How mafia and corruption scandals rocked Italian football

High-profile cases of corruption, ticket touting and match fixing have led Italians to lose faith in the beautiful game, writes criminologist Anna Sergi.

Football could be considered Italy’s most popular sport, with world-class teams worth billions attracting a dedicated following across the country. But more than that, football shapes the nation’s collective identity, bringing people from the smallest village to the biggest city together in their love for “the beautiful game”.

But over the past decade, media investigations and research have uncovered an unseemly lack of virtue within the industry. Mafia infiltration and corruption have come to characterise Italian football to the point that malpractice, deviance and criminal behaviour might seem to be the norm.

Monopolization of sport: Funds from Europe’s Champions League cement domestic domination

By Steve Menary

Only three new clubs enter this season’s Champions League, the latest edition of the Diversity Index shows and also reveals that the current prizing system fuels competitive imbalances and domestic hegemony.

The 2018/19 edition of the UEFA Champions League will see the competition move nearer to a closed league as the number of clubs making their debut dwindles to just three.

Read more on PlaytheGame website

Manchester City’s plan for global domination

Football has already been transformed by big money – but the capitalists behind Man City are trying to build a global corporation that will change the game for ever | GILES TREMLETT in The Guardian 

(December 15) – On 19 December 2009, Pep Guardiola stood and wept in the middle of Zayed Sports City Stadium in Abu Dhabi. The 38-year-old Barcelona manager clasped a hand across his face as his body gave way to huge, shoulder-heaving sobs. Zlatan Ibrahimović, the club’s towering Swedish striker, wrapped a tattooed arm around Guardiola’s neck and then gave him a vigorous push in order to jolt him out of it. But Guardiola could not stop.

Football: EURO 2016 new front for NATO’s hybrid war on Russia

Russia’s threatened disqualification from the Euro 16 Football Championship over fan violence fits into a pattern of systematically demonizing Russia in the Western media on a host of other issues | FINIAN CUNNINGHAM*

For the past two years, Russia has been blamed for annexing countries, invading others and threatening the entire geopolitical architecture of European security.

Outrageous! Ukraine asks UEFA for permission to use Nazi SS symbols

Photo shows “patriotic” Nazi SS Galician banner in in the Lviv Arena stadium in Ukraine

These articles were originally published by this blog on December 3, 2014 and are being republished on the occasion of EURO 2016 now underway in France, in which Ukraine is competing. Violent clashes took place on June 11 between English and Russian hooligans in Marseille. (Note: On June 14, in a brazen political maneouvre, EUFA arbitrarily levied Russia with a suspended disqualification and €150,000 fine as French authorities set to deport up to 50 Russian fans. No action was taken against England.)

“We have yet to win back our symbols and to uphold them.” Condemn this growing fascism!

Oleksandr Hlyvynskyi, press attaché of Ukraine’s national football team, asked UEFA for permission to use “SS-Galicia” logos Hlyvynskyi said this during a roundtable discussion on the subject “The patriotic dimension of football: Fan culture.”

The politics of futbol: When Real Madrid was the fascist Franco’s team

Following the club’s 11th European Cup win, an 1985 article from the archive of History Today explains why the shadow of fascism hangs over Real’s stellar history. During the Franco years, the ostracised regime used football to initiate a gradual road towards acceptance of the the entry of Spain into NATO in 1982 and the EEC in 1985. The Catalans and the Basques, however, used football as a means of popular anti-fascist protest | DUNCAN SHAW (photos and captions added by TS)

On June 21st, 1964, an ecstatic crowd of 120,000, awash in a sea of red and yellow, cheered and applauded Generalissimo Francisco Franco as he stood up to leave the Madrid summer evening gathering. This was no mass rally of political affirmation that the dictator was leaving, but a football match. Spain had just beaten the Soviet Union in the Final of the European Nations’ Cup; so much more than just a football victory: a triumph for international co-operation over Cold War hostility, but, conversely, perhaps also a triumph over the old Red enemies of the Civil War.

IAAF: Who is the ‘real’ Sebastian Coe?

Comment: The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), headed by its newly-elected president Sebastian Coe, has suspended Russia’s track and field federation by a 22-1 vote. The vote came within one week of a controversial report issued by the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA) citing Russia – and no other country – for doping violations under the pretext of high ideals. The meeting in London was hastily convened by Coe, himself a vice-president of the IAAF since 2007. ANDREAS SELLIAAS* analyses Coe’s compromised background and comments on his mounting challenges. Originally posted on this blog on August 20, 2015

Will newly elected athletics president Seb Coe (photo) get the IAAF back on its feet? | Andy Miah/Flickr

(August 20) — Lord Sebastian Coe was Wednesday elected as new president of theInternational Association of Athletics Federations ahead of Sergey Bubka. Winning 115-92 was a comfortable, but not overwhelming victory. But for the former middle distance ace and successful leader of the 2012 London Olympics this was a great day.

Fighting talk: Maradona wants FIFA boss job to kick out ‘mafia’

“I am strong, they are not going to break me,” said Maradona | Photo: teleSUR

(30 July) – “I am running for FIFA. Truly. I have to fight against the mafia. I have to fight the mafia that is still within FIFA,” said the soccer legend.

Legendary Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona said that players support his bid for FIFA presidency, which he said he will use to “fight against the mafia within.”

Geopolitics is behind the FIFA scandal as the war against Russia enters a new front

There is no question that there is a lot of corruption inside the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). Bribes and behind the scene deals have been going on for decades. The sport federation is responsible for the most watched and popular sport in the world and is part of a lucrative business venture that has a lot of soft power and prestige attached to it. MAHDI DARIUS NAZEMROAYA*

Why the United States is targeting FIFA

Systemic corruption is quite common among the world’s political, financial, and economic power-brokers. Every other political, financial, and economic entity in the US is entangled in some form of systemic corruption, including professional sports leagues and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA); yet the US has not pursued violators from those entities. Above all, what is suspicious about the US intervention into FIFA politics is that whenever the US intervenes internationally, claiming to be concerned about democracy, good governance, and/or human rights, that intervention proves to be duplicitous. Professor GEORGE WRIGHT* on the US-dictated Anglo-American/UEFA alliance.