Juventus ultras react to points deduction and punishments for former officials: It’s worse than 2006!

All that’s left of a possible attack on leaders Napoli is mid-table and a real shame. Juventus must endure a deduction of 15 points, former club officials punished with various lengths of ban from football. What do the hardest core of fans have to say?

The Bianconeri may not have played their best this season, but the results have not been bad. After all, they were slowly creeping towards the top of the table and it looked like they might try to chase down leaders Napoli in the spring. But the opposite is true.

In fact, Juventus were punished for transfer fraud between 2018 and 2020, when members of the club’s management illegally took commissions and reported false profits to investors. The fraud was alleged to have taken place in 30 different transfers, mainly player swaps.

The Turin club faces a deduction of 15 points, which has put it in the middle of the table. As for the men who were responsible for the fraud, the punishments did not pass them by either. The worst offender was Fabio Paratici, the former sporting director who now works at Tottenham. He has been banned from football for two and a half years.

Andrea Agnelli, the former chairman, and Maurizio Arrivabene, the former chief executive, received a two-year suspension. Former Juventus vice-president Pavel Nedved is banned from football for eight months.

Ultras:: Worse than 2006!

Juventus fans are not the most united after the sentence was handed down. Several are protesting the decision to punish only the Bianconeri. However, three of the main ultras groups have come together and issued a joint statement.

“This time it’s worse than in 2006,” recalling the case when Juventus was relegated to the second league and stripped of its title because of match-fixing. “Back then we were really blameless and what was happening was done in an attempt to break our sporting domination, which was becoming embarrassing,” reads a statement from the ultras groups Drughy, Nab and Viking on the Curva Sud Juventus page.

The current situation is said to be made worse by unsavoury individuals in the management who have treated the club’s brand as an object without a soul. It is worth noting that the ultras groups have been harshly critical of Agnelli and his board for several years at least.

The problems began during the construction of the new stadium where Juventus now plays. “It wasn’t built as our home. It was built so that clients could visit and spend unthinkable sums for the experience,” the text reads.

But the worst part, he says, is not the punishment itself and the deduction of 15 points, but what will follow: ‘From now on, it will be much harder for a child to fall in love with a Juventus jersey because he will be forced to face insults and will have no way to defend himself. In 10 years’ time we will have a minimum of fans among teenagers. It’s unbelievable that the marketing strategy specialists haven’t thought of this.”

Source: Football-Italia