Juve done some shady shit again, could be relegated

[bluebell]

Juventus 'Could Be Relegated To Serie B And Stripped Of Scudetto' As Transfers Are Investigated


Josh Lawless

Published 16:38, 29 November 2021 GMT
| Last updated 16:44, 29 November 2021 GMT

Juventus could be relegated to Serie B and stripped of their most recently Scudetto if they are found guilty of false accounting.
The Old Lady's offices in Turin and Milan were raided last week, with invoices and financial statements seized.
The investigation from Italian authorities is related a total of 42 transfers, including Cristiano Ronaldo, Joao Cancelo, Arthur Melo and Danilo, between 2019 and 2021.
It's alleged Juve inflated their players' values on their accounts and the likes of Andrea Agnelli, Pavel Nedved and Fabio Paratici, now at Spurs, are cooperating with the investigation.

Image: PA
It's a serious matter and CODACONS, the Italian association for consumer rights, reckon an automatic demotion to the Italian second tier could be on the cards should a guilty verdict arrive.
Juve also won Serie A in the 2019/20 season under Maurizio Sarri and would likely be stripped of the title.


"The accusatory system is very serious and throws a sinister light on the last football championships, also because there has been a real Juventus dominance in recent years, which ended in the past year," president Marco Donzelli said, as per Football Italia.
“If Juventus were to have illegitimately gained an advantage over rival clubs with operations of this type, then the regularity of the last football championships would fail and, as a consequence, the Federation and the Authority for market competition will have to intervene and sanction those responsible.
“Beyond individual responsibilities, the club will not be exempt from punishment.
or this reason and to protect thousands of fans, we will present a complaint to the Antitrust and the Federal Prosecutor’s "Office asking for the relegation to Serie B for Juventus and the revocation of the last league titles won in the shadow of these potentially illegal operations.”


Juventus were relegated to Serie B in 2006 due to their involvement in the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal.
They were also stripped of their 2004/05 title and began the 2006/07 Serie B season on a nine-point deficit but returned to the top flight at the first time of asking.
On Saturday, Juve issued a statement on the situation and stressed the club are confident they have acted accordingly.

The statement read: "As necessary, Juventus is collaborating with the investigators and with Consob and is confident that it will clarify every aspect of interest to them, believing that it has operated in compliance with the laws and regulations governing the preparation of financial reports, in compliance with accounting principles and in in line with international football industry practice and market conditions."

 

[LeTallecWiz]

If they get found guilty, put them in serie C and starting with a 15 point deduction.
THey clearly aren't interested in abiding by the rules teams in Italy are obligated to follow.

 

[bluebell]

If they get found guilty, put them in serie C and starting with a 15 point deduction.
THey clearly aren't interested in abiding by the rules teams in Italy are obligated to follow.

Italian football is in a poor state, this could put them behind Ligue 1.

 

[Rosco]

I wonder if these transfers involve the same agent ?

Mendes is Ronaldo and Cancelo's agent isn't he ?

 

[Beamrider]

I wrote the below in the transfer rumours thread a few months back in relation to swap deals.

I believe this is one of the deals under investigation but the suggestion was that there were more than 40 deals being looked into and not all of those were swaps, so there's something else going on here that I haven't been able to put my finger on.

Juve's accounts are actually really detailed in the information they provide on player contracts (they detail individual transfer fees by players, with agents' fees shown separately and amounts payable / receivable also split by player). I didn't see anything un-toward, other than the swaps where the values looked very fishy. And in the Arthur / Pjanic swap, Barca were milking it more than Juve as they were also raising cash by selling the receivable from Juve.

With swap deals, I don't think there is likely to be any angle on the agent's side with the pricing - that'll be a matter for the clubs. The agents usually get paid based on a percentage of the player's guaranteed wages / image rights so the fee doesn't usually make any difference to them. There are occasions when an agent will be instructed to get the best price for a sale of a player, but in that situation they'll be engaged and paid by the selling club and the agent they use isn't always the player's agent.

-------------------------

Swaps are great for the accounts. Both clubs falsely inflate the player values, book higher profits on the sale leg and meet FFP. It’s what happened with the swap deal for Arthur / Pjanic last year between Barca and Juve. Barca reported a big profit on sale and sold the inflated receivable due from Juve to boost their year end cash position. Juve just got a big profit on sale.
The only downside is increased transfer levy / solidarity payments, but if you can avoid FFP sanctions then you’d probably be prepared to live with that (only 5% of the inflation in value).
Clubs unlikely to be paying tax on the extra profit due to losses or deferral mechanisms.

 

[bluebell]

I wrote the below in the transfer rumours thread a few months back in relation to swap deals.

I believe this is one of the deals under investigation but the suggestion was that there were more than 40 deals being looked into and not all of those were swaps, so there's something else going on here that I haven't been able to put my finger on.

Juve's accounts are actually really detailed in the information they provide on player contracts (they detail individual transfer fees by players, with agents' fees shown separately and amounts payable / receivable also split by player). I didn't see anything un-toward, other than the swaps where the values looked very fishy. And in the Arthur / Pjanic swap, Barca were milking it more than Juve as they were also raising cash by selling the receivable from Juve.

With swap deals, I don't think there is likely to be any angle on the agent's side with the pricing - that'll be a matter for the clubs. The agents usually get paid based on a percentage of the player's guaranteed wages / image rights so the fee doesn't usually make any difference to them. There are occasions when an agent will be instructed to get the best price for a sale of a player, but in that situation they'll be engaged and paid by the selling club and the agent they use isn't always the player's agent.

-------------------------

Swaps are great for the accounts. Both clubs falsely inflate the player values, book higher profits on the sale leg and meet FFP. It’s what happened with the swap deal for Arthur / Pjanic last year between Barca and Juve. Barca reported a big profit on sale and sold the inflated receivable due from Juve to boost their year end cash position. Juve just got a big profit on sale.
The only downside is increased transfer levy / solidarity payments, but if you can avoid FFP sanctions then you’d probably be prepared to live with that (only 5% of the inflation in value).
Clubs unlikely to be paying tax on the extra profit due to losses or deferral mechanisms.

So are you also alleging Barca did something illegal, and could face sanctions?

 

[peekay]

I wrote the below in the transfer rumours thread a few months back in relation to swap deals.

I believe this is one of the deals under investigation but the suggestion was that there were more than 40 deals being looked into and not all of those were swaps, so there's something else going on here that I haven't been able to put my finger on.

Juve's accounts are actually really detailed in the information they provide on player contracts (they detail individual transfer fees by players, with agents' fees shown separately and amounts payable / receivable also split by player). I didn't see anything un-toward, other than the swaps where the values looked very fishy. And in the Arthur / Pjanic swap, Barca were milking it more than Juve as they were also raising cash by selling the receivable from Juve.

With swap deals, I don't think there is likely to be any angle on the agent's side with the pricing - that'll be a matter for the clubs. The agents usually get paid based on a percentage of the player's guaranteed wages / image rights so the fee doesn't usually make any difference to them. There are occasions when an agent will be instructed to get the best price for a sale of a player, but in that situation they'll be engaged and paid by the selling club and the agent they use isn't always the player's agent.

-------------------------

Swaps are great for the accounts. Both clubs falsely inflate the player values, book higher profits on the sale leg and meet FFP. It’s what happened with the swap deal for Arthur / Pjanic last year between Barca and Juve. Barca reported a big profit on sale and sold the inflated receivable due from Juve to boost their year end cash position. Juve just got a big profit on sale.
The only downside is increased transfer levy / solidarity payments, but if you can avoid FFP sanctions then you’d probably be prepared to live with that (only 5% of the inflation in value).
Clubs unlikely to be paying tax on the extra profit due to losses or deferral mechanisms.

I did a quick google search. It seems it is not just the swap deals which is under review. They are investigating fake invoices for transfer deals which did not happen, fake receipts. So this goes beyond inflated swap deals. Since Juventus are a publicly traded company, isn't the scope of punishment beyond football? I am assuming if people created fake invoices and misrepresented finance for a publicly traded company, folks should be going to jail?

I hope the focus on the Arthur Pjanic swap deal and subsequent investigation doesn't affect Barca's ability to pay us back the 42 million they owe us for Coutinho 😉

 

[Beamrider]

So are you also alleging Barca did something illegal, and could face sanctions?

The issue with a swap deal is that the accounting benefit hinges on player valuations. We all know that those valuations are always going to be subjective and if two independent parties (Juve and Barca) agree that's what the player's worth then who can prove otherwise?
Everybody looks at what happened, they know what those clubs have done but it's a financial "shit happens" moment. Unless you can find evidence (emails, WhatsApp messages) where both parties agree to inflate the prices, you can't prove it to the necessary legal / regulatory standard. Most of these guys will routinely print out anything helpful and delete the rest at the end of every deal so there is no incriminating audit trail.
But Barca selling Arthur, who'd hardly played for them, for almost double what they paid for him smelt very fishy and very convenient.
Bearing in mind that UEFA couldn't get an independent valuer to opine that Man City's sponsorship deals with Abu Dhabi were over-priced (which they clearly are because there are comparable deals for more prestigious clubs which carry lower values) then who is going to give a firm opinion on the more subjective matter of player valuations where comparable deals are so difficult because the quality of what you are buying is so difficult to measure?

 

[Rosco]

So are you also alleging Barca did something illegal, and could face sanctions?

There's also every chance we've done similarly too.

 

[Beamrider]

I did a quick google search. It seems it is not just the swap deals which is under review. They are investigating fake invoices for transfer deals which did not happen, fake receipts. So this goes beyond inflated swap deals. Since Juventus are a publicly traded company, isn't the scope of punishment beyond football? I am assuming if people created fake invoices and misrepresented finance for a publicly traded company, folks should be going to jail?

I hope the focus on the Arthur Pjanic swap deal and subsequent investigation doesn't affect Barca's ability to pay us back the 42 million they owe us for Coutinho 😉

Yeah, if there's fake transactions then that's flat-up fraud and people should be doing time for it. As you say, those sanctions will probably be for stock market fraud, quite apart from any sporting sanction.

 

[Beamrider]

There's also every chance we've done similarly too.

Can't remember the last time we did a swap deal. Closest I can recall was when we bought Robbo from Hull and sold them Kevin Stewart. I think they were two separate deals and it's fair to say that while Stewart was over-priced, Robbo wasn't. I think we're more at risk on trade descriptions act charges for saying Stewart was a professional footballer.

 

[Beamrider]

Can't remember the last time we did a swap deal. Closest I can recall was when we bought Robbo from Hull and sold them Kevin Stewart. I think they were two separate deals and it's fair to say that while Stewart was over-priced, Robbo wasn't. I think we're more at risk on trade descriptions act charges for saying Stewart was a professional footballer.

Forgot about Jota / Hoever which I think was an actual swap deal, with Hoever valued at £9m. That might have been pushing it a bit.

 

[Rosco]

Forgot about Jota / Hoever which I think was an actual swap deal, with Hoever valued at £9m. That might have been pushing it a bit.

This is the one I had in mind

 

[bluebell]

Forgot about Jota / Hoever which I think was an actual swap deal, with Hoever valued at £9m. That might have been pushing it a bit.

So was Jota n that case at £43m, he was going through a bad patch, Wolves fans couldn't believe we'd pay that much. Moreover there was no danger of us being dealt any kind warning from the FA/UEFA as the owners made sure they were a model for FFP

 

[Beamrider]

So was Jota n that case at £43m, he was going through a bad patch, Wolves fans couldn't believe we'd pay that much. Moreover there was no danger of us being dealt any kind warning from the FA/UEFA as the owners were being tight

Yeah, I think with that deal it wasn't so much that both clubs were trying to cook the books (don't think Wolves would have had any need to), it was probably a way of bridging a gap on fees. Like as if we'd offered £34m plus Hoever for Jota and Wolves had said they wanted £43m so we then said we thought Hoever was worth £9m (when we might have taken a bit less in a straight cash deal).
Point is that even if the values were a bit off, we weren't taking the piss - I reckon Michael Edwards would have been looking for something like that for Hoever who was a player a few of us were quite hopeful for.

 

[bluebell]

If Juve are relegated, does that mean Perez's ESL is dead and buried?

 

[Woland]

Probs the opposite. If you're setting up your own league it doesn't matter what serie a or FIFA think about you.

 

[peekay]

Probs the opposite. If you're setting up your own league it doesn't matter what serie a or FIFA think about you.

That seems to have been the strategy, isn't it at Juve, Barca? Run up the debts, break the rules, then form your own competition where you make up the rules. Use the billion dollars Morgan Chase or Stanley was throwing at you to cover up what you have done until now.

No wonder Barca, Juve, Real were fighting the hardest for ESL.

 

[bluebell]

That seems to have been the strategy, isn't it at Juve, Barca? Run up the debts, break the rules, then form your own competition where you make up the rules. Use the billion dollars Morgan Chase or Stanley was throwing at you to cover up what you have done until now.

No wonder Barca, Juve, Real were fighting the hardest for ESL.

Real books really good now. They've trimmed wages, crowds are back, and they still have the highest T/O