ITALIAN COACH Cesare Prandelli may have touched a provocative, rhetorical note when he suggested yesterday that Italy might drop out of this month’s European Championship finals in Poland and Ukraine but his words nonetheless give some indication of the mood in the “Azzurri” camp.
Prandelli’s problem is simple. Every time he sits down to a press conference at the Italian team training camp at Coverciano, Florence, he finds himself fielding questions about everything other than football.
This has been another of those traumatic weeks in Italian football when the nation’s favourite game has once again been overwhelmed by off the field, judicial events despite the side losing a friendly 3-0 to Russia last night in Zurich.
The re-emergence of the “Last Bet” match fixing and betting enquiry last Monday, with its 19 arrests just 10 days before Euro 2012, has upset all of Prandelli’s best laid plans.
This investigation, too, arrived literally on his doorstep with police staging a dawn raid at Coverciano to serve a judicial notification to Zenit St Petersburg left back, Domenico Criscito. Not surprisingly, Criscito was immediately dropped from the national squad.
Nor was it any surprise that the Italian football media have spent all week asking Prandelli questions about bank accounts and betting syndicates rather than about zonal defence or his current 4-3-1-2 line-up.
Prandelli’s problems were then exacerbated when it emerged that amongst the voluminous “Last Bet” documentation was a reference by Turin Finance police to Italy and Juventus goalkeeper, Gigi Buffon.
The Turin police had contacted the Cremona-based, Last Bet investigators to find out if they had come across Buffon in their various wire-taps and searches.
The problem about Buffon is that the Bank of Italy drew the attention of the Finance police to the fact that between January and September of 2010, Buffon had written 14 cheques worth a total of €1.585 million, made out to a certain “Alfieri, Massimo”, who just happens to run a “tabaccheria” with a betting licence.
Buffon is not under investigation but, inevitably, eyebrows have been raised about the €1.5 million with many speculating that Buffon, too, has been betting heavily, perhaps on football matches. Were this to be the case, then the player could be facing a lengthy Federation suspension since professional footballers in Italy are prohibited from betting on any Fifa, Uefa or Italian Federation games.
One of the great ironies of Buffon’s situation is that news of his €1.5 million cheques hit the media just the day after he had issued a stinging attack on the irresponsible and inaccurate way in which much of the Italian media had “sensationalised” the Last Bet arrests.
Furthermore, he appeared to accuse various investigating magistrates of leaking vital information to the press, which of course they often do.
As if all that were not bad enough, Prandelli has an “investigative” cloud hanging over another Juventus player, namely central defender Leonardo Bonucci whose alleged involvement in Last Bet goes back two seasons to his days as a Bari player. If he receives an avviso di garanzia as did Criscito, will he too be dropped from Poland-bound squad?
Furthermore, just to keep the kettle boiling nicely, Criscito himself on Thursday gave a series of media interviews in which he complained about the way he had been treated, arguing that the national team authorities had been a bit hasty in dumping him, given that as yet has not even been charged let alone convicted of any misdoing.
He has merely been informed that he is under investigation in relation to a betting scam during his days as a Genoa player.
All of which would explain the exasperated tones of team coach Prandelli. In an interview with Italian state broadcaster, RAI, he said yesterday: “If people told us that, for the good of football, it would be better if we didn’t go to the European Championships, then that wouldn’t be a problem, certainly not for me.
“I think there are other more important things and I don’t like this present atmosphere of a crusade . . . I just want to talk about football but with all that is going on around here at the moment, I’m forced to talk about other things”
Uefa had no official comment to make on Prandelli’s statement but a reply did come from the Italian Home Affairs Minister, Anna Maria Cancellieri who expressed her opposition to Italy dropping out of Euro 2012, saying: “The European Championships are an important event, Go there, play, play well and Forza Italia”.
Who is to say that after such a polemical build-up, Italy will not repeat 2006 when the Calciopoli investigation paralleled Italy’s World Cup win.
Italy to win Euro 2012, then?
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