremonese and making a challenge in his own penalty area. The spot kick Khvicha Kvaratskhelia missed at 0-0 in Frankfurt came about after the Mexican hit the post and Victor Osimhen refused to give up on the ball. He chased down Frankfurt centre-back Evan Ndicka who probably thought the Serie A top scorer was on his haunches, head in his hands cursing Lozano’s luck. Instead, he bore down on the unaware Ndicka who swung out a leg to make a clearance, missed the ball and hit Osimhen.


Minutes later, Stanislav Lobotka, Napoli’s agile playmaker, pounced on a loose pass from Mario Gotze and released Lozano who whipped in a cross to the only place he could put it. Osimhen hurtled towards it like a runaway train travelling so fast, he followed the ball into the net and scored for a sixth consecutive game.

Fame, as the Italians say. Hunger, not Hollywood.

Osimhen’s frustration at being substituted after 84 minutes was seized upon by Fabio Capello in the Sky Italia studio as another great sign. “For a coach, these things…” he drifted off in wonder. Determination typified Osimhen’s performance, the Nigerian perhaps eager to prove a point in Germany, having, in the past been prematurely written off by Wolfsburg.

It also found personification in Di Lorenzo, the skipper, who played 185 games in the lower divisions and was without a club as recently as six years ago when Matera went bust in Italy’s third tier. “I’ve got to say it’s a bit odd,” he admitted after scoring his second goal in the Champions League this season. This was some night for Napoli, the best in Germany since Diego Maradona led the club to their only European trophy, the 1989 UEFA Cup against Stuttgart.

Kvaratskhelia had a poor game by his standards and still finished with a Guti-esque back-heel assist, his 13th of the campaign. “He isn’t on the market,” Giuntoli said. “I don’t know how much he could be worth. Time will tell. We’re very happy with him. He’s a great player. We’re holding on to him.”


The attention Frankfurt paid the Georgian left Lozano open on the other flank and he was arguably Napoli’s man of the match, however, it was hard to choose between him, Osimhen, Andre-Frank Anguissa and the impeccable Kim Min-jae.

After a fast start in which Frankfurt caused Napoli problems in the right half-space, Glasner encountered the same dilemma as Dionisi in Reggio Emilia on Friday. “We tried to push up one of the three midfielders, often Matheus Henrique and sometimes Maxime Lopez, to give (Gregoire) Defrel a hand. The difficulty they create for you is that if they don’t play out with a short-passing game, they go long and prepare pre-emptive strikes on the opposite side. Then they have the individual quality to win many duels. We had to be good both in the short and the long.”

Such are the standards Napoli have set that Capello spent most of his post-match analysis criticising Napoli for failing to put the tie to bed, particularly after Randal Kolo Muani’s red card. “The team managed the game well,” Spalletti politely countered. “We had 70 per cent possession in their half.” Kolo Muani will be suspended for the second leg on March 15.

In some respects, it feels like Christmas has come early for Napoli.

(Top Photo: Christian Kaspar-Bartke/Getty Images)

James Horncastle covers Serie A for The Athletic. He joins from ESPN and is working on a book about Roberto Baggio.

Got Bounced in Europa!

Love it.

light work.

They triggered Tuchel's self-destruct mechanism in record time and now Potter is going to end up mumbling to himself in a corner.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/feb/24/graham-potter-chelsea-mental-health-family

Graham Potter reveals Chelsea job’s toll on his mental health and family life
Manager says fans entitled to be upset after Southampton loss
He feels ‘sub-optimal pre-season’ a factor in poor results

Graham Potter has revealed that his family life, personality and mental health have suffered because of the criticism he has received since becoming Chelsea’s head coach.

There was a searing honesty to Potter as he opened up on the challenges he has faced since replacing Thomas Tuchel last September. The former Brighton manager faced a furious backlash from the crowd after Chelsea’s demoralising 1-0 defeat at home by Southampton last weekend and he needs a strong response when his team, who are 10th despite spending heavily on signings, visit Tottenham on Sunday.

“Pressure is a two way thing, isn’t it?” Potter said. “Four months ago was I under pressure? I don’t know. But obviously with the results the way they are now you accept it absolutely. It’s fascinating to see the process play itself out. I’ve sat here for four months answering questions about pressure. Do I have time? Have I spoken to the owners?

“The same every week. That’s just part of life at Chelsea. And then you have to accept the fact that when the results are like they are, you have to accept criticism. That should come and that’s fair. The mood in here has always been relatively positive and respectful. But that’s not to say it’s easy at all. Your family life suffers, your mental life suffers, your personality … it’s hard. But you’re not really bothered, eh? It’s just how it is.”

Chelsea have won two of their past 14 league games and Potter is in danger of losing the fans. “Supporters, rightly so, are upset because we lost at home to Southampton,” he said. “Supporters care and when they are upset, they let their feelings be known and we expect that.

“I’ve had a lot of support from the supporters as well and while everyone would agree we’re not happy with the current situation and position, there are a lot of people who recognise where we’re at, what’s happened, and what the challenges have been for us. The solution is that we have to win matches.

“If you are Chelsea and lose 1-0 at home to Southampton, who are bottom of the league, then you expect fans to voice their criticism. Then it’s about how we analyse the situation we’re in now. Results haven’t been good enough, defeat at home to Southampton isn’t good enough, and you’re entitled to be angry. My response is there are contributing factors to that result as well.”

Potter said that Chelsea’s unsatisfactory pre-season tour of the US had contributed to their problems. The atmosphere under Tuchel was not good during the trip.

“My quote a few weeks ago was that this is probably the toughest job in football, and there are a lot of factors for that,” Potter said. “There was a sub-optimal pre-season – and speaking to a few of the experienced guys, they thought it was the worst pre-season they’ve had for different reasons. That isn’t to blame anybody for the reasons. It’s just that it happened.”

It has been discovered that there was match fixing going on
during the Copa Del Rey, and then you have the huge reveal
of Barcelona paying off refs to fix games.

All of Barca’s titles are tainted!…all of them!

What a fraud of a club…

BS VAR calls aside, this should have been 3-0 walk in the park. But points are points at this point.

Jesus practicing!! Liked having jorginio, but Partey time now that he's healthy, gap is still meaningful, even if much better than Elneny.

The full 11 is scary once we get back with the stronger bench we've built.

BS VAR calls aside, this should have been 3-0 walk in the park. But points are points at this point.

Jesus practicing!! Liked having jorginio, but Partey time now that he's healthy, gap is still meaningful, even if much better than Elneny.

The full 11 is scary once we get back with the stronger bench we've built.

To set up a goal for an academy kid on the opposition. LOLOLOL.

*chefs kiss*

Ollie Watkins has scored more goals (5) for Villa in the last five PL games than Chelsea have scored in all competitions in 2023 (4).

some dudes are just small club guys and he is one of them. Big moyes vibes this team has no ideas and he has no gravitas

Enzo blindly lobbing the ball back out to the edge of his own penalty area seems like a U17 thing to do

>some dudes are just small club guys and he is one of them.
>Big moyes vibes this team has no ideas and he has no gravitas

any Russian association.

So you using that name is highly outdated and inapplicable.

Your insult game is far from being current.

newcastle wouldnt have scored if they had all day. magnificent defensive performance

GLORY GLORY MAN UNITED!!!

Even if it is an English muffin trophy…..at least it is something.

went from Burnley to winning a cup in a couple months.

To bin Ronaldo and loan in a guy that couldn't get a sniff at Burnley in a dogfight took courage, but ten Hag had to know that Weghorst would play his heart out and do all the things that EtH needs in that system.

it'd be nice if he could get on the scoresheet a bit more but our style isn't SUPER suited to him, but as a holding forward he's been doing fucking outstanding and unlocking the game for everyone else.

and, and i think this is more natural for guys who don't come from big big teams and pedigrees, etc, he works really hard which is one of the biggest things we've been lacking for so long just simple work ethic.

Excellent work from Jonathan Liew. The parallel with Pep waving away similar abuse toward Roberto Carlos is heartbreaking just for how little things have changed.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2023/feb/28/vinicius-junior-real-madrid-racism-fans-la-liga

Vinícius Júnior is essentially being hunted and hounded for sport
Jonathan Liew

The racist abuse aimed at the Real Madrid striker is becoming routine and there seems to be little appetite to drive change

In 1997, Roberto Carlos was racially abused while playing his first clásico for Real Madrid. Barcelona fans made monkey chants every time he touched the ball, held up racist banners and even scratched the word “monkey” on his car as a special treat for him to find later.

No charges or punishments were issued and if, after complaining publicly, Carlos was hoping for a little professional solidarity at this most harrowing of moments, he was out of luck. “This man talks a lot, he talks too much, he doesn’t know our fans and he hasn’t been here for long enough to justify these things,” Barcelona’s central midfielder retorted that day, a Spain international by the name of Pep Guardiola.

It would be nice to imagine we have made some progress in the intervening quarter-century: that black footballers would be able to go about their business in one of the world’s biggest leagues without having to negotiate the horrific obstacle course of racism, that the game itself would not be quite so eager to play it down. And yet there are times, when watching the case of Vinícius Júnior, when you begin to wonder.

It’s hard to pinpoint when Vinícius started being targeted by opposition fans for abuse. There were some monkey chants at Mallorca’s Son Moix stadium this month, a few shouts from the Osasuna end during the minute’s silence for the Turkey and Syria earthquake, the effigy hung from a motorway bridge near Real’s training ground last month, bedecked in the red and white of Atlético Madrid.

But this has been going on for more than a year, a grisly gauntlet of othering and dehumanisation that seems to have taken on a horrific performative quality. Somehow, the longer it continues, the more routine it becomes, the more and less shocking it becomes. You sense Carlo Ancelotti’s heart breaking a little more every time he has to talk about it. And so most weekends Vinícius simply sighs, laces up his boots and braces himself for what comes next.

While the individual incidents continue to gain coverage in the Spanish media, there seems to be precious little sense of the broader picture, precious little of the anger and urgency and introspection that could drive change. One of the world’s greatest footballers is essentially being sacrificed on a weekly basis, hunted and hounded for sport.

Who, exactly, do we see about this? Where are the points deductions, the stadium bans, the bone‑shattering fines? Where are Uefa and Fifa, who are quite happy to mine Vinícius’s talent to promote their own competitions but have had nothing to say about this?

There have been the usual beige statements, the usual buck-passing, the usual equivocation. La Liga argues it is powerless to enforce sporting sanctions and instead refers all cases to the justice system, which has proven itself a wholly inadequate arbiter. After Atlético fans were filmed chanting “Vinícius, you are a monkey” at a fixture against Real in September, the Madrid prosecutor’s office declined to bring any charges, arguing the chanting had been “disrespectful” but lasted only a few seconds and needed to be seen in the context of the “fierce rivalry” between the clubs.

For large parts of Spanish society, this remains a curiously prevalent mindset: that racist abuse is somehow mitigated by its sporting context or is just a particularly impolite form of booing. You will still see the view expressed that opposition fans are simply trying to gain a competitive edge by trying to rile Vinícius into a reaction, which they occasionally get. (Racism: the original marginal gain.)

Adjacent to this is the idea that Vinícius provokes these strong feelings through his showboating, his behaviour on the pitch, his dancing celebrations. In September a guest on the popular television show El Chiringuito de Jugones said, with either maximum irony or none at all, that Vinícius should “stop playing the monkey”.

Atlético’s condemnation of their own fans came with a caveat that it was “the responsibility of everyone” to ensure harmonious relations between the two clubs. On television and radio shows, coverage of Vinícius’s behaviour is often given as much attention than the abuse he receives, as if these were two equal sides of an argument, as if the basic humanity of Vinícius were no more than a phone-in debate.

This is, in many ways, a textbook example of how the victims of racism are often gaslit: abused and then made to accept complicity in their own abuse. There has been some idle speculation – because no football story really exists unless it has a transfer angle – that Vinícius may tire of his treatment and leave La Liga. But to isolate this as a purely Spanish disease is to misunderstand the nature of the problem. Besides, given the frequent online abuse of prominent black Premier League players, there seems little point in holding England as any kind of a gold standard.

And so every week the stakeholders wring their hands and insist something must be done. And every week Vinícius plays on, to a chorus of boos and whistles and usually something far more sinister. Racism has always chosen its targets unequally and on some level we should expect his talent and fame and wealth to offer him a certain protection. His treatment instead poses a burning question: if football can’t protect Vinícius, what chance does it have with anyone else?

did he fail to show up in a similar way for Raheem Sterling all those years?

and it really is sad. hard to do much about an effigy, but id love for racist behavior in the stadium to come with an automatic 3 point deduction. theres no other way to make clubs take this seriously.

https://twitter.com/eurofootcom/status/1631370075033706512?t=qvtx47xstAX3tAIaWBHUBw&s=19

6th fastest goal in recorded history