Former Juventus director general Luciano Moggi claims the club was unfairly punished in the Calciopoli scandal.
The Bianconeri were sent down to Serie B and stripped of two Scudetti after wiretaps revealed the director lobbying for certain referees in specific games.
He was also found to have used his influence in the media to ensure referees who gave perceived bad decisions against the Old Lady would be hounded.
Former Juventus director general Luciano Moggi claims the club was unfairly punished in the Calciopoli scandal.
The Bianconeri were sent down to Serie B and stripped of two Scudetti after wiretaps revealed the director lobbying for certain referees in specific games.
He was also found to have used his influence in the media to ensure referees who gave perceived bad decisions against the Old Lady would be hounded.
“Antonio Giraudo told me: ‘you can drive us away, but you’ll see the bandits and incapables who will come after us’,” Moggi told Corriere dello Sport.
“He was right. These people couldn’t even appoint Presidents of the FIGC and the Lega.
“Then there are prosecutors who lay down the law, Presidents who want to be sporting directors. In the lower leagues there are clubs who sign young people and then get payed by their parents…
“They can hand down all the sentences they want, but I’m someone who always worked hard and wherever I went I always created healthy budgets, buying little and selling a lot.
“My only ambition, even now, is to make people say: ‘bravo!’.
“Really, I had to defend myself. I had two eyes in my front and two eyes in the back of my head. [Franco] Carraro and [Adriano] Galliani, the FIGC and Lega Presidents were working in the interests of Milan.
“Then [Giacinto] Facchetti was lobbying the referees in favour of Inter. I spoke with the referee designators, that’s true, but it was allowed then, and no-one can say I ever asked to win a match.
“I only asked for referees, is that illicit? The real problem is that there was a reckoning inside Juventus to get us out.
“The Agnelli family has always been a bit Wild West, and they were afraid that Giraudo would end up with too much power.
“Giraudo was a great accountant. [Roberto] Bettega was a great person, but he had to be commanded. He was a solider.
“Galliani and Carraro were the real black souls, there’s no doubt about that.
“You only have to listen to the wiretaps to deduce that Carraro controlled [referee designator Paolo] Bergamo.
“Pope Wojtyla died on a Saturday night when we were in our pre-match retreat in Florence. We should have postponed until Monday, but the game was delayed by a week.
“Galliani – the President of the Lega – was intercepted calling Costacurta and saying: ‘we’ve moved it back a week so we can have the injured Kaka back’.
“The year 2004. Two hours after the draw, Carraro called Bergamo: ‘who is the referee for Inter-Juventus?’. The answer: ‘[Pasquale] Rodomonti’.
“Two hours before the match, Bergamo called Rodomonti: ‘how are you organising? Be careful, it’s very hard to go up, but it takes nothing to fall off the precipice…’
“They did all kinds of things to us. That day with the storm in Perugia [in 2000] they took the Scudetto away from us.
“[Pierluigi] Collina, sponsored by Milan, decided to suspend the game for 74 minutes. If I was as arrogant as they say I’d have taken the team and left, but there’d have been consequences later.
“There are things people don’t know. There was the time when, after a Milan-Juventus game that Milan lost at home, Bergamo called Galliani and said: ‘direttore, we cried in my house’.
“Bergamo’s wife, Alessandra, is a Milanista. ‘I never thought that Juve would beat Milan with Collina’.”
A wiretap was presented in the Calciopoli trials where Moggi said he’d locked Gianluca Paparesta in his dressing room after being unhappy with his refereeing.
“A nonsense. I’d have messed him up that day, he cost us a match, but why would I I lock him in the dressing room and throw away the key? What would be the advantage?
“It was just a joke, and for that joke they expelled me.
“As for the Swiss SIM cards, I got those to protect my work. [Dejan] Stankovic and I got them for Juve, then Inter blew it up with Telecom wiretaps. They were given to referees for other reasons.
“The investigators said they were mute, that they couldn’t be intercepted, but it wasn’t like that. It was just so the referees could talk with their lovers and whores.”
Referee Massimo De Santis was the only one to be banned as part of the scandal.
“He was linked to us for no reason,” Moggi insisted.
“Fiorentina were fighting not to go down, Milan were a point behind us. On the Tuesday, [Leonardo] Meani – a Milan director [responsible for referee relations] – called De Santis: ‘watch out because Kaka and [Manuel] Rui Costa are on a booking, don’t have them be suspended for the Juventus match’.
“If he’d been one of our associates he’d have called the inquest office and Milan would have ended up in Serie B.
“If you remember that match, De Santis denied Fiorentina a penalty and allowed Milan to take the lead. We kept quiet.
“The next morning De Santis calls Meani: ‘you saw, only I can stop them talking’. Meani: ‘you’re a friend, I’ve already told Galliani’.
“Before Calciopoli, [President Massimo] Moratti had signed me for Inter. My time was done at Juve, I’d signed the contract.
“Moratti told me to sell [Francesco] Moriero and I managed to sell him to Middlesbrough, but I left the credit to [Sandro] Mazzola. The day after I found out that they’d renewed Moriero’s contract.
“Mark Iuliano’s tackle on Ronaldo? It was probably a penalty, but that Inter shouldn’t even have been in Serie A. They should have been relegated due to the [Alvaro] Recoba passport scandal.
“Regrets? I regret that I didn’t take anyone with me. If I think that someone like Meani got passed off as some office clerk… everyone should be ashamed.
“Juve will always be hated, but there won’t be a second Calciopoli. There’s no longer Telecom, Tronchetti Provera and [Luca] Montezemolo.
“There’s no longer [former FIFA President Sepp] Blatter, who thanked Montezemolo publicly for withdrawing the appeal to CAS against the sentence that sent Juve down.”