Turintians received a ten-point score – Kommersant

Turin “Juventus” was deprived of ten points scored in the championship of Italy. This decision was made by the Court of Appeal of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), which found the club guilty of financial violations. Thus, the most titled team has moved from second straight to seventh in Serie A and is now unlikely to be able to qualify for the Champions League next season. True, the troubles for Juventus are not limited to this: in mid-June, the FIGC court will consider another case of Turin on other episodes. In addition, the club and persons involved in it can also become accused in a criminal process.

The Court of Appeal of the Italian Football Federation ruled in the case of Juventus Turin, convicted of various violations: creating fictitious financial statements, overestimating the value of assets, manipulating the stock market in order to mislead investors, using gray schemes when paying monetary compensation. The court considered only part of the allegations, namely the one related to the overestimation of the value of assets.

In this case, we are talking about the fact that Juventus reflected in their reporting inaccurate data on the value of the players they sold, which allowed the club to spend more on the purchase of players and thus fit into the requirements of the financial fair play regulations.

The court concluded that Juventus had indeed broken the rules and ordered him to be stripped of ten points. Representatives of the FIGC asked to fine the club 11 points. The federation’s demand to disqualify seven former top managers of the club for eight months was rejected by the court. The most famous among them is the former vice-president of Juventus, the owner of the Golden Ball in 2003, Pavel Nedved.

It should be noted that according to the episodes considered by the court, Juventus have been fined for the second time. In January, the FIGS court deprived the team of 15 points at once. In addition, 11 former top managers of Juventus received various terms of disqualification, including the ex-president of the club Andrea Agnelli, a member of the family that controls the club through the investment company Exor (he, as well as three other functionaries, remained under sanctions after all the appeals). However, Italy’s highest sports arbitration body, Collegio di Garanzia dello Sport (SGB), overturned that decision in April, ordering the case to be retried.

After a fresh court verdict, Juventus moved from second place in the standings directly to seventh and almost certainly will not play in the Champions League next season, which means that tens of millions of euros of income will be missing (in the 2021/22 season, Turin earned € in the Champions League 78 million). From Milan, which rose after the court verdict, to fourth place, Juventus is five points behind two rounds before the end of the championship. Given the fact that Atalanta and Roma were also ahead of Turin, the team’s chances for a saving fourth place seem purely speculative.

It is worth noting that the position of Juventus might have been much stronger if the court had chosen a different time for the announcement of the verdict.

The team, according to its head coach Massimiliano Allegri, found out about the incident a few minutes before the start of the match against Empoli, devoid of any tournament motivation.

And out of frustration, she lost with a score of 1:4. Beat Turin in this match, they would have not 59, but 62 points (Milan have 64), and they would have kept a great chance to break into the Champions League. After all, one of the two remaining matches for Juventus to play just against Milan.

Considering, however, that it is too early to put an end to the Juventus case, it is possible that, even having avoided a misfire in the match against Empoli, and then displacing the competitors in the battle for fourth place, Turin would have been left out of the Champions League. After all, the court considered only part of the charges against the club. The hearing for the others is due on June 15th. There is also a very high likelihood of a guilty verdict. The situation of the club is aggravated by the fact that in Turin there are preliminary hearings in the criminal court, which will decide whether a criminal case will be initiated against officials and the club itself. At the heart of this case is the said charge of manipulating the stock market in order to mislead investors.

Alexander Petrov