Juventus and eight other clubs face the prospect of a trial being reopened into inflated transfer fees for capital gains, but it remains to be seen if the new evidence really will be enough to force a rethink.
The original charges brought by the FIGC prosecutor were dismissed in April and again on appeal in May, because the magistrates ruled that it was impossible to calculate how much a player is worth on the transfer market other than the fee two clubs have agreed on.
It is therefore not possible to say Juventus or any other clubs artificially inflated the transfer value of players in exchange deals.
The FIGC prosecutor has lodged an appeal to overturn that verdict following new evidence from the wiretapped phone calls and confiscated documents dug up by the Prisma investigation, which was performed by the Turin public prosecutor.
However, it remains to be seen whether the so-called ‘smoking gun’ has been found or if it remains largely insubstantial evidence against Juventus, Sampdoria, Pro Vercelli, Genoa, Parma, Pisa, Empoli, Novara and Pescara.
An example put forward by La Gazzetta dello Sport includes a conversation from September 6, 2021 between President Andrea Agnelli and his cousin, chief of holding company Exor, John Elkann.
“You said that in the end, the sporting directors got a bit out of hand. There’s a whole series of moves they made,” said Elkann.
“Exactly, if you resort excessively to capital gains, then if the market crumbles, the market crumbles! This is a fact,” replied Agnelli.
Just three days before that, Agnelli had also spoken to director Maurizio Arrivabene.
“It wasn’t just COVID, we know that well. We clogged up the machinery with amortisation and above all the s**t, because it’s all the s**t underneath that we can’t talk about.”
There are a few other quotes that emerged from the wiretaps, but again they are fairly insubstantial and could be referring to a general approach that many clubs have in modern football to boosting their revenue.
“If we get back to being the Juve of a few years ago, we’ll have that value in house, not artificially,” said director of sport Federico Cherubini.
Much of the focus was on former Juventus director of sport Fabio Paratici, who has since left to join Tottenham Hotspur.
Most of the deals were done under his watch and several of his colleagues pointed towards Paratici for going “too far” with what is after all “a legal approach” to the accounts.
“I complained many times to Fabio that the value we were giving to those players was incongruous,” said Cherubini.
Notably, the appeal to overturn the verdict in the original April and May trial was only for nine clubs, not Napoli and Chievo.
This is because they were not involved in deals with Juventus, so the new evidence does not directly impact them.
which are the other 8 clubs?
Where is Samya Ibrahima ?