The long read: A series of financial scandals have rocked Italy’s most glamorous club. But is the trouble at Juventus symptomatic of a deeper rot in world football?
A series of financial scandals have rocked Italy’s most glamorous club. But is the trouble at Juventus symptomatic of a deeper rot in world football?from its most iconic club, Juventus, in the middle of the season. Juventus suddenly dropped seven places in the Serie A table. The club was accused of falsely inflating the value of players in transfer dealings and, in a separate case, of lying to shareholders.
In the 1980s and 90s, Serie A was the richest and most glamorous league in the world, where players received the best salaries and fans enjoyed the best football. Now it has become the poor relation of the other major European leagues, with many clubs sinking into the quicksand of debt. According to the latest report from the FIGC, the accumulated debts of Italian football currently stand at €5.3bn., pending a retrial, and the club sprang back up the table to third place.
Agnelli appeared even more successful on the financial side. A new stadium had been opened in 2011, with naming rights sold for €75m before construction had even begun, in 2008. Agnelli believed that the club could bring in fresh sources of revenue if it reinvented itself as a lifestyle brand, whose signature would be the letter J.
“That was the sliding doors moment,” says an executive of an Italian football club who asked to remain anonymous. “There was an inflationary effect on wages.” Ronaldo’s gross salary cost Juventus €54.24m a year, a sum that surpassed the entire wage bill of many smaller Serie A clubs where players earn €1m-2m a year. The effect was exactly as Marotta had predicted. According to a report by Deloitte, the percentage of Juve’s revenue spent on wages shot up from 66% in 2018 to 84% in 2022.
But it was only after his playing career ended that Paratici’s football career took off. His luck turned in 2004, when he was appointed by Marotta to be head scout at Sampdoria. Surrounding himself with dozens of TVs that showed games from around the world, Paratici built a youth team that won “the triple” in the 2007-08 season: the youth-team Scudetto, the Italian Cup and the Supercup.
In May 2021, the public prosecutor in Turin opened a secret investigation – known as Prisma – into the club’s finances. The investigation discovered that Juventus had undisclosed debts to various clubs, players and agents. One club executive admitted to investigators: “There’s €7m in debt with Atalanta that has never been entered in the balance sheet.” One agent was owed €400,000.
The very public spat between Uefa and the Super League became a personal battle between their respective figureheads, Čeferin and Agnelli. The former had been brought up in humble surroundings in Slovenia. A lean strategist, Čeferin easily out-manoeuvred Agnelli, playing the part of the common man to perfection. “We will not allow them to take football away from us,” he said, encouraging fan protests across the continent. By contrast, Agnelli appeared privileged and elitist.
There was also increasing disquiet within the club about plusvalenze. One executive was recorded by investigators saying: “I swear, I’ve had evenings in which I go home and I feel sick just thinking about it.” The practice of buying and selling players purely for bookkeeping reasons was taking its toll on the team, too.
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