ROME, 16 July 2006 — Less than a week after winning the World Cup, Italy mourned the biggest blow to national soccer in decades yesterday after top clubs were ousted from the elite league for match-fixing.
An Italian sports tribunal delivered the verdicts late on Friday, punishing Italy’s most successful team Juventus with relegation to Italy’s second-tier Serie B along with Fiorentina and Lazio.
The fourth club involved, AC Milan, owned by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, was also heavily penalized, starting next season’s Serie A campaign minus 15 points.
“To Hell,” screamed a front-page column in Italy’s leading newspaper Corriere della Sera. It counted 120 hours from Italy’s World Cup win to the moment when “two generations of soccer establishment were wiped out.”
As teams prepared their appeals, the country braced for a likely exodus of prized players such as World Cup captain Fabio Cannavaro and goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon.
“This sentence on soccer strikes at nearly 20 million fans,” said Berlusconi’s spokesman Paolo Bonaiuti. “Our best players will be forced to play abroad. Well done. Justice served.” Even Italy’s Justice Minister Clemente Mastella weighed in against the verdict, saying it mostly punished fans.
“At least I’m not the ‘sports’ justice minister. I can’t agree with the sentence,” Mastella said.
“I don’t believe that the whole system is rotten. There are some amputations that need to be made but an Italian soccer that wins the World Cup frankly can’t be great abroad and less than that at home.”
Many fans and officials, however, said rough justice was needed to purge the sport of chronic corruption. Prime Minister Romano Prodi said that those guilty “have to pay, even if we are world champions.”
Former Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi, who was at the center of the scandal, was banned for five years and ex-Federation president Franco Carraro for four-and-a-half years.
Moggi said there had been no wrongdoing. “No match was fixed, no referee was pressured,” Moggi was widely quoted as saying by the Italian media yesterday.
The demotion of Juventus, Lazio and Fiorentina is certain to prompt a transfer merry-go-round across Europe.
Solskjaer Scores Twice in Easy Win for Manchester United
In Durban, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who has spent the best part of the last three seasons sidelined with injury, scored twice to spur Manchester United to a 4-0 win over Orlando Pirates yesterday.
The Norwegian struck twice in the first half with Kieran Richardson and own goal from the South African team’s goalkeeper Francis Chansa doubling United’s tally in the second.
The match, watched by an estimated crowd of 40,000, was the first of three on the English club’s South African tour. They next meet Kaizer Chiefs in Cape Town on Tuesday.
Solksjaer’s last goal for United in an official match was against Panathinaikos of Greece in a European Champions League tie in September 2003.
Beckham Looking for Asian Academy Venue
In Beijing, England’s David Beckham wants to build on his popularity in Asia by opening a new soccer academy on the continent.
The Real Madrid midfielder, who stood down as England captain after their exit from the World Cup finals, is looking for an Asian city as a site for a new state-of-the-art academy to go with those he runs in London and Los Angeles.
“We’re looking from the Pacific to the Middle East and anywhere in between,” Ed Cunningham of AEG, partners in the project with 19 Entertainment, told Reuters.
“It’s not a matter of which city wants it, but of where’s best to put it.
“We’d like it to be a hub for children from all over Asia.” As a child, Beckham attended a soccer school run by former England and Manchester United player Bobby Charlton and wants to pass on similar experiences to the next generation.
