Juventus and Agnelli’s summer of litigation
Sometimes, you just start to wonder whether Juventus are pathologically incapable of doing the right thing. Time and time again over a period of decades they’ve ended up getting caught with their fingers in the till, and time and time again over a period of decades there’s been some sort of punishment which doesn’t seem to have actually had its desired effect and altered the culture of the club once and for all.
Former club president Andrea Agnelli was banned from the game for a further 16 months after he was charged with fraud for the way he handled player salary cuts during the coronavirus pandemic. The details of the case might be considered to be ‘typical Juventus’. At the start of the pandemic, the club claimed that 23 players agreed to reduce their salary for four months to help the club through the crisis, only for prosecutors to claim that the players gave up only one month’s salary.
Agnelli and Juventus have, as they ever do, denied any wrongdoing, although the club’s entire board resigned in November following the investigation by Turin prosecutors into false accounting. Juventus, who were docked 10 points last season over false accounting in a separate legal case, are at serious risk of a further points deduction and expulsion from next season’s Europa Conference League over all of this. Agnelli, meanwhile, has his latest appeal over the two-year ban stemming from the false accounting case is due to be heard today.
In light of this apparently perpetual cycle of legal papers being issued, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Juve should have at least finally departed the sinking ship that was version one of the European Super League plans. With Real Madrid and Barcelona, they’d remained one of the last clubs standing with the thoroughly discredited idea, but at the start of June they finally confirmed that they were finally withdrawing from it all with a statement reading:
With reference to rumours that appeared in today’s press, Juventus Football Club S.pA (“Juventus or the “Company”) informs that it has transmitted a communication to the two remaining clubs that as Juventus, have not exercised their withdrawal from the Super League Project (Football Club Barcelona and Real Madrid Club de Futbol) in order to initiate a discussion period among the three clubs concerning the potential Juventus’ exit from the Super League Project.
The Company will proceed with any communications due under the law following the outcome of the interlocutions and evaluations regarding the above, clarifying that many of the reconstructed versions published by the media about the contents of the communication (including any reference to alleged threats of potential sanctions by UEFA) are not true. For more information on the Super League Project, please refer to the press releases issued by the Company on 19 April and 21 April 2021.
The game is about glory, and all that.
It’s tempting, when something like these stories start to emerge, to start thinking that some sort of beautiful tradition is being tainted. But with Juventus, if there is a beautiful tradition, that tradition has been to be repeatedly caught with their fingers in the till. Whether we’re talking about Calciopoli, the European Super League or this little ploy, they always seemed to be present and correct, tilting something in their favour through nefarious means. It now seems that Agnelli couldn’t even leave the pandemic alone. Italian, international and world football are better off without him. But at some point, the insitution of Juventus needs some degree of investigation, because this sort of chicanery certainly pre-dates this particular individual’s involvement with the club.
Postecoglou’s first stand
As with anybody who accepts this particular poisoned chalice, it’s difficult not to look at Ange Postecoglou and Spurs and wonder why on earth he would even want to try his luck at this particular club. Spurs supporters have allowed themselves a little cautious optimism over his appointment. He’s said the right things, he’s been unbelievably well-spoken of by Celtic supporters… he does seem the one of the better choices that they could have made to actually try and heal what has long felt like a fractured football club.
But it remains difficult to avoid the conclusion that Postecoglou’s initial success will be judged on something quite out of his control. The atmosphere around the club may not be quite as poisonous as it was at the end of last season, but that’s setting an extremely low bar and whatever renewed optimism there is among the club’s supporters is at best brittle and and worst likely to turn back to mutiny should Harry Kane leave the club for Munich.
Much as he might like to characterise himself as a Machiavellian transfer market genius, Daniel Levy must surely already be aware of how week the Spurs bargaining position is. They can’t offer him European football this season of any persuasion, and there have been few signs that a decade and half long trophy drought is going to end at a club which continues to act as though it’s Too Big for the FA Cup or the League Cup while their realistic likelihood of winning the Premier League or Champions League has dropped from low to just about zero.
What, exactly, is the case for persuading Kane to stay? A borderline coercive “no-one else will love you as much as we love you”? Some sort of appeal to the player’s extraordinary levels of loyalty to persuade him of the dubious glory of seeing out the rest of his career as a one club man? No amount of positive early vibes can disguise that the success of the new manager’s first few weeks in charge of the club will be determined by how Kane responds to the offer. There’s plenty of time for that fragile positivity to go the way of all the other false dawns that have been promised by this particular club in recent years and for everything to be starting to feel mutinous again by the start of the autumn.