If the entire board of Juventus Turin resigns without any prior notice on a normal November evening, then that is about as significant for Italian football as the surprising fall of the government is for national politics. However, the latter is much more common. For the Gazzetta dello Sport if it is even a “Rivoluzione”, she now wrote it in large letters over the entire first page.
Andrea Agnelli, scion of a Turin dynasty with a historically mature name, has resigned after twelve years at the helm of the club. Not entirely voluntary, one has to say. His vice Pavel Nedvěd, an old player glory at the club, and managing director Maurizio Arrivabene, who was not very happy in the same role at Ferrari, are also going with him. All newspapers agree that an “epoch”, an “era” is coming to an end, one between glory and tumult.
Agnelli drafted a three-page letter for his addio, in which he reviews his successes in all lengths: nine championship titles in a row, two finals in the Champions League, several national cups and super cups, the construction of a club stadium. When Andrea Agnelli, son of Umberto, took over in 2010, Juve had just finished two sevenths in the league and the Calciopoli scandal was still on everyone’s minds. From that point of view, his record is quite impressive. Only, that’s not what will remain.
Juve’s supervisory board is closed because it had no other choice: the abundance of murky allegations and legal investigations into the club’s business conduct in recent years is so blatant that 16 people responsible from this period are risking criminal proceedings. For falsifying the balance sheet, communicating false numbers to the stock exchange, issuing false invoices for fictitious operations, preventing controls.
Agnelli admits in his letter that the company is experiencing a “delicate moment”. The most recent club balance sheet, dated the end of June 2022, shows liabilities of 254 million euros – that is an Italian record. And if investigators are to be believed, the only reason the previous books were better was because the management had systematically cheated, artificially inflating player values and posting sales proceeds for transferred employees. In truth, it was all just sham maneuvers.
The “Prisma” judicial file is full to bursting, and there is also talk of Cristiano Ronaldo
The Turin public prosecutor’s office has now completed the phase of the investigation, and a heap of material has been collected. In the “Prisma” file there are also said to be many compromising protocols of wiretapped telephone conversations. In one of them, the club’s legal officer talks to the sports director about a secret deal with Cristiano Ronaldo, who was in Juve’s service from 2018 to 2021: “There is a piece of paper that shouldn’t exist.”
What exactly it says on it will probably be negotiated in the trial as soon as the Turin court has decided in a few weeks whether to start criminal proceedings. With the unusual galactic signing of Ronaldo, it looks in hindsight that Agnelli’s rapid fall began. CR7 brought a lot of charisma, promoted jersey sales and fueled hopes of a victory in the Champions League, which one has been waiting for in Turin for so long. In the pandemic, however, the Portuguese blew up the club’s finances with his high annual salary, apparently 30 million euros. Athletic? A flop.
Agnelli then made himself in the eyes of many Juventini also unpopular because he was a particularly active advocate of a European super league. Only Real Madrid boss Florentino Pérez was busier than him. Andrea Agnelli closed his farewell letter with a saying attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche: “Those who could not hear the music thought the dancers were crazy.” What he wanted to say exactly with the quote, he will perhaps resolve in the near future.
The new president will probably be an auditor – a very fitting profile
Juventus can’t let the “delicate moment” smolder, especially since there’s a big party coming up in eight months: the club will then have been owned by the Agnellis for a hundred years. Another branch of the family is now in charge, and above all John Elkann, grandson of the legendary Gianni Agnelli and head of Exor, the family holding company. All activities are united under this company umbrella – including Juve, with a capital share of 64 percent. After all, Massimiliano Allegri should remain a coach, a dismissal would cost a lot of money. As the new club president, Exor is proposing fellow shareholders Gianluca Ferrero, who is a tax consultant and auditor by trade – not an unsuitable profile for someone tasked with putting the bookkeeping in order.
Of course, the fans would have preferred other names. No sooner had the news of Agnelli’s resignation made the rounds, with breaking news from the newspapers on the Italians’ cell phones, than the call was made on social media for a club icon to become president, one from the absolute top category, preferably Alessandro Del Piero . He currently lives mostly in California, but is the TV commentator from afar, elegant as he used to be as a player. Del Piero would be a romantic choice. But Juve probably doesn’t have a penchant for romance right now.