Posted on Friday 14 July 2006
Newcastle will kick things off tomorrow night at St James’ Park against Lillestrom in the Intertoto Cup. They do it without Michael Owen, obviously. Alan Shearer is no more. And the diminutive Scott Parker now wears the captain’s arm band. I like Glenn Roeder, but I think Toon are going to find it tough going this year. They’ll be solid mid-table, but they’ll need some signings if they’re going to keep up with the tier of teams just below Chelsea (Arsenal, ManU, Liverpool).
The Italian verdicts are supoposed to be in about now. They wanted to wait until the financial markets closed for the weekend. That should tell you something. Juve, Fiorentina, Lazio are all to be relegated to Serie B and AC Milan are booted from the Champions League. Now all we need is some public beheadings of the guilty refs and team management, and we’ll call things square.
Also listed under: European Soccer
All the punished clubs in Italy still have the right of appeal.
It’s crazy. They are all crying not guilty, mistreatment, outrage. They say the recorded phone calls prove nothing. I have listened, the phone calls are iron clad proof.
Some others even argue that the economic interests justify a lighter sentence because the clubs are bigger than the misdeeds of a few (as if the employees involved did not work for the clubs)
Money drives this whole mess. My opinion is tha the sentences were not harsh enough.
The massive scale of cheating effectively means that as a season ticket holder, I was paying to watch what is akin to a pro wrestling match. In other words, Serie A is an entertaining 2 hours in which one watches skilled men play a game in which the outcome is decided before the match starts.
To regain credibility Serie A did not do enough. I personally will vote with my pocketbook, even though I am an Inter fan, a team not caught in the scandal, I will not renew my season tickets.