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The past two weeks have turned Italian football upside down, after the revelations of Juve’s Luciano Moggi’s match fixing with referees, another eight teams are being investigated.
Fiorentina, Lazio, Udinese, Siena, Messina, Arezzo and Avellino are all being investigated along with Juventus. Three of the above mention teams are being investigated for match fixing and most likely if found guilty be relegated. The other clubs remaining are either victims or accomplices of Moggi’s match fixing. At least Inter, Milan and Roma have not been mentioned and I wonder what could be going through the management’s minds of these teams. It is a very desperate situation indeed.
The new information coming out of this investigation is that Franco Carraro who resigned as chief of the Italian Football Federation as a result of this scandal knew about these wrong doings, as did the heads of the referee selection committee of the 2004/2005 season, Luigi Pairetto and Paolo Bergamo.
I am beginning to believe that the Scudetto had already been decided at the beginning of the season, not by the players but men in the boardroom. All the pressure on Milan and Inter to win the Scudetto was useless since it seems the outcome had already been decided.
Football, unfortunately, has become a sport where men with suits and ties decide the outcome of a game and not the athletes and team effort.
All the dubious plays and calls of referees this season and in other seasons seem to be making sense now. I don’t know how many times this year Juve have had final calls that always decided a game in their favour.
After the smoke clears from this enquiry I really hope that the management who were involved in this wrong-doing get penalised in a major way and not just a slap on the hand. If Moggi is found guilty, Juventus should have the Scudetto taken away from them and also be relegated.
In recent weeks I have been publishing articles about bodybuilding. This sport has a broad following abroad and also in Malta. I don’t know how many people come up to me and ask me why I choose to write about a sport that is ‘full of drugs’.
My answer has become a standard reply: give me one sport that is drug free. Football has had its fair share of drugs; on numerous occasions football players have been suspended abroad because of the use of drugs. Similarly, track and field athletes have been found to use performance enhancing drugs.
The International Federation of Bodybuilders (IFBB) perform random testing and in Malta this is also the case.
Bodybuilding is not only a sport but a lifestyle. These athletes follow very strict diets and workout routines. They are dedicated to the gym for four or five days a week. I cannot see what is so wrong about publishing an article on these athletes.
Usually, the people who criticise the sport are the ones who exert most of their energy opening the door of a toilet to do what they know best.
I will do my best to promote the sport, without any regrets. It is a sport greatly followed in Malta and it should be given its prominence like any other sport. |
