ROME — Soccer in Italy is nothing short of a religion.
It demands reverence and adulation. It reflects power and symbolizes status. Players are national idols, and clubs are the prized possessions of the nation's billionaire elite.
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Italy's Obsession Is Dealt a Swift Kick
The World
As scandal envelops the nation's beloved soccer league, its fans are horrified if not exactly shocked. Something did smell fishy.
But a scandal that widens each day has tarnished the glory of Italian soccer, engulfing the sport and its beloved participants in shame. And all just days ahead of the World Cup, which starts June 9 in Germany.
What began as a referee-tampering case involving Juventus, Italy's most storied team, and its general manager, Luciano "Lucky Luciano" Moggi, has mushroomed into the worst Italian sports scandal in at least a generation.
New revelations Tuesday reached all the way to the top echelons of government, implicating a former interior minister. The soccer federation was placed under emergency administration after the resignations of numerous soccer officials, including Moggi and the entire board of directors of Juventus.
Four Serie A (top-tier) teams and 41 sports officials are under investigation. Police and prosecutors in four cities have raided sports offices and are questioning several potential suspects. An Italian referee who was supposed to officiate at the World Cup has been suspended.
Juventus' star goalie, Gianluigi Buffon, was interrogated in connection with a separate case involving illegal betting, and it was unclear until recently whether he would be barred from the World Cup. (He won't be.) But the last several national championship titles won by Juventus, which is based in Turin and owned by the Fiat dynasty, are now at risk of being yanked.
Italians are horrified -- but not altogether surprised. Soccer fans, especially those who root for clubs other than the dominant Juventus, have long harbored suspicions that something fishy was afoot. After every match, the talk in coffee bars and town plazas routinely turned to rulings by certain referees that didn't seem quite right.
"Now the rumors have become a certainty," said Mario Tonucci, a corporate lawyer who has advised sports organizations. "Everybody is damaged."
Tonucci said the corruption ran so deep that it would take a major overhaul of the league to restore credibility to the game. "We need new, pure air," he said.
The investigation that ensnared Juventus began a couple of years ago when law enforcement authorities were looking into allegations of drug use by athletes. Employing their favorite investigative tool, wiretaps, they listened to the phone calls of several sports officials.
In one conversation, leaked to the Italian press and published last week, Moggi asks a top soccer federation official to assign sympathetic referees to Juventus matches. In another intercept, Moggi brags about trapping a referee and two linesmen in a locker room after Juventus lost to Reggina in a 2004 match. The referee had awarded a penalty against Juventus.
On Monday, police spent six hours interrogating Moggi, who was forced to resign the day before. The possible charges against him and Juventus former managing director Antonio Giraudo include attempting to fix games, kidnapping, embezzlement and false accounting, authorities say.
Moggi has also been accused of pressuring the national coach, Marcello Lippi, to use players represented by Moggi's son Alessandro, whose agency handles most of Italy's Serie A players, the Italian press has reported.
Moggi did not answer reporters' questions Monday when he was taken into police headquarters in Rome. But when he announced his resignation Sunday, he spoke with emotion as he defended himself. "My soul has been killed," he said.
In another wiretap transcript published Tuesday, Moggi is quoted attempting to pressure then-Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu to go ahead with scheduled games despite the death and funeral of Pope John Paul II. In turn, Pisanu asked Moggi to help out Pisanu's home team.
Everywhere, Italians are talking about little but the unsavory chaos that has befallen their favorite pastime. They have started to compare the scandal to the infamous "clean hands" corruption cases of the early 1990s -- so called because the targets and nearly everyone in power were believed to have dirty hands -- that toppled the government.
"They have cheated the people and they have betrayed ideals, the worst thing you can do," Federico Pola, 41, who runs a newsstand in central Rome, said angrily.
Massimiliano Lucio, a 27-year-old barman, said, "It is disgusting and unfair for the fans who spend a lot of money." As he slung out cups of espresso and macchiato for a lunch crowd, he concluded, "They are all thieves."
Italian newspapers have filled column after column with reports on the scandal, pushing political news, such as Monday's inauguration of a new national president, to the back pages.
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