The Dark Heart of Italy (39 page)

Moggi emerges as the most influential footballer never to have kicked a ball: he kicked ass instead. Pierluigi Pairetto was the man responsible for picking the referees and he was in constant contact with Moggi. On one occasion Pairetto even pleaded with one of his referees to ‘be good so that you can see what’s not there sometimes’. Afterwards (3–0 to Juventus, of course) the referee phoned Pairetto to boast, ‘I tried to make the game go in that direction’. It emerged that there was a mathematical usage of yellow and red cards against Juventus’ future opponents so that their key players would be suspended when they played Moggi’s team. For years there had been a lot of tedious repetition about Juventus being the honourable Old Lady of Italian football; suddenly it appeared as if the famous black-and-white stripes resembled an old-fashioned prison uniform. The share price plummeted by 40% as the scandal unravelled and Moggi, and various accomplices, were sacked. One Juventus director, the former player Gianluca Pessotto, tried to commit suicide from the roof of the club headquarters.

By then the 2006 World Cup was underway and one small fact revealed the reach of Moggi’s system. Besides Saudi Arabia, there was only one team at the World Cup whose squad of players was entirely home-based: Italy. Not because all the best Italian footballers played their football in Italy, but because there was pressure to pick only players from Italian clubs. Moggi realised that a club’s assets were boosted by players’ selections for the national team. He had no interest in helping foreign clubs increase their players’ values but he gleefully boasted of his ability to bounce certain home-based players into the
Azzurri
. By contrast, team managers in Spain or Britain didn’t think it either necessary or possible to lobby for their players to be included in the Italian
national side; they were even secretly grateful if their players didn’t risk injury or exhaustion with the additional games. For years there was a tacit acceptance that an Italian footballer going abroad was effectively ending his international career. It meant that Moggi’s power was increased even further because when a player picked a fight with him he could arrange their exile abroad, almost certainly ending their aspirations to play for their country. He famously argued with and humiliated two of Italian football’s brightest stars, Fabrizio Miccoli and Enzo Maresca. Both were Juventus players but were loaned out to Fiorentina and then shunted abroad: Miccoli was a small, speedy striker who had too much independence of mind for Moggi’s liking (‘Tell him to stop being an idiot’, Moggi said of Miccoli in one conversation; ‘He plays in the national team because I sent him.’) Likewise Maresca appeared too much of a maverick for the ‘lollipop man’ who liked to control all the traffic. Miccoli was sent to Benfica and Maresca to Sevilla where he scored two crisp goals in the UEFA cup final of 2006 (4–0 against Middlesbrough). Neither player, obviously, made the squad for the World Cup.

Not for the first time I got that impression that Italy is a very small country. Italians call it, disparagingly,
Italietta
, implying that the country is in the hands of a select gang of unscrupulous people who do their dirty work in the dark. The world of football was so small that Marcello Lippi – national coach at the 2006 World Cup – was twice Juventus ‘technical commissariat’ working directly with Moggi. Lippi’s son, Davide Lippi, worked with Moggi’s son, Alessandro Moggi, in the infamous GEA sporting agency. The agency represented over 200 footballers who would move incessantly, often inexplicably, from club to club at vastly inflated prices. Other leading lights of the agency were Chiara Geronzi, daughter of the President of the Capitalia Bank (one of the major backers of Lazio football club) and Francesca Tanzi of the curdled Parmalat empire. In the last two seasons the agency’s share of the entire football transfer market was 17.9%; Alessandro Moggi, alone enjoyed a colossal 12.3% of the market. The overlap of interests whereby Moggi senior could buy a player represented
by his son, or Lippi could sell a player represented by his son, meant that, as always, nothing was ever ‘disinterested’. There was always a hidden agenda to most deals which had absolutely nothing to do with football tactics and talent. Because of the practise of the
cartellino
, a player’s ‘deeds’, a human being could be divided into percentages and, for example, Juventus could own 50% of a player’s
cartellino
and another club the other 50%. When those two teams actually met the players were obviously subject to pressures from two competing masters. Juventus deliberately had an enormous squad so that frequently they could loan players to other teams; again, when those teams met, key players for the opposition would be injured or suddenly find themselves short of form.

Despite all the breathless excitement surrounding the scandal, there was actually nothing particularly astonishing in the news that non-footballers were determining the destinies of various teams. It’s often not clear at the end of a season which division your team will play in next time round because no-one’s quite sure where the Chairman has gone: he could be a fugitive in Santo Domingo (Perugia’s Gaucci), in prison (Lazio’s Cragnotti), on trial (Parma’s Tanzi), or caught red handed giving a suitcase of cash to a fixer (Genoa’s Preziosi). Because clubs are so frequently on the brink of bankruptcy or under investigation, the decision of who actually plays in which league next season is arbitrary. The tortuous process of deciding who goes up or down has become the means by which we slavish followers of Italian football get our fix of football during the long summer months when there are no matches. I don’t know what it was like before I moved to Italy, but ever since I’ve been here each summer is taken up with judicial processes to decide who plays in which league. It’s invariably not decided by the final points tally from the season before (if only). The decision rests with a strange combination of FIGC (the Italian FA) and various court decisions (and appeals). And when something which should be purely mathematical becomes arbitrary, the arbiters become incredibly powerful. Long before Moggi’s system became apparent, teams were openly ‘fished’ into
higher leagues by men in suits who were puppeteering the sport. Every summer, one or two teams would be bounced up or down on the basis not of goals scored and conceded, but because of some judicial pronouncement; furious fans would blockade ports or railways during the tourist season; politicians would pronounce their wise solutions; the saga would obsess sunbathers all summer, especially as it carried the threat that – no change here – the start of the season would have to be postponed because of all the confusion. It seemed to be a vicious circle: so many club chairmen were facing legal action that lawyers, not footballers, were the people promoting or demoting teams.

Calciopoli had exploded on to our screens just as the World Cup was getting underway. For once Italy wasn’t amongst the favourites for the competition. There was tension between the players – some of whom had unwisely tried to play down the scandal – and the disillusioned fans. But, as with 1982, the scandal seemed to have galvanised the Italian team and players appeared desperate to redeem the reputation of Italian football. In many previous tournaments players had sulked when left on the bench and managers had gone for the easy option of
catenaccio
, defensive lock-out. In 2006 something changed. The brilliant and miserly defence was still there, epitomised by those old Parma stalwarts of Gigi Buffon and Fabio Cannavaro; but this time there was the sublime passing of the ‘quarterback’, Andrea Pirlo. His ‘bodyguard’ was his AC Milan colleague, Rino Gattuso. On the wings Fabio Grosso and Gianluca Zambrotta pushed up at every opportunity, feeding lethal forwards like Luca Toni and Alberto Gilardino. When a game was heading for a draw, Lippi would daringly put on another forward (Alessandro Del Piero or Vincenzo Iaquinta) rather than pull one off. It’s true that the Italian team benefited from other traditional advantages: innate cunning (Marco Materazzi’s verbal provocation of Zinedine Zidane) and extraordinary luck (a dubious injury-time penalty against Australia and an absurdly easy route to the semi-finals). But they played muscular, technical, attacking football and, most importantly, they won without the suspicion that Moggi’s mobile had
played any part. Once again the country had shown that it was a place of contradictory extremes: in the space of a few short weeks Italian football had shown itself to be very bent and yet, at the same time, the very best in the world.

The ensuing celebrations reminded me of why, despite it all, Italy is a delightful place to be. There are few places that can rival it for a decent party. Parma is normally a rather genteel town, but suddenly it went very ‘southern’: immediately after the victory, there were revving mopeds everywhere, often carrying two or three people. There were flags covering every wall and window. Tractors from the surrounding countryside appeared in the middle of the city at midnight with dozens of people on their trailers. People danced and hugged in fountains. You bumped into old friends you hadn’t seen for years. It was so hot that residents on the third and fourth floors of houses in the narrow streets of the
centro storico
either threw down buckets of water on the grateful, dehydrated crowds or else just put their shower heads, full blast, out of the window. Hilarious chants began, my favourite being
Berlusconi porta sfiga
(the implication being that the win had happened because Berlusconi had been voted out of office). As always, the pageantry was both striking and spontaneous.

Given how much of the sport seems susceptible to corruption, I often wonder why I still bother following it all. But then, I don’t really go to the stadia just for the football. For me, the main attraction is still to listen to the hilarious insults and one-liners of the fans.
Striscioni
(the so-called ‘big strips’ or huge banners containing slogans and put-downs which fans unfurl at the kick-off) have also become, in the last decade, an integral part of the stadium experience. The sheer inventiveness and undercover intelligence required to plan
striscioni
are fascinating. Once, during a derby match between Lazio and Roma when the latter were top of the league, the Roma fans proudly unravelled a long banner saying ‘above us only sky’. Some undercover Lazio fan clearly knew what was coming and so, as soon as the Roma
striscione
was visible, the Lazio fans unfurled their own: ‘the sky is blue and white’ (the Lazio colours). Or there was the grudge match between
Verona and Napoli. During the first meeting at Verona, the home fans were typically disgusting about southerners, endlessly haranguing every Napoli player, especially foreign ones. On the return match in Naples, the teams walked out to complete, dramatic silence. Not one Naples fan raised a shout or a cheer. They simply unwound a
striscione
insulting Verona’s most famous daughter, Romeo’s squeeze: ‘Giulietta was a slapper’ it said.

One of the most famous comments about Italian football spoke of
sudditanza psicologica
(‘psychological subjection’). The phrase captured perfectly the atmosphere: it didn’t necessarily accuse referees or commentators of precise bias, but implied that there existed a sub-conscious attitude of reverence and knee-bending to the powerful. Even if there was nothing mechanical to the cheating, it suggested, there was still an instinctive propensity to favour the favourites, namely Juventus. Since ‘Calciopoli’, the mention of
sudditanza psicologica
appears almost too generous as an analysis (the subjection was all too conscious), but it still captures something of the atmosphere, and not only in football. In politics, too, there really does appear to be a ‘psychological subjection’ whereby the powerful are able to hypnotise people into accepting their own inferiority. There’s a fascinating comparison to be made between Luciano Moggi and Silvio Berlusconi: both are extraordinarily audacious and arrogant, but both are admired for having reached the summit of power. The nuanced, complicated reaction to their behaviour is fascinating: they are as often admired for getting away with it as they are criticised for any moral failings. Success itself (electoral victory or yet another
scudetto
) appears to lull millions into admiration for what they, in the face of all odds and etiquette and laws, have achieved. The leniency of punishment is a clear reflection of that attitude. Despite having sullied the national sport for years, Juventus were merely relegated to Serie B and docked 17 points for their role in the scandal; other teams involved in the scandal – Lazio, Fiorentina and Milan – were simply deducted a few points. No-one doubts that Juventus will be back with a vengeance within a year or two. Moggi is already dominating television shows all over again and
politicians queue up to defend him as a ‘loyal friend’. Everything will be forgiven and forgotten and the powerful will be returned to their rightful place.

There’s a similarity in the way most of these scandals emerge. Phone-taps are released to journalists and we all eavesdrop on what public servants really say in private. At the same time as Moggi was being revealed as the deus ex machina of Italian football, another series of phone taps had captured the curious conversations of the heir apparent to the dismantled Italian throne, Vittorio Emanuele. For 54 years he had been exiled from Italian soil, not allowed to enter Italian territory. Following a 235–19 parliamentary vote in 2002, the exile was revoked. Vittorio Emanuele arrived in Italy desperate to do business. His conversations and connections are gripping. He talks like a lecherous teenager. He’s overheard discussing prostitutes and trying to pay a sum of money to the people running the
Monopolio di Stato
to guarantee the license for videogames in his casino. Having confessed to various crimes, he is now awaiting trial and, funnily enough, is now banned from
leaving
the country.

It sounds, from the conversations, like the casino offers a ‘full package’, meaning women thrown in. The investigation reveals links to the usual suspects: political parties and television. One of the fixers in guaranteeing the license is Salvo Sottile, the spokesman of the National Alliance’s leader (and then deputy PM) Gianfranco Fini. Sottile, it emerges, has also had his phone tapped and gets regular updates about which show-girls are best in bed and, therefore, which ones Rai should employ. Men are recording laughing with Sottile about which Sicilian girl is a real
porcella
(a piglet) and which they might pass onto Flavio (thought to be Briatore, the Benetton and Formula One entrepreneur). Just as footballers are shared around and their
cartellino
put into percentages, girls are passed around between people who have optained an ‘option’. In another recording, Bruno Vespa, the indestructible talk-show host, is overheard asking permission to Sottile about who he can bring on his own show.