Web Exclusive | The World Cup | Fandom Jumping The Gun After Just One Win Celebrating Italy's World Cup success with an amnesty for alleged football wrongdoings is too soon for most By JEFF ISRAELY / Rome subscribe to TIME Printable Version email this story

Posted Wednesday, June 16, 2006: 19.19BST
Leave it to an Italian politician — and an ally of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi — to utter out loud the sinful thought that went through the collective mind of this soccer-mad (and scandal-plagued) nation. After Italy's strong World Cup debut this week, opposition member of Parliament Maurizio Paniz suggested this hypothesis should the squad bring the Cup home from Germany: an immediate, nationwide amnesty for all the clubs and individuals involved in a widening probe into alleged match-fixing in the Italian soccer league.

The thinking of course is flawed on two accounts. For starters, Paniz is getting way ahead of himself after just a single Italy victory in what would be a very long road to arrive at its fourth World Cup. (Following its convincing 2-0 opening win over Ghana, Italy faces the United States on Saturday) But more importantly, you don't need to be a saint to understand that even an inspired performance on a foreign pitch shouldn't wash away the sins back home. Italy's Minister of Sports Giovanna Melandri quickly shooed away the amnesty idea, while even a 23-year-old national team midfielder, Daniele De Rossi, saw right through this bit of Olympian relativism all'Italiana. "To not punish whoever is guilty would make for two wrongs," said the World Cup debutante. "If the proof is clear, you can't pretend like nothing happened and cancel everything in one fell swoop because we've won the World Cup. It's absurd."

Still, many Italians are doing their best to pretend (at least temporarily) that nothing has happened. It's of course comprehensible that Italy, like so many other nations, is losing itself in World Cup fever, but it comes with the side effect of helping fans to avoid facing what may amount to one of history's largest soccer scandals ever.

Juventus, Italy's most storied team with 29 top league titles, including the last two, is at the center of an investigation into systematic match fixing and referee tampering. The Turin club announced a new board of directors on Wednesday (staging it at one of the recent Winter Olympic venues) in an attempt to wipe its slate clean after the departure of Luciano Moggi, its general manager, who stands at the center of the scandal after intercepted phone calls revealed a longstanding effort to influence the assignment of referees in league play. Juventus will find out in the next few weeks if a specially assigned sports tribunal has knocked them down to the second or even third division.

The next most successful Italian club in recent years, AC Milan, owned by Berlusconi, is also under investigation along with several other first and second division teams. A series of criminal investigation from Naples to Turin are also underway that involve alleged match fixing and the high-stakes world of player transfers. Five Juventus players are on the Italian national squad, including goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon, who was questioned by magistrates just before the World Cup in a sports-betting probe. Italy coach Marcello Lippi was a former Juventus coach who worked closely with Moggi, while Lippi's son works for the sports agency company also under investigation that is run by Moggi's son.

But now is not the moment to remind us, Italian fans say as their national team joins the World Cup spectacle. If anything, the Azzurri supporters wouldn't mind recalling an older scandal. In the early 1980s, several top league players were suspended from competition in a match-fixing and betting probe. One was a striker named Paolo Rossi, who returned to play just in time to become the hero of the 1982 squad that brought home the nation's last World Cup. It's a historical analogy that is bittersweet, but most of all — with just one win under Italy's belt — premature.

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