Juventus Slammed with 10-Point Penalty, Champions League Hopes in Danger

Juven­tus, the Serie A pow­er­house, has been slammed with a 10-point penal­ty by the Ital­ian Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion (FIGC) for its role in a trans­fer fraud scheme. The sanc­tion could put the club’s chances of qual­i­fy­ing for the next season’s UEFA Cham­pi­ons League at risk.

The FIGC revealed on Mon­day that Juven­tus, along with AC Milan and Inter Milan, had breached its reg­u­la­tions by inflat­ing trans­fer fees in deals with oth­er Ital­ian clubs over three sea­sons to cre­ate mil­lions of pounds in “cap­i­tal gains” for tax pur­pos­es. The scheme alleged­ly allowed Juve to free up their spend­ing pow­ers in the market.

While AC Milan and Inter Milan agreed to a set­tle­ment with the FIGC that includ­ed a fine of 5 mil­lion euros each and a deduc­tion of 1.8% of their rev­enues for one sea­son, Juven­tus refused to set­tle and faced a dis­ci­pli­nary hear­ing. The FIGC’s sports jus­tice court decid­ed to impose a harsh­er penal­ty on Juven­tus, deduct­ing 10 points from its tal­ly in the cur­rent Serie A season.

The deci­sion could have seri­ous con­se­quences for Juven­tus, which is cur­rent­ly fourth in the Serie A table with 40 points from 19 games, 13 points behind lead­ers Napoli. The top four teams at the end of the sea­son qual­i­fy for the Cham­pi­ons League, while the fifth and sixth teams enter the Europa League. Juven­tus has won nine con­sec­u­tive Serie A titles from 2012 to 2020, but fin­ished fourth last sea­son and bare­ly secured a Cham­pi­ons League spot.

Juven­tus has vowed to appeal the rul­ing, call­ing it “unac­cept­able” and “dis­pro­por­tion­ate”. The club said in a state­ment that it “reserves the right to take any appro­pri­ate action to pro­tect its rights and inter­ests”. Juven­tus also reit­er­at­ed its com­mit­ment to the Super League project, claim­ing that it was “a response to the man­i­fest cri­sis of the cur­rent foot­ball system”.

The Super League was a pro­posed com­pe­ti­tion that would have fea­tured 15 per­ma­nent mem­bers and five rotat­ing teams play­ing mid­week match­es. The found­ing mem­bers includ­ed six clubs from Eng­land (Arse­nal, Chelsea, Liv­er­pool, Man­ches­ter City, Man­ches­ter Unit­ed and Tot­ten­ham), three from Spain (Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atleti­co Madrid) and three from Italy (Juven­tus, AC Milan and Inter Milan).

The project was met with wide­spread back­lash from fans, play­ers, coach­es, gov­ern­ing bod­ies and politi­cians, who accused the clubs of greed and elit­ism. Most of the clubs with­drew with­in 48 hours of the announce­ment, leav­ing only Juven­tus, Barcelona and Real Madrid as defi­ant holdouts.

The three clubs are also fac­ing legal action from UEFA, the Euro­pean soc­cer gov­ern­ing body, which has ini­ti­at­ed dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings against them for breach­ing its rules. UEFA has already reached an agree­ment with the nine clubs that with­drew from the Super League, impos­ing finan­cial penal­ties and with­hold­ing some of their rev­enues from Euro­pean competitions. 

How­ev­er, Juven­tus, Barcelona and Real Madrid have chal­lenged UEFA’s author­i­ty in a court in Madrid, which has referred the case to the Euro­pean Court of Justice.

The saga of the Super League is far from over, and Juven­tus could face more sanc­tions and law­suits in the future. The club’s fans are hop­ing that their team can over­come the 10-point penal­ty and secure a Cham­pi­ons League spot for next sea­son, but it will not be an easy task. Juven­tus will need to improve its per­for­mance on the pitch and hope that its rivals slip up. Oth­er­wise, it could miss out on Europe’s elite club com­pe­ti­tion for the first time since 2011-12.