Milan Follows Juve Path in Italian Scandal

You can never get enough of writing about the Italian scandal that arose in Serie A three weeks ago. How could that not be, since every day brings something new to the story? The latest: Milan is also very much involved with the "fixing-matches" scandal, through referee pressure.

Not long before this week, Fabio Cannavaro and Luciano Moggi were saying that what Juventus did concerning the talks they had with the referees is a common thing among the Serie A officials. And, if you thought that the two were just trying to give Juve a break, you're dead wrong. Another series of phone recordings were released to the public by the same "Corriere della Sera" Italian newspaper, in which one of Milan's officials was having a "Moggi style conversation" with one of the top refereeing executives in the peninsula.

In other words, Leonardo Meani, after Milan lost a game in 2005 at Siena, was threatening one of the linesmen to be "very careful the next time" on a telephone call. More, Meani called the chief of Italian refereeing and said that Adriano Galliani - who, besides being the Milan president, is also the president of the Italian Football League - is "very angry with him because of the refereeing".

Still, Galliani refuses to let go of his Italian Football League presidency, saying that he is not guilty of anything and that he has a clear conscience. After Moggi declared earlier this week that he felt "stabbed in the back" by Galliani, the Italian prosecutors started taking things more seriously concerning the Milan boss. So, Milan is now in the position of having the same fate as rivals Juventus, if the FIGC officials find out that they too are implicated in the "fixing matches" scandal.

To the present time, if we were to make a short recap, the clubs most affected by the scandal are: Juventus, Fiorentina, Milan, Lazio and Inter. Of course, there are many more along them, but these are the best known. So here we are, approximately 2 months away from the start of the next Serie A season, with most of the teams endangered by the prospect of playing in the Serie B next year. So, I wonder, who has the time now to focus on the World Cup?