According to reports, Napoli are accused of inflating the cost of players in the Victor Osimhen deal by €20m, while Juventus had several exchanges with €60m in ‘fake’ profits, as the trial begins tomorrow.
The FIGC has announced the first hearing in the court case will be held on Tuesday April 12 and they hope to have a final verdict by mid-May, before the end of the Serie A season.
Although many sources suggest we will see only fines and probably not a points penalty or even demotion, the figures in question are surprisingly large.
Calcio e Finanza claim to have viewed the paperwork of the court filing, showing huge inflated capital gains – plusvalenze – in exchange deals.
These allow the clubs to swap players and register them as being worth a certain amount, even when the actual transfer market value of the players is far less.
This enables them to balance the books by showing large sums of money or assets being moved around.
The clearest example was Napoli’s deal with Lille for Osimhen, which was officially for €71.2m, of which €20.1m was made up of four player exchanges.
However, the investigation decided the value of the players – Orestis Karnezis, Ciro Palmieri, Claudio Manzi and Luigi Liguori – was in fact €470,000, therefore inflating the cost of the operation by €19.3m.
This benefited both Napoli and Lille, as the Ligue 1 side were in financial trouble at the time and needed to show a massive profit from Osimhen’s sale.
The three youth team players never represented Lille and were released from their contracts a year later.
Juventus are accused of the same thing, but on a much larger scale and using the tactic systematically.
So while single player values weren’t inflated to the same degree, the cumulative effect was for €60.3m in non-existent profits.
Among them, Sampdoria goalkeeper Emil Audero’s transfer value was allegedly inflated by €7m, Pereira Da Silva Matheus by €6m, Manolo Portanova by €8m, Elia Petrelli by €7m and Pablo Moreno Taboada by €8m.
According to Calcio e Finanza, these profits still did not make enough of a difference to the finances of the club that it would’ve prevented them from registering for the Serie A season, so Juve are not facing a points penalty.
— Alfredo Pedullà (@AlfredoPedulla) April 11, 2022
So clubs are not allowed to sell player above market value now? Arthur had a marked value of 70m 6 months before Juve signed him. In the six months leading to him being sold he was frozen out and his marked value dropped. One could argue that Pjanic was not worth what Barca payed but that their fault for agreeing to it.
Maybe e- finanza will be the one to determine how much a player Worth and how much it should be sold.
no, it is basic economics.. they are artificially iinflating the players (in exchange) value to indicate that under FFP, they are making a net profit. it’s like saying you are selling a Ferrari for $1million dollars but under the hood, there is a Honda Civic engine. it’s fraudulent to say the least and at the most, it deflates the monetary value of the Euro/Sterling Pound.
Now, your point rings true ONLY if the exchange was pure cash that did not include any players in exchange. So it’s like using the italian lira to pay for a british pound, not equal monetary value in exchange.
So does this mean Napoli and Juve are headed back to Serie B? Football-Italia writers will have a big orgy if that happens. The Milan clubs will rule Serie A and Juve/Napoli top players will end up in EPL.
Put a price tag on each player then, easy for everyone ….
So in the future players such as sms, higuain, chiesa, vlahovic, cr7 would come so cheap ….
Italian football is one big steaming pile of hypocrisy. It makes me sick. This is why this dead league is not evolving and is on death’s door- this constant witch-hunt of the country’s most successful club out of nothing but petty, pathetic jealousy.
In 2017 Inter signed Bastoni for like 35 million euros when his market value according to TM was 1.5 million! Where’s their trial?
Also, Declan Rice is valued at 80 million euros, but West Ham are refusing to sell him for anything less than 150 million (almost doubled), for another example. Isn’t that illegal too?
@vlahovic. Those are different scenarios in that they’re actual player sales. Inflating the value of players going the other way is what they’re investigating. Essentially, transactions that clubs use to balance their books by inflating player values to what’s needed to balance the books. That’s far different than a team overpaying for a single player. That only benefits the selling party, not both.
@ThisisFair
It’s the same bottom line though. Paying that much for a teenager who’s value was just over a million euros is clearly sketchy behaviour- Inter Milan obviously got some benefits out of it, otherwise why else would they do it?
The bottom line is clubs decide player values. You can’t punish them for valuing players a certain way. The rules have been “bended but not broken” before, and this really is no different.
A bunch of Jube fans unable to understand basic economics or chose to ignore it
You all let your hate on Inter clouds your minds
Inflating players’ value in a pure player exchange or with minimum amount of cash involved are fraudulent
Barca would never agree to pay $60 mil pure cash for Pjanic. Instead, Jube paid them $ 10 mil cash for Arthur while Jube got to chalk $60 mil in their book (fraudulent) as Pjanic went the other way
smh
@ThisisFair
Actually, interestingly enough, I looked into that Bastoni deal a bit more and it turns out they shipped some guy (Eguelfi) to Atalanta for 6.5 million when his value was 0.4 million in the same window.
Not only did Inter get something sketchy out of it, it turns out it was the exact same thing that Juve are being fined/called to be relegated over.
This is a ridiculous waste of time. How do the Italian courts determine a players value. Maybe look into the pay Gravina receives. It would be just as much a crime. And never in the history of the Italian judicial system has anything been concluded in a months time unless… well you know.
You mean to tell me the Sturaro deal was not the same? Juventus sold him for like 16m back then and there’s just no way Genoa had paid that much for a player who costs half as much.
And Inter have done the same with selling many of their youngsters, too.
I always used to wonder how these clubs sell players at those prices. Silly me.
@BASICEconomic What about Inter buying Hakimi for 40 mil but failing to pay the first installment? And then quickly selling him on to pay Real. In all honesty, that’s far worse than what Juve and Napoli allegedly did. Without Hakimi last year they might have not won the title.
I’m not going to let Juventus off the hook here, but the real issue is with FFP not Juventus recording high ‘book values’ for players involved in swaps.
When you force teams to jump through hoops, then don’t be surprised when they jump through hoops. The one thing FFP was supposed to do was rein in the likes of PSG and Man City, and that is also the one thing it failed to do, because they could just hire more lawyers, find the loopholes, and exploit them.
The two things that should be protected are the wages that players are promised, and the ticket prices that fans must pay, to watch the game! Commercial deals, TV deals, sponsorships, renaming of stadiums, who cares, let the clubs/corps do what they want. And yes, a few catastrophic bankruptcies will probably happen. But as long as the players are paid their contracts, its not actually a crisis (except for local fans).
@BASICEconomic Maybe you should look into the deal then. Arthur to Juve was not a exchange deal. Juve bought Arthur for 70m & Pjanic was not part of that deal. They where 2 separate deals and clubs all around europe have been doing this for ages now
correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s not about inflating player price here.. it is about whether the money of those inflated price was real or not.. if those money were a real transaction then it’s valid, but if those money were just ‘magic’ numbers to balance their book then it is fraudulent.
It’s fraudulent money laundering. They showed a magical 60 million profit to launder their dirty money from other sources. Juventus if found guilty should be forced to close shop. Thugs in every sense this club. How anyone can support them in this day and age is beyond me. Corrupt to the core, buying domestic titles since forever
PSG and Man City r laughing.
How on earth is this one sided or money laundering? The value of the players going or coming had to be agreed to by the other team, correct? By definition if you have a willing unrelated buyer and willing unrelated seller and they agree to a value then fair value is determined.
The fact that these players did not pan out after the fact is irrelevant to their value at the time the deal was made.
Harry Maguire was sold for 80 mill. Let’s all just stop and look at that figure. 80-****ing-million for Harry Maguire. C’mon, let’s all laugh together. If that isn’t hyperinflation, nothing is. I have £5 and a sainsbury’s coupon in my pocket and I wouldn’t swap that for Maguire.
@jULIAN You need to understand how balancing the books work. I agree it’s a messed up system but this is the system of UEFA. If a club Earn 100m one year they could potentialy buy 10 players worth 50m and still break even in the books. This is because when you buy a player you spread the cost over the contract lenght you give to that player. So you buy a player for 50m give him a 5 year contract & then you con report a profit of 90m in the books that year. That same club could potentaly buy 9 more players for that same price give every player a 5 year contract & still break even that season.