This is The Guardian.

The Guardian Archive Long Read.

Hello, I'm Tobias Jones, an author and journalist living in Italy.

I wrote, I feel like I'm selling my soul inside the crisis at Juventus, published in 2023.

This is the story of why Juventus, Italy's biggest football club, was docked 15 points in the 22, 23

Seria season for, as the prosecutor said, repeated violations of the principle of truth. The club was

shown to be incessantly trading players at inflated prices to cover up losses of hundreds of millions of

euros.

So I was drawn to this story because, as well as loving football, especially Italian football,

I'm particularly interested in what happens in the murky background of that glamorous sport.

And one of the key tenets of journalism is follow the money.

And following the money in Italian football takes you to some very surprising places.

It was shown that Juventus was spending 92% of its revenue stream on players' wages.

And they were buying and selling players, not according to whether they were good footballers, but according to how

much capital gains they could put into their accounts. So this was a story that was a window

into a league, Seria A, that used to be the richest league in the world, and which is now

outdated and indebted. So it's a sort of richest-to-rag story.

So in the aftermath of this article, one of the protagonists, Fabio Paratici, who'd gone to Tottenham Hotspur, had to resign. Andrea Agnelli, the famous owner of Juventus, has sort of disappeared

from public view. And Juventus has really failed to win

any big trophy since. But it's more than about Juventus and Seria really. It's about how a

billion pound industry should be regulated and overseen.

Recently in the Premier League, clubs like Manchester City and Chelsea have been shown or suspected of repeated financial violations.

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