Italian media report conversations between Tottenham director Fabio Paratici and Atalanta CEO Luca Percassi during negotiations for the signing of Cristian Romero in the summer of 2021: ‘You paid €16m for a player who you sell after one day for €50m.’
Paratici is among the 11 individuals recommended for trial by the Turin Prosecutor for false accounting and false communication to the market, among other things.
Juventus directors are suspected of having inflated transfer values and hidden payments to their footballers during the peak of the COVID pandemic.
The investigation could soon involve other Serie A clubs that completed deals with Juventus over the last three years, including Atalanta, Sampdoria, Sassuolo, Empoli and Udinese.
The Romero deal is among those under the spotlight. Paratici signed the Argentinean centre-back from Genoa for €26m in 2019, leaving him at Genoa on loan for one season. The following year, the defender returned to Juventus but soon joined Atalanta on a two-year loan deal worth €4m with an option to buy for €16m.
After one year in Bergamo, where he was named the best Serie A defender for 2020-21, Romero joined Tottenham for €50m.
Calciomercato.com reports a wiretap between Paratici and Atalanta CEO Percassi on 30 July 2021.
“You paid €16m for a player who you sell after one day for €50m,” Paratici told Percassi, trying to persuade him to sell the Argentina international.
Percassi took time and said he’d meet Juventus President Andrea Agnelli to find an agreement over Romero’s permanent signing and the transfer of Merih Demiral, who would replace Romero at Atalanta. Percassi allegedly said he had to ‘recover the loan fee from my credits.’
Paratici reassured the Atalanta director that “Andrea [Agnelli] is the one who will fix it” and explained that Juventus “needed money” in 2020, so they had to sell Romero to La Dea “even if not for the right price.”
Tottenham signed Romero on a paid loan with an obligation to buy for €50m on August 2, 2021, while Demiral joined Atalanta on an initial loan deal with an option to buy.
Agnelli “behaved well and confirmed everything to me,” Percassi told Paratici after finalising the two agreements.
Atalanta paid €2m for Demiral’s loan with an option to buy for €20m.
Paratici had also signed Dejan Kulusevski from Atalanta in January 2020 for €44m, but the player remained on loan at Parma for the second part of the campaign.
The fee was perhaps too high for the Old Lady who sent U23 midfielder Simone Muratore to Bergamo for €7m just a few months later.
Paratici allegedly told investigators that Atalanta had a ‘moral obligation’, but investigators found an undisclosed document where Atalanta promised to sign a Juventus player for €3m. A ‘side letter’ has also emerged in the Romero deal between Tottenham and Atalanta, with the Serie A side allegedly demanding guarantees in case the North London side would not make the defender’s move permanent.
“I’ll never be able to get that letter out because if we go to trial, it will be evident that it’s false accounting,” Percassi allegedly told Paratici on August 4, 2021.
It is now obvious that this practice is a norm with many clubs. The exorbitant players’ wages are also responsible. English clubs have already destroyed the values and salaries of players as they are rich. It is now clear that no other countries can compete with them in that aspect. The football leagues should have introduced the salary cap on players’ earning with maybe 3 exceptions. Now with Bosman rule, Playeers have a lot of power to run down the contract and ask for exorbitant wages and agents’ fees for free transfers. If there is salary cap, this would also affect this situation. Seriously, Italy clubs need to focus more on young players rather than wasting millions.
They have cheating and stealing in their DNA.
Rubentus feeder clubs going down along with their puppet masters.