Platini and Pescante Order Action Against Match-Fixing in Italy

UEFA president Michel Platini, along with International Olympic Committee (IOC) vice-president Mario Pescante, have urged action to tackle the illegal betting scandal in Italian soccer. 

Platini said that “finally someone is doing something” with regards to the issue overhanging the sport in Italy, adding: “We had already forecasted it a few years ago, now national and international authorities have been aware.

“It’s good. Late is better than never. UEFA can help, but we are not the policemen,” Platini said in reference to the bribery allegations engulfing Italian football.

On Wednesday, the Italian football federation banned former Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi, involved in a criminal trial into the match-rigging, and ex-Juve director Antonio Giraudo from soccer for life. Moggi had already been banned for five years following the 2006 match-fixing scandal which saw the Italian soccer giants relegated and stripped of two Serie A titles.

The ban comes as a new Italian match-fixing scandal has generated more negative headlines for the country’s soccer chiefs. At least 16 people, including former player Beppe Signori, were last week arrested due to illegal betting on primarily Serie B matches. Prosecutors in Cremona are investigating 18 matches. Signori was questioned and later released.

But the scandal has widened to include Serie A matches. Austrian betting firm Skysport365 informed Italian prosecutors of unusually high bets of millions of dollars placed on some games in the top-flight last season.

Mario Pescante, Italy’s vice president of the International Olympic Committee, has expressed his concerns, stating: “In our football there is the hand of organised crime, which certainly makes us understand the system we are talking about: Mafia, Camorra, Sacra Corona Unita, which constitute the rotten system in our country.”

Pescante, who is leading Rome’s bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics, added: “It is not a small incident, it is a serious phenomenon, bigger in Italy than in other countries.”

The scandal has attracted criticism from Serie A TV rights holder Sky Italia, whose CEO Tom Mockridge said earlier in the week|: “This show outside the pitch is demeaning to say the least. We have invested millions of euros in the authenticity of football these years. 

“Only with a serious change of course we will ensure again these TV rights.”