Abodi: “It’s right to send Tonali and Zaniolo home”

“There is an even more important game than qualifying for the European Championship, and it is that of correct behaviour, taking into account a problem that is not a football problem, it is a social pathology: because this is gambling addiction. The choice to send the two boys home was appropriate, also for their protection.” The Minister for Sport Andrea Abodi, guest at the Sports Festival, comments thus on the news which sees the removal from Coverciano of Sandro Tonali and Niccolò Zaniolo, investigated as part of the investigation by the Turin prosecutor’s office into illegal betting sites. “This is a phenomenon that we have evidently not been able to interpret in depth. Without prejudice to the fact that we must adapt to the investigative activities that will be carried out. Something had already emerged about Fagioli, we learned about the others during the day. There is not only respect for the work that has been done, but there is certainly a need to understand the dimension of the phenomenon.”

interview

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It all happened in the afternoon when, after the indiscretion provided by Fabrizio Corona, the representatives of the police showed up in Coverciano, home of the national team’s retreat, to hold a conversation with Sandro Tonali and Nicolò Zaniolo. Then the Football Federation’s decision to send the two players home. “The most important game now concerns the reputation of a context and of public health, especially of young people who evidently, at certain levels, are unable to fully perceive the privilege of living in a condition that is not that of many others, we must bring them back to a dimension which is that of being exemplary, positively and not negatively”.

risks

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The Minister then continued by recalling his experience derived from the seven years of presidency of B: “From 2010 to 2017 for each season we carried out activities in all the changing rooms for the first teams and youth sectors to explain the risks of match fixing and related gambling addiction to bets, also having to distinguish legal ones from illegal ones and tracked ones from non-tracked ones. Because the traced ones, i.e. the legal ones, provide for a quota of expenses by the player, being precisely traced and therefore transparent. There is no need to look the other way, it is right that we go all the way and understand the dimension of the social phenomenon. We will be able to face it together even with some painful choices.”