Those Italians Don't Mess Around or It's Horribly Slow at Work Today

Something that the cheese didn't talk about much during the world cup was the on going "match fixing" scandal in Italy. There were three reasons for this: it was still an ongoing investigation, the cheese didn't think Italy would win it all and the cheese doubted anything would come of it.

Oh how the cheese did underestimated those Italian investigators!

Juventes, Lazio and Fiorentina were all dropped from Serie A to Serie B (and given 30, 12, and 7 point penalties respectively), and AC Milan was given a 15 point penalty to start the season and denied taking place in any European competitions.

The cheese will pause at this point to explain a few things.

First off, unlike in American sports, when you play badly in European Football you pay, and not just by attracting less fans. It differs for each country/league, but basically the two or three worst teams, at the end of the season, drop down into a lower league the following year (with a corresponding number of teams being promoted from below).

Juventes have won the Italian Serie A title 29 times (sidenote: their last two title were stripped in the sentence so now it's 27) and never, since the club's creation in 1897, played below the top tier. Add to that the 30 point penalty assessed them (that means they have to win 10 games, out of 40, just to get to zero) and they probably won't get promoted next season.

This whole thing is basically like Major League Baseball forcing the Yankees, Orioles and A's to play in AAA next year, and then assessing the Yankees 30 losses to start the season.

13 of the 29 players from Italy's World Cup squad are currently on the Juventes roster. No doubt most of those players will be leaving the club to play in the top flight of other countries, making it that much harder for Juve to make it back to Serie A.

It's a really surprising decision, in that it actually punished these teams (sidenote: no players have been implicated, only club officials and refs). No one knows exactly how organized crime figures into various parts of European football, but it's nice to see justice done in this case. That is, of course, unless the sentencing is overturned on appeal...