The Juventus president has resigned along with the entire board.
(Photo: imago images/Nicolo Campo)
Rome Far fewer Italians are currently watching the World Cup than usual. This is not only due to Qatar as the venue, but also to the Italian team: they are not even there. In the country of the reigning European champions, there has only been one football topic since this Tuesday – and that is playing in Turin, with record champions Juventus. The club’s entire board has resigned, including long-term president Andrea Agnelli.
The 46-year-old led the club for eleven years. He belongs to the billionaire Agnelli clan, which has stakes in companies such as Ferrari, the carmaker Stellantis, the publishing house Gedi and the British business magazine “The Economist” through its holding company Exor. The company also owns almost 64 percent of the Juventus shares, and the voting rights are almost 80 percent.
Fiat founder Giovanni Agnelli bought the club in 1923 and made his son president at the time. Since then, the auto dynasty has called the shots at the club. Andrea Agnelli, Giovanni’s great-grandson, was the fourth President of the family.
Juventus had to postpone the general meeting
Last week it became known that the Italian financial market supervisory authority had encountered irregularities in the Juventus balance sheet. She asked the club, which has been listed on the Milan Stock Exchange since 2001, for clarification. As a result, Juventus postponed the general meeting, which was actually planned for November 23, by more than a month.
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In the room is the allegation of falsification of the balance sheet for the years 2018 to 2020. The public prosecutor’s office in Turin accuses the association of share manipulation and false invoicing. Among other things, it is about amounts of 115 million euros, which the club is said to have noted in the books from fictitious evaluations of its players.
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The trial of Agnelli and the other 14 suspects is expected to begin in the spring of next year. The procedure could also result in sporting penalties – in the worst case, the Italian record champions even face forced relegation.
There was one before, in 2006. At that time it was revealed that a Juventus manager had manipulated games in the first professional league and influenced the results by bribing referees. The club was also stripped of two championship titles.
Juventus stock plummets
The markets reacted promptly after the resignation: the share temporarily fell by seven percent on Tuesday to 0.26 euros. Within a year, the papers have lost around 40 percent of their value.
It was only in September that Juventus announced a record loss of 254 million euros for the past year. In terms of sport, on the other hand, the Andrea Agnelli era will not be forgotten: the “old lady” – the club’s nickname – became Italian champion nine times in a row. There were also four Italian Cups and five successes in the Supercup. In the last two seasons of the league, however, the team has only finished fourth in Serie A.
Agnelli was one of the leading club bosses looking to launch a new European Super League in April 2021. It would have been an exclusive circle, with 20 top teams from Spain, England and Italy. Agnelli and Co. wanted to take marketing to a new level, it was about three-digit millions per year – for each team.
But after just two days, English clubs jumped out again because of fan protests. The European Super League was dead before it was even born. The first major defeat for Agnelli. The end at Juventus should hurt the official a lot more.
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