Allemandi Case


The Allemandi case was one of the major scandals in the history of Italian soccer and one of the first in order of time, having occurred before the establishment of the “one-round” Serie A. The case involved the revocation of the Scudetto won by Torino in the 1926-1927 season and has been the subject of debate due to ambiguities in the available documentation. The controversial outcome of the court case led, in the following decades, to several attempts to reopen the investigation into the matter, but so far all were unsuccessful.

The chronicle of the scandal

The affair revolves around a combination orchestrated by Guido Nani, Torino's auditor as well as a personal friend of Granata president Enrico Marone Cinzano, and Francesco Gaudioso, a Sicilian student at the Polytechnic University in the Piedmontese capital who was on good terms with several Juventus players, including in particular promising fullback Luigi Allemandi; Gaudioso and Allemandi were both staying at a guesthouse in Piazzetta Madonna degli Angeli.
According to the chronicle of the time, Dr. Nani agreed with Gaudioso for the latter to hijack in favor of the “Toro” the result of the Derby della Mole scheduled for June 5, 1927, in exchange for 35,000 liras to be distributed to the people involved in the scam; 25,000 liras were given in advance to the student, while the remaining 10,000 liras agreed upon would be delivered after the Granata won the scudetto. The derby ended with a 2 to 1 comeback victory for Torino and about a month later, on July 3, the “Toro” became champions of Italy;
For unclear reasons, however, Nani allegedly refused to pay the remaining 10,000 lire; as a result, Gaudioso decided to reveal the existence of the combined sua sponte to Renato Ferminelli, the Turin correspondent of the newspapers Lo Sport of Milan and Il Tifone of Rome, as well as a lodger in the same student hostel: the self-report aimed to induce the Turin manager to pay his due for fear that a scandal would break out.
Having sniffed out the scoop, Ferminelli, who was moreover on bad terms with Torino, gradually gathered Gaudioso's confidences and published in the two magazines he worked for, between July 29 and September 22, 1927, a series of articles with allusive titles, in which he sibylline-described the Granata club's malfeasance. According to the reporter, Marone Cinzano was also implicated in the misdeed as the author of a telegram addressed to Nani with the mysterious meaning, "Suspend parcel delivery."

The judicial proceedings

The sports process

The report triggered an investigation by the Italian Football Federation in September. At that time, at the head of the FIGC was Leandro Arpinati, a Fascist hierarch as well as podestà of the city of Bologna, who was assisted by the secretary general Giuseppe Zanetti. After a series of investigations carried out in Piedmont, Lombardy, and Sicily, the two executives conducted several interrogations.
The first witness was Ferminelli himself, who explained that Gaudioso had told him that the players involved in the affaire were Juventus players Federico Munerati and Piero Pastore, who had distinguished themselves negatively in the derby della Mole. Gaudioso's turn then came: the student denied what had happened at first, but later decided to confess and named Nani; the Turin adviser confirmed the bribery had taken place, specified that he did not know who the players involved were, and added that the entire Piedmontese club was informed of the combine, except that he later denied it and explained that he was the only manager responsible for the misdeed. Gaudioso, moreover, after declaring that he had given the money to Munerati, Pastore and his friend Allemandi, claimed that he had kept the money for himself and finally recanted further, accusing Allemandi alone. The three aforementioned players were questioned: it was learned that Munerati had received a case of wine and liquor as a gift from Granata president Cinzano, while Pastore was accused of having a bet on the Juventus defeat.

Judgment of the first instance

The judicial verdict came on November 4, 1927, at the end of an emergency meeting of the Federal Council that had begun the day before at the Casa del Fascio in Bologna, during which the decisive talks were held with Gaudioso, Nani, Allemandi, Munerati, and Pastore. The Direttorio Federale decreed the revocation of the Scudetto to Torino for proven bribery of unspecified Juventus players on the occasion of the June 5 stracittadina, as well as the disqualification for life for the members of Torino's Board of Directors in office in May and June 1927. No action was taken against Juventus, however, since the management of the Bianconeri club had been a victim, not an active participant, in the misdeed.
The Directory, moreover, ruled that the result of the match under investigation and the final league standings would not be changed and that the Scudetto would remain perpetually “unassigned,” the only case in Italian soccer until a second episode was repeated in 2005. Arpinati motivated the decision by implying that other matches, besides the one at the center of the investigation, appeared to have been falsified and that therefore the irregularity of the championship in toto had been established. The title, as a result, was not given to second-place Bologna, as FIGC and IOC regulations stipulated, nor was it given to third-place Juventus, which would have become first in the standings if it had obtained a forfeited victory in the incriminated derby.

Society

  • Torino FC: Revocation of the 1926-1927 Scudetto and payment of 10,000 liras for investigation expenses.
  • Enrico Marone Cinzano : disqualified for life.
  • Eugenio Vogliotti : disqualified for life.
  • Pietro Zanoncelli : disqualified for life.
  • Guido Nani : disqualified for life.
  • Another 17 members of the Torino Board of Directors in the months of May–June 1927: disqualification for life.
  • 2 other members of the Torino Board of Directors in the months after June 1927: disqualification for 2 years.

    Judgment of the second instance

In an interview with the Gazzetta dello Sport on November 6, Arpinati announced that the Juventus player involved in the crime was Luigi Allemandi and that he intended to disqualify him for life. Allemandi, who had moved from Juventus to Inter in the summer, prepared a lengthy defense brief in which he emphasized his excellent performance in the incriminated match and disputed the reliability of Gaudioso's words against him, but Arpinati rejected the request for acquittal on Nov. 21, citing as material evidence of the wrongdoing the alleged fragments of a letter in which the player, addressing Gaudioso, allegedly claimed payment of the initial fee of 25,000 lire; this missive was allegedly found by the president himself following an inspection at the guesthouse in Piazzetta Madonna degli Angeli. On the same day, Munerati and Pastore, the other two Bianconeri involved in the investigation, were also lightly punished: in fact, Arpinati sanctioned both of them with a formal reprimand, respectively, for the gift they received from the president of Torino and for the transgression related to soccer betting.
According to the official version of the trial, Allemandi said at first that he did not remember any message, then admitted that he had written a letter to Gaudioso about the nascent affaire but did not remember its exact contents, and when he asked to be allowed to read the text of the missive in person, Arpinati refused that concession, believing that the footballer's guilt had now been proven, as well as rejecting the request for a confrontation between Allemandi and Gaudioso. Later, Allemandi supplemented his memorial by claiming that the content of the letter to Gaudioso had been decontextualized, as it did not refer to an implication in the scandal on his part, but rather Munerati and Pastore's.

Society

Confirmation of first instance ruling.

Executives

Confirmation of the judgment of the first instance.

Players

  • Luigi Allemandi : disqualified for life.
  • Federico Munerati : official recall.
  • Piero Pastore : official recall.

    The criminal trial and the two amnesties

On November 9, 1927, the directors of Torino sanctioned by the Federation issued an official communiqué in which, claiming their extraneousness to the bribery work carried out by Nani, they announced that they would present a petition to the FIGC Directorate to ascertain individual responsibility. Arpinati nipped the initiative in the bud and suggested that they take legal action. Marone Cinzano and other members of the club filed, therefore, a libel suit against Nani, and on January 13, 1928, a trial on the Allemandi affaire was held in the criminal courts.
In the Bologna court, the auditor repeated that he had orchestrated the malfeasance on his own, exonerating everyone except secretary Zanoncelli, who had given him 20,000 lire for the buying and selling of the match. Drawn in, Zanoncelli testified that he had borrowed the money from vice-president Vogliotti, without explaining, however, the real reason for the request then defended himself by saying that Gaudioso had, in turn, contacted him to propose a combine before April 3, 1927, first leg derby and that, after talking it over with Nani, he had decided not to go ahead with the scam; it was then the auditor who negotiated independently with the student on the occasion of the return match, except for later asserting before the members that he had received authorization to do so from Marone Cinzano himself. Finally, federal president Arpinati intervened and explained that he had condemned the entire Torino board of directors because he was convinced for various reasons that Nani had not acted alone, and Granata president Marone Cinzano, who proved with documentary evidence that the infamous “Suspend package delivery” message did not conceal anything irregular, but referred to commercial titles.
The next day Marone Cinzano and other associates, believing themselves satisfied with Nani's statements that exonerated everyone except Zanoncelli, pledged to drop the defamation charges; Zanetti's opinion, however, was that the waiver took place “because the evidence provided to the Tribunal by the federal leaders was too clear, evidence such as to admit no doubt as to the guilt of the punished.” In any case, on February 3, 1928, the FIGC announced, applying the amnesty decree of August 26, 1927, the cancellation of the disqualifications of Torino's directors, except, however, for those of Marone Cinzano and Vogliotti, as well as those of Nani and Zanoncelli; for the Direttorio Federale the Torino president and his deputy would not have proven their “complete extraneousness” to the offense, unlike the other members of the Granata management.
The quenelle finally came to an end on April 22, 1928, when, on the occasion of Christmas in Rome, CONI president Lando Ferretti promulgated an amnesty aimed at all sportsmen and sportswomen affected by disciplinary sanctions: among the beneficiaries were Allemandi himself and the four Torino managers still under disqualification. Zanetti asserted that this measure was granted solely because of Allemandi's mother's heartfelt pleas for clemency, addressed to Ferretti, the Duce, Prince Umberto, and even the king of Italy, although the footballer, in the decades that followed, repeatedly disputed the outcome of the scandal, always proclaiming himself innocent.