This is the end of an era for the Old Lady. Hidden amongst the World Cup commotion, the entire Juventus board officially resigned as the failures of the club this season became too much for their reputations to overcome.
This was an inevitable outcome for Andrea Agnelli, Pavel Nedved, and the rest of the Juventus board given how far Juventus has fallen this season. Not only have they failed to make it to the Round of 16 in the Champions for the first time in forever, but they also finished a full 10 points behind Napoli in Serie A before the World Cup break.
Plus, given how embarrassing and rigid Juventus were playing in the opening months of the season, I’m actually a little shocked that Agnelli, Nedved, and the rest were allowed to hand in their resignations. If I was in charge of Juventus, those guys would have been kicked out of the club months ago. That’s how bad they screwed up the Old Lady.
Nearly every single one of their offseason signings these past few years have failed as they relied way too heavily on old, veteran players to bring Juve the Champions League glory their 2010’s dynasty could not achieve. And, unfortunately for Juve fans and the board, those singings almost uniformly ended up as busts.
Nevertheless, it’s still a little strange for the entire Juve board to abruptly resign in the middle of the World Cup. And what’s even stranger is the fact that manager Max Allegri, who was the handpicked successor by the board after Andrea Pirlo’s departure and architect of the 2010’s Juve dynasty, has stayed on.
It’s his fault that the team has played such a rigid, old fashioned defensive style of football, which would have led me to believe that his resignation would be the first one on the Juve chairman’s desk. But that would be my assumption if this en masse resignation was down to Juve’s poor on-field performances and not off-field allegations and investigations.
No, this resignation might have something to do with the fact that Juve is currently under investigation by the Turin Public Prosecutor’s Office for nefarious transfer dealings and deferred player wages cover-ups during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the prosecutors, they claim that Juventus, and its board by extension, mislead Serie A and the appropriate Italian tax officials about the wages they withheld from players during those shutdown months.
In essence, the prosecutors are claiming that Juve only withheld 1-month worth of wages (though Juve says they withheld 4-months), which was then used to get illegal tax breaks from the Italian government for the three months they did not withhold wages.
Oh, and they are also under investigation for getting ‘illegal commission’ on player transfers and loans. Or, in other words, they were overvaluing their own players in transfer exchanges in order to get fudge their income statements to get tax breaks.
What a classy group of guys, right?
I’m glad to see Agnelli and Nedved finally put out to pasture by Juventus as those two were a plague on the club, staining the very name of Juventus with each day they stayed on in their leadership positions. I wonder how Agnelli will bring about the European Super League now that he’s out as Chairman of one of the biggest clubs in the world.
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