Hi all. I’ve written a post in Italian on both r/calcio and r/seriea about this, and thought I’d make a post in English here. For reference, I’m an English student studying in Italy.
I have a short post to write about the president of the FIGC, and vice-president of UEFA, Gabriele Gravina, and also a question to the people here most involved in Italian football.
I doubt many of you have read this book before: the Miracle of Castel di Sangro. It recounts the season that a tiny Italian team, Castel di Sangro played in Serie B in the 1990s. In short, Gabriele Gravina was the president of the club during this period, and this story was written before he achieved any kind of political success, inside or outside of football. It was written by an accredited American journalist at the time.
The book talks openly about Gabriele Gravina’s involvement in blatant corruption, infidelity with many women (including many wives of the team) and, worse still: being involved and investigated for having been part of a drug trafficking ring worth $25m in which one of the footballers is also arrested by the anti-mafia police.
My question is: why isn’t this known to more people? Has this information been buried over time? The newspapers at the time reported all these crimes (see links below). Even a quick look on Google and you can find proof. Yet this man is now the vice-president of UEFA.
My Italian is very limited and this keeps me from investigating more on the internet or in archives. Maybe someone else will find more.
It would be interesting for me to know more about why this is the case and what people know about it today.
A modern article referencing the events of the book (in English): https://www.footballparadise.com/the-miracle-of-castel-di-sangro-review/
This article from 1997 in France tells of Gravina being fully aware of and complicit in drug trafficking: https://www.liberation.fr/sports/1997/04/14/castel-di-sangro-drole-d-histoire-de-foot_202680 /
Here is a newspaper article from 1997, which clearly implicates Gravina as being involved in the drug trafficking ring (in Italian): https://archivio.unita.news/assets/main/1997/03/08/page_040.pdf
FROM LA GAZZETTA DELLO SPORT - the main sports newspaper in Italy, reporting on the events at the time: http://archiviostorico.gazzetta.it/1997/marzo/08/Castel_Sangro_senza_pace_ga_0_9703086205.shtml
Note: some of these articles mention Gravina as unaware of the crimes (since they were committed mainly by the player Gigi Prete and his wife). However, in the book, a direct interview with the player suggests that Gravina was aware, involved and protected them from arrest until the media became involved. This appears to have potentially happened again very recently in the case of Rosario D’Onofrio (see here): https://www.affaritaliani.it/cronache/migranti-la-corte-europea-condanna-italia-889217.html
Hope to hear from other people more about this.
Least dodgy UEFA employee.
It’s very sad that so many criminals have found their way in top football positions. FREE FOOTBALL FROM ALL THESE PEOPLE. SEND THEM TO QATAR AND SAUDIA ARABIA TO FIX THEIR FOOTBALL. Away from us.
OPs head will explode when he googles Silvio Berlusconi.
I have read the book! And it was amazing to read, really loved it. Though yeah, Gravina was kind of a crook back then already.
least corrupt italian official
I’d be more surprised if he wasn’t corrupt.
Right. He works at a high level in one of the organizing bodies of football. Of course he is corrupt.
No … can’t be …
Holy shit, I just started reading the Castel do Sangro book and had to check the post to see if it was the same Gravina. I’m only 10 chapters in, but I’m not at all surprised by this news.
Keep reading mate it’s a fantastic read. One of my all time favourite books.
The links I was able to read don’t say anything that implicates Gravina in drug trafficking. The closest they get is a player (the one whose wife he had an affair with at some point) telling Gravina that he and his wife are caught up in drug trafficking (after she’s been arrested while working as a mule to smuggle cocaine).
Does it get more specific than that in one of the other documents?
Well you know how some things are considered features not bugs…
Now he will hand juventus a 20 point penalty.
nope, he said that the Juventus brand needs to be protected
Aren’t all Italians corrupt and drug dealers?
Can we finally get at least 1 of them?
I read the book about 20 years ago— and I was startled when it dawned on me that the slippery club president was now the head of FIGC.
Corruption accusations aside (and I find McGiniss’s account quite credible), it says a lot that the person responsible for the repulsive Robert Ponnick incident is now in charge of the Italian federation and high up in UEFA.
That’s a bang on point about Ponnick. Maybe I’ll add it to the post. His only real celebration as FA head (considering Italy have missed two major tournaments under his leadership) is supposedly his efforts in fighting racism! Complete and utter BS
Yeah, it’s pretty gross.
I imagine you’ll get a lot of “of course he’s corrupt, they all are, and everyone knows it” responses to your posts.
But I’m glad you posted this-- there are a lot of people in Italy who would like McGinniss’s book to be entirely forgotten, and I don’t think it should be. McGinniss is an over-the-top, subjective, sometimes unreliable-seeming narrator, but it doesn’t seem reasonable to think that he just made all that stuff up.
This means Juventus needs to be investigated and deducted more points at once!