The Juventus team has suffered a shocking blow following the recent decision of the sports authority to give the team a 15-point penalty and to ban the entire Juventus Board and its President (from engaging in football activities in Italy) for varying lengths of time, including 24 months for former president Andrea Agnelli. The club had already replaced all its acting managers and its president in a move that many speculated was done in anticipation of this verdict.
The team faces 2 different accusations of wrongdoing: firstly, it is accused of reaching private agreements with players on wages, resulting in an imbalance between the financial books and the actual payments made to the team (which is still awaiting verdict), and secondly, the accusation of artificially inflating player values during transfer deals in order to generate impossible capital gains for the
players concerned. It is this second accusation that led to the dramatic verdict, sending Juventus spiraling down to 10th place in Serie A and seriously jeopardizing the club’s future plans for development following last year’s double crisis of sporting results and €444milion loss. Juventus still has the chance to appeal the verdict, and claims that as no real parameters for establishing player value exist, no wrongdoing can be said to have taken place if a buyer is willing to pay, even though the values may seem unrealistic. However, the accusations relate to a “well established system” put in place with smaller clubs, and not to single transactions with similar-sized clubs.
Nevertheless, it is curious that Juventus is the only team to have been found guilty, while others who engaged in the same transactions are not being investigated or penalised. Only time will tell, but this latest news, coming after the tax break given to Serie A clubs, has stirred up a lot of controversy regarding regulation and spending in the football world.