Andrea Agnelli’s lawyer confirms the Juventus President will appeal his one-year ban as “the verdict is not convincing”.
The Bianconeri chief was this week sentenced for his role in allowing tickets to be sold the club’s ultras, with some of those tickets finding their way into the hands of organised crime.
Andrea Agnelli’s lawyer confirms the Juventus President will appeal his one-year ban as “the verdict is not convincing”.
The Bianconeri chief was this week sentenced for his role in allowing tickets to be sold the club’s ultras, with some of those tickets finding their way into the hands of organised crime.
Notably, the ruling “completely rules out all possible links with organised crime”, so Agnelli has been sentenced for breaking ticket selling rules and had no involvement with the mafia.
“This is a verdict which, in my view, is not convincing,” the President’s lawyer, Paco D’Onofrio, told Tuttomercatoweb.
“It’s not convincing for a fairly straightforward reason: if the prosecution’s thesis had been upheld – i.e there was incriminating evidence on President Agnelli about possible collusion with organised crime – then it would have been right to grant the request of the Procura Federale.
“If, however, as the ruling shows, no such relationship ever existed, nothing illicit and criminal between the Juventus directors and the fans, then even a year’s ban seems excessive, unjustifiably harsh and doesn’t meet the criteria of congruity.
“In sporting justice the judges are pretty free when compared to penal judges who must choose between the maximum and minimum edict.
“That is to say they can moderate the punishment based on the actual gravity of the case. Here there’s a discord between the ruling and the sentence.
“The motivations show that at most there was a ‘casual attitude’ on the part of the President in having sold more than four tickets, so we’re talking about something which, according to the regulations, is a mere irregularity and not something illicit.
“Weighing-up the sanction could never lead to a year’s ban.
“It seems to me that there are no winners in this judgement: the Federation hasn’t taken a position, because if they’d allowed the prosecutor’s position then the sanction would have been greater.
“If instead they’d allowed the thesis of the Juventus defence, namely the irresponsibility of the behaviour of President Agnelli and the other executives, then the sanction appears disproportionate, excessive and incongruous.
“If the Federation and the prosecutor’s office were actually going to turn the spotlight on, to condemn an attitude by the directors, they should have acted collectively.
“They should have held an inquiry into each club, conduct a collective deferment and jointly address this phenomenon.
“If we’re only targeting one club then we’re returning to 2006 where it started from the idea that Juventus were guilty of altering matches.
“Then of course we find that the sporting justice system was never able to find one altered game, and that 10 years of criminal proceedings led to convictions, yes, but not for something illicit: i.e no game was ever altered and no referee was ever convicted.
“In this case it seems to me that the world of the parliamentary anti-mafia commission has been much more linear and consistent, they heard from not only President Agnelli, but from the Presidents of many other prestigious Serie A clubs.
“These are sanctions which don’t fall into the sporting realm, which is to say that no players have been banned, there are no penalties and no closed stadiums.
“So within a few days the parties will have to submit an appeal, but the appeals court has no urgency to set a precise date for the hearings, because there are no judgements where the effects impact directly on the pitch.
“That makes it difficult to make a prediction, but I think a new hearing will be held in a maximum of one month.
“I’m convinced that this won’t be the definitive ruling and this punishment won’t be the definitive one.
“There are two more tiers of justice, the second is still within the Federation – namely the appeals court of the FIGC – and then there’s the third tier represented by CONI [the Italian Olympic federation].
“After that you leave the federal auspices and in my opinion we’ll be able to keep any surprises in reserve, precisely because the reasons for this verdict don’t completely convince.”