admin On 20 January this year, the Italian football association shocked fans throughout the world by docking 15 points from its most iconic club, Juventus, in the middle of the season. Juventus suddenly dropped seven places in the Serie A table. The club was accused of falsely inflating the value of players in transfer dealings and, in a separate case, of lying to shareholders. The Italian football association (FIGC) accused Juventus of “repeated violations of the principle of truth”.
In a country renowned for provincialism, Juventus is a uniquely national team. Based in the northern city of Turin, it has about 8 million supporters, far more than its nearest rivals AC Milan and Inter Milan. But in the wake of repeated scandals, the club has also become a symbol for the downfall of Italian football.
The points deduction, which Juventus immediately challenged, was just the latest crisis to hit the club. Two months earlier, the entire board of directors, including the chairman, Andrea Agnelli, and the former player Pavel Nedvěd, had resigned because criminal charges were pending. There are now two on-going cases involving Juventus: one overseen by the sporting magistrature regarding capital gains, the other a criminal case in which Juventus is accused of false accounting, market manipulation, obstructing inspectors and fraudulent financial statements.
Meanwhile, a wider challenge loom over them. In 2022, Juventus’s revenues slumped 8%, while its operating costs increased 7.6%. In the past five years, the club has asked shareholders for cash injections of €700m (£619m) to cover losses of €612.9m. “It’s as if there’s been a sinkhole,” Giovanni Cobolli Gigli – chair of Juventus between 2006 and 2009 – said. “There has been this continuous chasing of revenues when what they should have been doing was limiting the disproportionate and senseless costs.”
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