Fall of the Old Lady

A series of financial scandals have rocked Juventus, Italy's most glamorous football club. But is the trouble in Turin symptomatic of a deeper rot in the beautiful game?

- Tobias Jones

On 20 January this year, the Italian football association shocked fans throughout the world by docking 15 points from its most iconic club, Juventus, in the middle of the season. Juventus suddenly dropped seven places in the Serie A table. The club was accused of falsely inflating the value of players in transfer dealings and, in a separate case, of lying to shareholders. The Italian football association (FIGC) accused Juventus of "repeated violations of the principle of truth".

In a country renowned for provincialism, Juventus is a uniquely national team. Based in the northern city of Turin, the club - nicknamed la Vecchia Signora ("the Old Lady") - has about 8 million supporters, far more than its nearest rivals Milan and Inter. But in the wake of repeated scandals, the club has also become a symbol for the downfall of Italian football.

At the centre of the club's current crisis were a series of suspicious transfer deals. In 2021, the regulatory body overseeing Italian football had raised concerns with the FIGC about 62 player transfers between clubs in Italy and abroad; 42 of those involved Juventus. The club is accused of having relied on a system whereby two clubs swapped players for exactly the same amount and magically improved their balance sheets - without actually spending or banking any money. The value of the players being exchanged was allegedly inflated by both sides of the deal to show