Calciopoli
Calciopoli was a sports scandal in Italy's top professional association football league Serie A, and to a lesser extent, Serie B. The scandal centered on the manipulation of referee appointments to favor certain clubs during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons. It was uncovered in May 2006, when a number of telephone tappings showed relations between clubs' executives and referee organizations, being accused of selecting favourable referees. This implicated league champions Juventus and several other clubs, including Fiorentina, Lazio, AC Milan, and Reggina. In July 2006, Juventus was stripped of the 2004–05 Serie A title, which was left unassigned, and was downgraded to last place in the 2005–06 Serie A, as the title was subsequently awarded to Inter Milan, and relegated to Serie B. Initially Fiorentina and Lazio were also relegated though this was later overturned on appeal, meanwhile all five clubs received points penalties for the following season. In July 2006, the Italy national football team won the 2006 FIFA World Cup, beating the France national football team 5–3 in a penalty shoot-out following a 1–1 draw at the conclusion of extra time; eight Juventus players were on the football pitch in the 2006 FIFA World Cup final, five for Italy and three for France. Many prison sentences were handed out to sporting directors and referees but all were acquitted in 2015, after almost a decade of investigation, due to the expiration of the statute of limitations, except for a one-year sentence confirmed to referee Massimo De Santis.
A subsequent investigation, dubbed Calciopoli bis, implicated many other clubs, including Brescia, Cagliari, ChievoVerona, Empoli, Inter Milan, Palermo, Udinese, and Vicenza; they were not put on trial due the statute of limitations. Although popularly known as a match-fixing scandal and focused on Juventus, no match-fixing violations were found within the intercepted calls for Juventus, there were no requests for specific referees, no demands for favours, no conversations between Juventus directors and referees were found, and the season was deemed fair and legitimate. The club was absolved from any wrongdoings in the first verdict, while its sporting executives Luciano Moggi and Antonio Giraudo were found guilty and banned for life six months before their previous five-year ban expired; they were absolved on charges related to sporting fraud, and appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, once they exhausted their appeals in Italy's courts. Other club executives were found guilty but did not receive lifetime bans and returned to their previous or new positions, among them Milan vice-president Adriano Galliani and Lazio president Claudio Lotito, both of whom retained or gained important positions in Lega Serie A. Most referees and their assistants were either found not guilty or had their sentences annulled due to the statute of limitations; only Massimo De Santis and Salvatore Racalbuto were convicted.
Italy's Court of Appeal rejected damage claims from Atalanta, Bologna, Brescia, and Lecce due to the fact that no match in the 2004–05 championship was altered by non-football episodes. This led Juventus to request €444 million in damage claims, later updated to €551 million, to both Inter Milan and the FIGC, restoration of the 2005 scudetto, and the officialization of the 2006 scudetto; all its appeals were either rejected due to the courts declaring themselves not competent or due to technical issues rather than juridical issues. Attempts for peace talks between Juventus, the FIGC, and other clubs did not improve relations, and the case remains much debated and controversial. Juventus returned to Serie A after winning the 2006–07 Serie B championship and in the UEFA Champions League the following two years but then struggled with two consecutive seventh places, before starting a record nine-consecutive league titles run, two Champions League finals, and four consecutive domestic doubles. Milan won the 2006–07 UEFA Champions League but only won the 2010–11 Serie A championship and struggled throughout the 2010s until winning the 2021–22 Serie A. Inter Milan started a cycle of five-consecutive league titles, culminating in the treble with the 2009–10 UEFA Champions League win but then struggled throughout the 2010s, with Napoli and Roma as Juventus' main rivals, until winning the 2020–21 Serie A during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy and 2023–24 Serie A. In April 2021, all three clubs found themselves united in the European Super League project. The most recent league winner outside the three of them is Napoli in 2023 and 2025.
Recent developments in the aftermath of the scandal have focused on the intersection of Italian sports justice and European law. Following his lifetime ban, former Juventus executive Antonio Giraudo filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights, challenging the compatibility of the 2006 summary proceedings with the European Convention on Human Rights. Investigative reconstructions of the case highlight how previously omitted wiretaps and the 2015 acquittals in ordinary courts have reframed the debate over the "Moggi system," suggesting a more complex ecosystem of institutional relations rather than isolated manipulation.
Etymology and origins
The name Calciopoli, which would be literally translated as "Footballville", was made up by the media by analogy with Tangentopoli, which is the name that was given to some corruption-based clientelism in Italy during the Mani pulite investigation in the early 1990s; in that case, the neologism was formed by combining the Italian word tangente and the Greek word polis, originally referring to Milan as "the city of bribes". It could be adapted in English as "Footballgate", by analogy with the Watergate scandal.The scandal first came to light as a consequence of investigations of prosecutors on the Italian football agency GEA World founded by Luciano Moggi's son Alessandro. The leak of news that triggered Calciopoli in May 2006 did not start from the major sports or investigative press but rather came from Il Romanista, a newspaper entirely dedicated to Roma supporters, and whose founder Riccardo Luna continued to boast of being "the first to reveal the intrigues of Calciopoli". The first major sport newspaper to anticipate and report the scandal was Milan-based La Gazzetta dello Sport, which also anticipated the subsequent court rulings. Transcripts of recorded telephone conversations soon thereafter published in major Italian newspapers suggested that Juventus general director Luciano Moggi and Juventus CEO Antonio Giraudo had conversations with several Italian football officials to influence referee designations during the 2004–05 Serie A season. Notable referees, such as Pierluigi Collina and Roberto Rosetti, were among the few referees to emerge unscathed from the scandal.
Investigation and sporting sentences
On 8 May 2006, Franco Carraro resigned from the presidency of the FIGC, the body responsible for selecting Italy's FIFA World Cup national team; he remained a member of the UEFA's executive committee and as a FIFA official. Juventus' entire board of directors resigned on 11 May, while Moggi resigned shortly after Juventus won the 2005–06 Serie A championship on 14 May, saying: "They killed my soul." Giraudo stated: "We take our leave, but you will see that bandits will come after us." On the Borsa Italiana, Italy's stock market, Juventus shares had lost about half their 9 May value by the 19 May. Massimo De Santis was due to be Italy's refereeing representative at the 2006 World Cup; he was barred by the FIGC after coming under investigation. Roberto Rosetti remained untainted by the scandal, and was chosen as one of the twenty-one 2006 FIFA World Cup officials.The scandal drew attention to many potential conflicts of interest within Italian football. Inter Milan provided sponsorship to the Serie A through Gruppo TIM, as Inter Milan vice-president Marco Tronchetti Provera was TIM director. Silvio Berlusconi, Milan's president and owner, was Prime Minister of Italy and owner of TV company Mediaset through Fininvest, while Adriano Galliani, as the vice president and CEO of Milan, also served as the president of Serie A. Juventus has been historically owned by the Agnelli family since the 1930s, one of the most powerful and rich family in Italy, which controls, alongside the Elkann family, one of the greatest holding company in the world Exor, the largest automobile manufacturer in Italy FIAT, their members have held political offices, Umberto Agnelli has been briefly the president of Italian Football Federation in the '60s and also FIAT has been the sponsor of the FIGC and also of the Association of Italian Referee with the conflict of interest associated. In addition to allegations of corruption and sporting fraud by owners, executives, players, referees, and league officials, Aldo Biscardi, the host of Italy's most popular football show, resigned amid allegations that he collaborated with Moggi to boost the club's image on television, compared to the Milanese side. Then-FIGC president Carraro was a former president of Milan and politically close to Berlusconi, while its successor in the four months as Extraordinary Commissioner Guido Rossi was a former member of Inter Milan's board of directors and minority Inter Milan shareholder. Journalist Christian Rocca commented: "I wonder why the Italian media say every possible abomination on the potential conflict of interest of Adriano Galliani, president of Lega and executive of Milan, but don't use the same criterion towards Guido Rossi, extraordinary commissioner of the Italian Football Federation and former executive of Moratti's Inter Milan from 1995 to 1999, and of Gigi Agnolin, appointed commissioner of referees but still former executive of Roma from 1995 to 2000." Federal prosecutor Carlo Porceddu, a critic of the trial, especially for its decision of revoking Juventus' title by assigning it to Inter Milan, stated in 2017 that Rossi appointed friends, one of whom was on Inter Milan's board of directors.
In all, magistrates in Naples formally investigated 41 people, and looked into 19 Serie A matches from the 2004–05 season and 14 Serie A matches from the 2005–06 season. Prosecutors in Turin examined the Juventus chairman Antonio Giraudo over transfers, suspected falsified accounts, and tax evasion. Prosecutors in Parma investigated Gianluigi Buffon, the national team goalkeeper, as well as Antonio Chimenti, Enzo Maresca, and Mark Iuliano, for suspected gambling on Serie A matches; all were cleared in the same year. After the first penalties were handed out, more clubs were looked at for possible links to the scandal. Lecce, Messina, and Siena were also investigated as prosecutors continued to analyze transcripts of telephone calls.