It didn't take long for news of Giuseppe Signori's arrest on 1 June to go global. Within moments of the first reports from Italy, the story had been posted on Twitter, Facebook and all manner of football message boards. The international press soon caught up, detailing how the former Lazio, Bologna and Italy striker had been placed under house arrest as part of a match-fixing investigation. Fifteen others had also been detained, including several other former players – and even some current ones – but none with anything like such a high profile.
Signori was released on Tuesday but that is not to say he is in the clear. He has been accused of playing a central role in a Bologna-based betting ring that sought to influence the outcome of games so as to inform their wagers, though he has firmly denied the allegations against him. But while Signori's name might command headlines, the greater concern for Italian football is not so much the fate of any one individual as the suggestion that, five years on from Calciopoli, the credibility of its competitions has once again been undermined.
The scale on this occasion, at least, is rather different. In 2006 the claims were of systematic rigging at boardroom level, with a number of teams, and their directors, found guilty (although many continue to contest the verdicts) of having contrived to weight the whole footballing infrastructure in their favour. This time the allegations are of small groups of individuals – as well as Signori's alleged "Bolognese" contingent, prosecutors have identified another group known as the "Zingari" (Gypsies) – working to influence one-off results.
Which is not to say that their impact was insignificant. At the time of the arrests, the talk was of fixes rooted firmly in the lower leagues, but as the investigation has progressed it has become apparent that at least a handful of Serie A games are also under suspicion. So too are a number involving the teams who are set to be promoted this summer from Serie B, as well as more from the lower divisions.
At this stage even the prosecutors are unclear about how many matches could have been influenced. The judge's order sanctioning the initial arrests ran to 611 pages, and was based on a collection of phone-tap recordings so extensive that even a fortnight later the prosecution has not had time to fully study them all. In the meantime, interrogations conducted by the presiding magistrate, Guido Salvini, and chief prosecutor, Roberto Di Martino, have provided fresh leads. It is hard to imagine how they could turn up anything more remarkable, though, than the story that kicked things off in the first place.
The erratic performances of the goalkeeper Marco Paoloni for the Lega Pro Prima Divisione (third tier) side Cremonese had drawn some attention in the early part of last season, but not nearly so much as some of his team-mates would during a win over Paganese. Two-nil up and cruising at half-time, no less than five of Cremonese's players simultaneously became ill during the second half. They somehow clung on to their lead, but the after-effects were so severe that two of the five wound up in hospital, while another – Carlo Gervasoni – crashed his car on the way home.
Blood tests confirmed that the players had been drugged with sleeping medication. The Cremona flying squad mooted that this was most likely to have been administered via drinks the players had at half-time. Suspicions turned to Paoloni, whose dentist, Marco Pirani, had prescribed a batch of Minias (a sleeping medication) in the player's wife's name just a day before the match in question. The allegation is that he wanted his team to lose the game.
Paoloni has flatly denied drugging his team-mates, but whatever the truth of the situation, the suspicions were deemed sufficient for the police to start tracking his movements. Phone taps followed, which in turn opened up entirely unexpected avenues of inquiry.
In the end these phone taps also led police to Signori. The former striker is not himself heard on any of the recordings, though he is referred to by others on a number of occasions by nicknames such as "Mr 200 goals". After tracking him to a meeting with two Bolognese businessmen, investigators were able to recover a document in Signori's handwriting detailing the "conditions" for a bet to be placed. He has insisted that he was simply taking down dictation and had no idea what any of the words meant.
With so much evidence to analyse and contradicting claims emerging from the various interrogations that have taken place so far, it is clear that the investigation will not be swiftly resolved. The vast majority of betting on the matches under suspicion is believed to have taken place on foreign markets – mostly in Asia – meaning that verifying the details of wagers will not be straightforward. Di Martino has suggested the criminal case could drag on for up to two years.
That, of course, is an unacceptable timeframe for footballing authorities who must decide on sporting punishments swiftly in order to draw up calendars for the new season. The Italian Football Federation has launched its own inquiry to render sporting judgments by early August at the latest. Sanctions could theoretically run from points deductions or even outright relegations for clubs, though in the absence of any evidence of corruption at a directorial level that may be deemed too severe. Players and administrators found guilty of any wrongdoing risk lengthy bans.
Complicating the issue further, though, are a number of concurrent cases. Long before the Cremona proceedings had even begun, prosecutors in Naples had opened their own investigation into the growing influence of organised crime in football – both through betting and direct involvement in clubs. Meanwhile, two other players, Lecce's Daniele Corvia and Sassuolo's Daniele Quadrini, informed Rome magistrates in May they had received phone calls, which they each claim arrived out of the blue, in which a third party sought to discuss bets with them.
Di Martino sparked a furious reaction – from both inside and outside the game – when he hinted last week at a problem that was deeply rooted. "The sensation is that the deals in Serie A are being made not between players but between teams," he said. "The sensation is that there are big problems in Serie A too – fixed matches."
It was certainly a bold choice of words for a lead prosecutor in an ongoing investigation, though his claims appeared to be lent some credence by testimonies from the Austrian bookmaker SkySport365. A lawyer for the bookmaker, Francesco Barranca, has informed magistrates in Naples and Cremona in recent days of unusual betting patterns on more than 30 games in Serie A, Serie B and Lega Pro. Crucially for investigators, SkySport365 also provided details of the geographic origins of the most significant bets.
Betting patterns in and of themselves do not prove anything, of course, and Italy has long struggled with the phenomenon of teams settling for mutually beneficial – and hence entirely predictable – results at the end of the season. It is also important to note that on a number of occasions the result indicated as most likely by the betting patterns did not come to pass. As the Cremona prosecutors have discovered, it can be extremely difficult to distinguish between a true fix and a merely suspected one.
Reactions in Italy have ranged from the hysterical – with suggestions that the monopolies commission should have the power to immediately stop a match when unusual betting patterns emerge – to outright denial of a problem from those who feel too many conclusions are being drawn from too little evidence. But Gazzetta dello Sport's Franco Arturi spoke for many last week when he called on his countrymen to "wake up" and start demanding proper action, instead of simply defending their own teams at every turn.
"If we continue down this road, we will truly open up an irreversible decline," he wrote. "We are already very close. People of good will are disorientated and disgusted. Public opinion calls for an injection of legality and correctness in football: from the little things to the big ones … Yet the formidable Serie A has only had one order of business for months: the division of its television rights."
On Wednesday the former Juventus director Luciano Moggi was finally handed a lifetime ban for his role as the apparent orchestrator of the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal of 2006. Fans will hope it can one day be looked back on as a symbolic moment – the point at which Italian football resolved to confront its problems properly. Rather than just another example of a tendency to let such scandals drag on far longer than they ever truly needed to.
イタリアのベッティングスキャンダルの捜査は進んでいるが、ジュゼッペ・シニョーリはいまだ否定しているまま。現在のところ、２００６年に発覚したカルチョポリの反省はまったくないように思える。実際カルチョポリから５年。主犯とされたルチアーノ・モッジら３人がイタリアのサッカー界から永久追放となったが、処分は遅きに失した感がある。
と同時に不公平ですらあった。ガッリアーニらは謹慎期間中にもかかわらず公的活動を行い、全く処分されていない。インテルも関わったことがあきらかになり、インテルにスクデットを与えたのは間違いだったと好評しても、ユベントスが主張する公平は処分とスクデットの返還は遅々として進んでいない。
イタリア人の気質といえばそれまでだが、今回のベッティングスキャンダルもできるだけ被害がでないように最大限のパフォーマンスをみせる処分ですませるのではないか。ヘイゼルの悲劇でイングランド勢が被ったヨーロッパカップ戦からの締め出しは困るのだから。
とはいえ、今のままではまったく解決しないのは事実。ナポリ検察がいくら頑張っても政財界の大物がカルチョのトップにいるのだ。握りつぶされてしまう。
いっそのこと、イタリアでは解決できません。UEFAがしっかりと調査してくださいと丸投げしてしまうのも手だ。もちろん、自治を放棄することでペナルティは免れないだろうが、膿を出し尽くすためには痛みが必要だ。かつて、ミランもラツィオも遠慮なく降格させた強い意志を持って当たって欲しい。
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