Free The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones Page B

Cosmi continued, was expected to win the league’s top scorer award: his previous seasonal highest tally was eight goals, but that year he scored 28. ‘They came to an agreement,’ said Cosmi, ‘they lost 4-3, it was enough that he scored three goals. Things from another world. Penalties were showered around, games finished 5-4. The south is like that, if they want someone to win the top-scorer award …’Cosmi had been caught by surprise, thinking that the cameras weren’t rolling, but he had only revealed what everyone had long suspected.
    More serious revelations were to come. Juan Sebastian Veron was probably the best player in Serie A. He had won the Uefa and Italian cups with Parma, and the Scudetto with Lazio. A shaven-headed Argentinian with a goatee, he plays in the hole between midfield and strikers, and often scores from very long range. If defenders then close him down, he invariably, casually, slips the ball to an attacker. Then it was suggested that Veron had been playing under a false passport (which was true, though Veron was entirely absolved of any involvement). As the season went on, more and more names came out, mostly South Americans, accused of the same thing: of having found fictitious Italian grandparents to adopt them and ease their passage into Serie A. There is a ceiling to the number of ‘extra-community’ players a team is allowed to field, so once a player is Italianised they’re automatically more attractive and their market value rises by some 30%. The crime itself wasn’t particularly serious, but in footballing terms the scandal was seismic. Not for the first time, it appeared that Italian football was slightly crooked. Whilst some teams had been adhering to the rules, others had been wilfully importing and fielding players who had no right to play. Clubs, it emerged, had either forged passports, or not even bothered to look at them. Accusations and libel writs flew in all directions. Fabio Capello, coach of Roma and therefore sworn rival of the other Roman team, Lazio, suggested that Lazio’s historic Scudetto of 1999–2000 was therefore a con. More subtly, the fact that some thirty players were caught up in the scandal added to the already fragile sense of the superiority of football all’italiana : Serie A, it was obvious, was reliant not on native play-makers but on imported stars.
    Since so many teams had fielded illegitimate players, applying the law and its sporting penalties (deducting points from offending teams, banning players or imposing hefty fines) would have meant invalidating many results from Serie A. The problem was so widespread that no one quite knew what to do: whether to goto the civil, rather than sporting, magistrates; whether to penalise teams or rather blame and ban the players themselves. Veron himself, at the centre of the row, began to get increasingly petulant, and the engine of the Lazio team suddenly found himself unable to get out of second gear on the pitch. The irritating law, it was obvious, was making life difficult for everyone, so a solution was found. It was a solution I was to see used frequently in Italy. The reasoning goes something like this: ‘If so many people are guilty, let’s change the law and play people “onside”. To prosecute the ocean of offenders would lead to utter collapse, because there are simply so many of them. So let’s not prosecute.’ The solution, as always, was to fudge right and wrong, to change the rules suddenly to suit the rulers. Thus, mid-season, the law limiting the number of foreign players allowed to play was wiped out, allowing teams to field whoever they wanted. Those who had been honest were penalised for not having been more furbi ; anyone who had played by the book, buying Italian players and checking foreigners’ passports, was suddenly at a disadvantage. It would have been fairer literally to have moved the goalposts.
    Of course, days after the ruling was changed, a foreigner scored a vital