Italian Serie A soccer

Winning safe matches today. It’s known as ‘The Beautiful Game‘, but soccer is a clear winner when it comes to documented match-fixing scandals.

Britain, Europe and South America have all had their turn in the spotlight.

Perhaps the most notorious and and with the most far-reaching consequences was the Italian Serie A soccer scandal.

Uncovered in May 2006 by Italian police, the scandal implicated league champions Juventus, and other major teams including Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio.

Intercepted telephone calls showed examples of collusion between team managers and referee organizations.

Juventus were the champions of Serie A at the time. The teams were accused of rigging games by selecting favorable referees.

Juventus was relegated to Serie B and forced to start the next season with a 30-point deduction. Lazio and Fiorentina were also sent down to Serie B, where they too entered the next championship with ‘minus’ points against their name.

Milan avoided enforced relegation but were stripped of 44 points from the 2006 season, dropping them out of contention for a place in the elite European competitions like the Champions League and the UEFA Cup.

Other scandals concerning referees who fixed matches for gambling purposes have been uncovered in Germany (the Bundesliga scandal) and Brazil.