Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Giovanni Cobolli Gigli" in English language version.
Juventus have been acquitted, the offending championships (2004/2005 and 2005/2006) have been declared regular, and the reasons for the conviction of Luciano Moggi are vague; mostly, they condemn his position, that he was in a position to commit a crime. In short, be careful to enter a shop without surveillance because even if you don't steal, you would have had the opportunity. And go on to explain to your friends that you're honest people after the morbid and pro-sales campaign of the newspapers. ... a company has been acquitted, and no one has heard of it, and whoever has heard of it, they don't accept it. The verdict of 2006, made in a hurry, was acceptable, that of Naples was not. The problem then lies not so much in vulgar journalism as in readers who accept the truths that are convenient. Juventus was, rightly or wrongly, the best justification for the failures of others, and it was in popular sentiment, as evidenced by the new controversies concerning 'The System.' But how? Wasn't the rotten erased? The referees since 2006 make mistakes in good faith, the word of Massimo Moratti (the only 'honest'). ... it isn't a question of tifo, but of a critical spirit, of the desire to deepen and not be satisfied with the headlines (as did Oliviero Beha, a well-known Viola [Fiorentina] fan, who, however, drew conclusions outside the chorus because, despite enjoying it as a tifoso, he suffered as a journalist. He wasn't satisfied and went into depth. He was one of the few).
The former Juventus chairman declared that in 2006 Inter Milan should also have been involved in the Calciopoli sporting trial, with the prosecutor Palazzi who spoke of a sporting offence by the Milanese club in reference to the Inter Milan file that appeared 4 or 5 years after the process. ... As is known, the Milanese club was not investigated because after 5 years the statute of limitations took over and Inter Milan were able to use it.
'Neither can we overlook the data of the resizing of the scope of the accusation which derives from the partiality with which the events of the 2004/2005 championship were examined, to run after only Moggi's misdeeds, of which modalities have been ascertained, as regards the sports fraud, to the limit of the existence of the crime of attempt, with the consequent further difficulty of hooking up to the responsibility of the employer, supplier of the occasion for the criminal action.'
The chairman of Juventus, Giovanni Cobolli Gigli ... declares himself confident: 'I am still convinced that we should stay in Serie A. The reasons do not justify such a severe penalty at all, because the reference is only to Article 1 of the Sports Justice Code and not in Article 6. A set of venial sins cannot be equivalent to a mortal sin.' 'I am convinced that the appeal will be accepted', he added ... when asked which penalty he would consider fair, he replied curtly: 'I would like to be in [Serie] B and that's it.' '... We are confident that with determination and will we will be able to reduce in the shortest possible time the great handicap that we have been assigned and go back to being successful and even more likeable than before.'
After four hours of discussion, in the elegant building on Corso Galileo Ferraris, in the heart of Turin, the moderate line recently promoted by President Cobolli Gigli won. Jean Claude Blanc, the managing director, the man who had advocated confrontation with the [Italian] Football Federation, has taken a step back by adapting to the majority. ... A small group of fans met outside the Juventus headquarters and targeted Cobolli Gigli and Blanc. 'You have ruined a hundred years of history', ... Then the words of coach Deschamps at the end of the Tim trophy at San Siro are striking: 'The players and I have some difficulty understanding, maybe we don't know everything, but we don't understand the reason for the appeal withdrawn. A decision had been made, then it changed, I expect explanations. What is certain is that we will fight all season', said the French coach with a controversial air. ... Indeed, there has been a change. But Federcalcio and Coni have not provided any precise guarantee to Juventus. 'There was no negotiation,' they said from via Allegri. Rossi, however, did not hide his satisfaction with the intention of the lost sheep returned to the fold to participate actively in the renewal and organization of football. Petrucci, on the other hand, thanked John Elkann, who followed the matter personally, and Montezemolo 'for the call to common sense and serenity, fully understood.'
'Juventus paid a lot, perhaps more than all the other teams. However, this fact brought about a positive total change and this made them more likeable. The humility bath in Serie B, the struggles with Albinoleffe...' This is how Luca di Montezemolo replied to Cobolli Gigli who the other day had said that in order for Juventus to become great, they would have to treasure the Ferrari organization. 'The team – said Montezemolo – has temperament and is doing well and at the end of the season will have the advantage of being more fresh, given that they don't have to play in the Cup.'
In recent years, with Andrea Agnelli at the helm, Juventus have taken an anti-system position: outside the government of the Lega Serie A, outside the ECA (the association of European clubs which was chaired by Agnelli), in contrast with UEFA, and projected on the Superlega project. Now, the club is proposing to open a dialogue on reforms. 'I hope that together with the other teams and the government we can change football in our country, to build a sustainable and ambitious future ... . Juventus are not the problem, but they are and will always be part of the solution. Here it is in play the future of Serie A and of Italian football, which is becoming marginal and irrelevant.'
[The FIGC sentence] stated perfectly clearly [sic] that no Article 6 violations (match-fixing/attempted match-fixing breaks the sixth article of the sporting code) were found within the intercepted calls and the season was fair and legitimate, but that the ex-Juventus directors nonetheless demonstrated they could potentially benefit from their exclusive relationship with referee designators Gianluigi Pairetto and Paolo Bergamo. There were, however, no requests for specific referees, no demands for favours and no conversations between Juventus directors and referees themselves.
In a series of consistent courtroom releases, Luciano Moggi's defence team unravelled not tens, not hundreds, but thousands upon thousands of calls between the referee designators and the directors and/or coaches of every team in Serie A and beyond, including Inter. All during the same 'incriminated' period that saw Juventus punished. The code of conduct in 2006 did not oppose dialogue between designators and directors; in fact the league officials encouraged it in order to maintain good relations between teams and the AIA (Italian Referee Association). The calls themselves, as a result, were not always incriminating but their mere existence meant that the theory of Juventus' 'exclusivity' could no longer hold. Up until that point nothing directly incriminating had ever been heard by any director. The new calls that Moggi's lawyers released, however, were full of other directors making referee requests, direct referee contact, proposals for secret meetings between referees and directors in closed restaurants and banks, and so on.
De Luna: We consulted the company financial statements, and noted the escalation of the emoluments that Moggi, Giraudo, and Bettega received. We don't have certain elements to be able to say that at that moment there was an attempt to take over Juventus, but those figures are impressive. Furthermore, there are some anomalies of the Agnellis which leave the door open to this type of hypothesis. The Calciopoli investigation was born out of a Turin investigation by the prosecutor Guariniello on the Juventus doping case, [in which] the interceptions of Moggi's conversations with the referees emerge. Guariniello sends the files to the boss Maddalena, notes that there are no crimes from a criminal point of view, but perhaps from a sporting point of view. Maddalena keeps the files for three months, then sends them to the [Italian] Football Federation. This period lasts a little over a year. Do you really [want to believe] that Juve didn't know what was going on? I have the impression that the Agnelli family took advantage of this opportunity to stop an attempt to take over the Moggi-Giraudo-Bettega company.
The Juventus defence, among other things, objects that a sum of several Articles 1 (unfair and dishonest sporting conduct) cannot lead to an indictment for Article 6 (sporting offence), using for example the metaphor that so many defamations do not carry a murder conviction: an unimpeachable objection. ... Hence the grotesque concept of 'standings altered without any match-fixing'. The 'Calciopoli' rulings state that there is no match-fixing. That the championship under investigation, 2004–2005, is to be considered regular. But that the Juventus management has achieved effective standings advantages for Juventus FC even without altering the individual matches. In practice, Juventus were convicted of murder, with no one dead, no evidence, no accomplices, no murder weapon. Only for the presence of a hypothetical motive.
Everyone stigmatizes the change of course by waving Zaccone's answer to Ruperto, but with little correctness, because they use only a fragment of the answer, altering its complete meaning. Zaccone had replied: 'The sanction accepted, indeed suffered but acceptable, is the one proposed for the other clubs to which the same objections are made, even if in greater numbers than us. Therefore, Serie B with penalty points.' ... Giovanni Cobolli Gigli: 'This morning we sent the appeal to the prosecutors and by tomorrow it will be filed with the TAR which will examine it and will have to inform us of a date. A date that could be brought forward with respect to 6 September, for our good and that of all. We have already notified appeal to all interested parties.' ... It's a right, but above all a duty towards Juventus fans, who are 25% of all Italian fans. We are aware that we are living in a situation of relative tension, but we are not scared. [Remaining in Serie] A would be a satisfaction for the club, the fans, and the shareholders: it is a championship that belongs to us. I continue with absolute calm to explain that there has been an inequality of treatment between Juve and the other clubs. Furthermore, the Serie B [penalty would be] a difficult economic situation [that] would result in a much higher penalty than one that any other team could bear.' ... 'We have thirty days starting from 18 August and we have the right, given that the conciliation did not take place', and he recalled the outcome of the appeal by the former Juventus CEO Antonio Giraudo and the former managing director Luciano Moggi: 'There is no 'it is doubtful whether the TAR has declared itself competent to accept questions of this type, especially ours, therefore, which has a much greater weight.'
It was enough to look at what happened in Portugal, where a top-flight team, relegated for ascertained collusion with (arrested) referees, was reinstated following the appeal made to the counterpart of the Italian TAR. For Juve it would have been even easier, because in the sporting trial no crime was ascertained and in the ordinary one the referees were all acquitted. The prosecutor had to resort to the 'anticipated crime' for something never committed or even thought of.
'Dear Lapo, my certainties about the perpetrators of this farce are known and always addressed to those who received the thanks of Blatter, president of Fifa at the time, for having Juve withdraw the appeal to the TAR which, if maintained, would have kept the club in Serie A.'
... the motivations in 558 pages are summarized as follows. 1) Championships not altered (therefore championships unjustly taken away from Juve...), matches not fixed, referees not corrupted, investigations conducted incorrectly by the investigators of the Public Prosecutor's Office (interceptions of the Carabinieri which were even manipulated in the confrontation in the Chamber). 2) The SIM cards, the foreign telephone cards that Moggi has distributed to some referees and designators, would be proof of the attempt to alter and condition the system, even without the effective demonstration of the rigged result. 3) Moggi's attitude, like a real 'telephone' boss, is invasive even when he tries to influence the [Italian Football Federation] and the national team, see the phone calls with Carraro and Lippi. 4) That these phone calls and this 'mafia' or 'sub-mafia' promiscuity aimed at 'creating criminal associations' turned out to be common practice in the environment as is evident, does not acquit Moggi and C.: and therefore here is the sentence. ... Finally point 1), the so-called positive part of the motivations, that is, in fact everything is regular. And then the scandal of 'Scommettopoli' [the Italian football scandal of 2011] in which it's coming out that the 2010–2011 championship [won by Milan] as a whole with tricks is to be considered really and decidedly irregular? The Chief Prosecutor of Cremona, Di Martino, says so for now, while sports justice takes its time as always, but I fear that many will soon repeat it, unless everything is silenced. With all due respect to those who want the truth and think that Moggi has objectively become the 'scapegoat'. Does the framework of information that does not investigate, analyze, compare, and take sides out of ignorance or bias seem slightly clearer to you?
However, the accusatory castle exists, built with interceptions expertly selected by the 170,000. That is, there are the famous 'barbecues', or the telephone calls between Moggi and the designator Bergamo, during which the two established the referees to be included in the drawing scheme. Phone calls that have particularly affected the Cassation which cites them as an example of pollution. In short, the fact that other managers (Meani from Milan, Facchetti from Inter, just to give an example, but the list could be long) also called Bergamo to plead their case and explicitly ask this or that referee isn't taken into consideration (Collina, for example...). But then, how many domes were there? The Cassation does not tell us, even if it admits between the lines that 'the system of preparing the grids was quite widespread' and admits that the developments of the behaviors of Meani and Facchetti (explicitly mentioned) 'were not investigated in depth'.
Despite the joy for the Bianconeri's performance, however, Cobolli Gigli does not forget the events of Calciopoli: 'The wound is still open for me. The documents examined by the sports judges were not complete, so much so that a series of additional tests came out afterwards: the real truth was not certified. It was an injustice, but the definitive penalties must be digested and we move forward.'
'Neither can we overlook the data of the resizing of the scope of the accusation which derives from the partiality with which the events of the 2004/2005 championship were examined, to run after only Moggi's misdeeds, of which modalities have been ascertained, as regards the sports fraud, to the limit of the existence of the crime of attempt, with the consequent further difficulty of hooking up to the responsibility of the employer, supplier of the occasion for the criminal action.'
... the motivations in 558 pages are summarized as follows. 1) Championships not altered (therefore championships unjustly taken away from Juve...), matches not fixed, referees not corrupted, investigations conducted incorrectly by the investigators of the Public Prosecutor's Office (interceptions of the Carabinieri which were even manipulated in the confrontation in the Chamber). 2) The SIM cards, the foreign telephone cards that Moggi has distributed to some referees and designators, would be proof of the attempt to alter and condition the system, even without the effective demonstration of the rigged result. 3) Moggi's attitude, like a real 'telephone' boss, is invasive even when he tries to influence the [Italian Football Federation] and the national team, see the phone calls with Carraro and Lippi. 4) That these phone calls and this 'mafia' or 'sub-mafia' promiscuity aimed at 'creating criminal associations' turned out to be common practice in the environment as is evident, does not acquit Moggi and C.: and therefore here is the sentence. ... Finally point 1), the so-called positive part of the motivations, that is, in fact everything is regular. And then the scandal of 'Scommettopoli' [the Italian football scandal of 2011] in which it's coming out that the 2010–2011 championship [won by Milan] as a whole with tricks is to be considered really and decidedly irregular? The Chief Prosecutor of Cremona, Di Martino, says so for now, while sports justice takes its time as always, but I fear that many will soon repeat it, unless everything is silenced. With all due respect to those who want the truth and think that Moggi has objectively become the 'scapegoat'. Does the framework of information that does not investigate, analyze, compare, and take sides out of ignorance or bias seem slightly clearer to you?
It was enough to look at what happened in Portugal, where a top-flight team, relegated for ascertained collusion with (arrested) referees, was reinstated following the appeal made to the counterpart of the Italian TAR. For Juve it would have been even easier, because in the sporting trial no crime was ascertained and in the ordinary one the referees were all acquitted. The prosecutor had to resort to the 'anticipated crime' for something never committed or even thought of.
FIGC's actions in relegating Juventus and handing the title to Inter Milan were somewhat peculiar. Of course, Moggi and Juventus deserved punishment; that is not up for dispute. However, the severity of the ruling and the new location for the Scudetto was unprecedented and arguably should never have happened. The final ruling in the Calciopoli years later judged that Juventus had never breached article 6. As a result, the Serie A champions should never have encountered a shock 1–1 draw away to Rimini in the season's curtain-raiser. Nor should they have trounced Piacenza 4–0 in Turin or handed a 5–1 thrashing away to Arezzo in Tuscany. The findings stated that some club officials had violated article 6, but none had originated from Juventus. FIGC created a structured article violation with their decision-making. This means that instead of finding an article 6 breach, several article 1 violations were pieced together to create evidence damning to warrant relegation from Italy's top flight. Article 1 violations in Italian football usually command fines, bans, or points deductions, but certainly not relegation.
