COVISOC has informed the FIGC of possible capital gains by inflated valuations, highlighting, among others, Victor Osimhen’s move from LOSC Lille to Napoli and Juventus’ exchange deal with Barcelona for Arthur Melo.
Reports have emerged regarding a possible transfer scandal in Serie A, as COVISOC has flagged 62 suspicious transfers, which ended up at the FIGC Prosecutor’s Office.
Capital gains through exchange deals have been discussed in recent years, due to the difficulty of establishing a precise market value for players who are included in swap deals.
Federal Prosecutor investigates suspicious Serie A transfers
The Federal Prosecutor is investigating into possibly inflated valuations to help clubs balance their budgets.
COVISOC has decided to highlight these operations and 42 of the cases concern Juventus, who have been doing business with clubs like Olympique Marseille, Sampdoria, Parma, Genoa, Barcelona and Manchester City.
Juventus’ ‘suspicious’ exchange deals
The biggest cases include the swap deal with Manchester City, when Joao Cancelo and Danilo switched clubs in August 2019.
The exchange deals are reportedly reaching a value of €90m for the Bianconeri, but only just over €3m changed hands when former director Fabio Paratici – who is currently plying his trade at Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League – ran the transfer operations at Continassa.
Il Tempo published a list of the transactions that are under investigation, as Danilo was valued at €37m when he arrived at the club, with Joao Cancelo valued at €65m when he moved in the opposite direction.
Juventus have another big-money operation including Miralem Pjanic, who is currently playing at Besiktas in Turkey.
The Bosnia international moved to Spanish giants Barcelona ahead of 2020-21, when Brazilian midfielder Arthur Melo arrived at the Allianz Stadium.
Pjanic was valued at €60.8m when he joined the Blaugrana but struggled to convince at Camp Nou in the following season and was sacrificed by Ronald Koeman ahead of 2021-22.
Arthur was given a valuation of €72m when he moved to Juventus, as part of the operation with the La Liga side.
Pereira Da Silva joined Barcelona in the same window and the swap deal seeing Alejandro Marques join the Old Lady is also part of the list of suspicious deals.
Juventus made a similar operation with Genoa, when Nicolò Rovella was valued at €18m when joining the Bianconeri, with Manolo Portanova and Elia Petrelli used as makeweight to match the total amount of the deal with the Grifone.
Both Rovella and Marques’ contracts were set to expire six months before the signed for Juventus.
Napoli, Parma and Sampdoria with a series of suspicious cases
Included in the long list published by Il Tempo, the controversial negotiation that helped the Azzurri sign Osimhen is of course the standout case.
The Nigerian joined Napoli on a deal valued at €71.25m, according to the report, with Orestis Karnezis, Claudio Manzi, Ciro Palmieri and Luigi Liguori going in the opposite direction for a total of €20.13m.
Palmieri and Liguori have then returned to Italy and are now playing for Nocerina and Afragolese respectively. Both clubs are in Serie D, Italy’s fourth division.
But the Partenopei are not the only ones joining the Bianconeri on the list, as Parma, Pescara, Sampdoria and Chievo Verona are mentioned on the list of suspicious cases reported to the FIGC by COVISOC.
If Jack Griellish is valued at £100m plus, then Cancelo is definitely worth 65m. Though this practice isn’t much of a surprise really. C
I hope they get deserving punishment, they are sketchy the least to say.
Well, not a fan of Juventus ethic of work (which has to be considered questionable at the very least) but since clubs put any value to his players, it is really hard to prove the wrongdoings without a single doubt. Good luck accusing clubs for this
These clubs aren’t public companies and are free to buy/sell players at any price they want to. A player’s value depends on many elements and can’t be a precise number.
ManU had lost Pogba for free and bringing him back cost them over 100M.
PSG didn’t sell Mbappe for close to 200M and are going to lose him for free.
Are they suspicious? Absolutely not.
It looks like Inter are trying their best to avenge that recent Juve penalty !
They need to be careful though because Beppe Marotta was Juve’s man and might lose him in this process.
They always try to sabotage juve, to the point its a little bit scary now. First they made calciopoli without half of tapes, now this etc
Questionable practice, yes, however it’s hard to prove as Market value is based on buyer and sellers opinion. As Rosario pointed out, how the in hell is Griellish a $100M player.
Rubentus will get away with it, just like with the Luis Suarez saga and his italian citizenship exam.
It`s just part of their DNA to gain out-of-pitch advantages and escape without punishment.
Almost like FIGC are constantly encouraging them to do shady/illegal things.
Juventus are a shady football club, in other news : water is wet.
@Juve fan – it’s not so much that they’re not free to buy and sell as they please, it’s that they’re telling the “official” accounts that a player is worth X amount to help balance their books.. and even still reporting record economic losses.
They also use the value of these players (as assets) to get loans and bonds to cover their debts so it’s 100 percent fraud in most cases
@juve fan, juventus are a publicly traded company in which the agnelli family own about 60 percent of the shares, what they are doing is fraud, but don’t worry they will get away with this too, like they have in the past
Hey Inter fans, it was a penalty! Get over it and try to focus on winning the scudetto in 2031 .
Example:
A pair of boots is, originally, valued by the seller at €200. However, the seller says the boots are valued at €425. I agree with this valuation and tell the seller that I’ll buy the boots for €425.
Simultaneously, whilst buying the boots at aforementioned price, the seller asks me if the Batman figurine I own is for sale… I say it is, it’s valued at €745 (even though I value the figurine at €450). The seller agrees to this price.
In the end, I make a profit of €320, but the boots due to usage and depreciation lose their value while the figurine, due to its pristine packaging, becomes a collector’s item and its value appreciates over time.
In this scenario why are these 2 transactions being investigated even though it’s a free market and the invisible hand regulates itself?
Very hard to prove this!
A waste of money. And they love to try and single out Napoli, and Lazio, who can run their clubs without hundreds of millions in debt. Players can’t be valued like a used Vespa. I can sell it for whatever I want. Face it, this is a business. And players are assets. If this is the case look into paying CR7 30 million a year. Maybe use this waste of money to help build new stadiums in Italy. Or on youth and women’s programs. And lets look into the value of the FIGC president???
This is getting weird and weird, almost every team did this kind of transfer, look the zaniolo santon – nainggolan transfer, or pinamonti radu and vanheusden transfer around inter and genoa, caprari around inter and sampdoria etc but curiously they’re not mentioned here. Hmmm
Now if you see Juve’s and Napoli‘s hands are a little bit reddish, go see Inter‘s too. They might’ve been holding the knife all along
@AI, Inter won the Scudetto already last year, why wait until 2031?
On the other hand, you’d probably need to wait until 3031 to win your next UCL title..!