Betting, Di Caro’s comment: now even football is contaminated

The divine plays on the field and the illegal plays off. While Roberto Baggio at the Gazzetta Sports Festival moved the audience on stage by speaking with the purity of a child about the beauty of football, in Coverciano the two Italian players Tonali and Zaniolo were notified of investigations by the Turin Prosecutor’s Office into a ring of illegal betting and these left the national team retreat at the request of the FIGC. After Fagioli, therefore, here are two other excellent names who have ended up in the new scandal that is shaking Italian football. Let’s clarify: this is not the old “football betting” where matches were bought and sold, but bets on results and events that happen during the matches. Huge sums and disproportionate numbers of bets that make the protagonists real gambling addicts. The uncontrollable vice of gambling that animates the world of illegal betting: 10,000 active online sites, with a turnover of over 18 billion according to the latest estimates in Italy. The investigation by prosecutor Manuela Pedrotta in Turin was opened a few months ago and revolves around a round of betting on illegal platforms: this is how the name of Nicolò Fagioli emerged. Fabrizio Corona was the first to do it publicly before anyone else. And again the former paparazzo with a criminal record, yesterday he reeled off two more names as promised, forcing the prosecutor’s office who was also investigating them to proceed immediately with a blitz.

Are there other names? And, if so, how many? Everyone is wondering this right now and so many are trembling. In fact, rumors about athletes with a gambling habit have multiplied in recent years. And even those about real fortunes squandered by those who have made a huge profit in their career. From a criminal point of view, if the protagonists are not organizers of the bets but only players, they can get away with a plea bargain or by paying a fine. From a sporting point of view, however, the matter is much more serious. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office (which has already heard Fagioli) is investigating the violation of the ban on betting by members. The cards will be studied, the economic level of the bets will have to be understood, whether they concern the FIGC championships and even one’s own team. The legislation provides that gambling on legal platforms (i.e. those under the control of the Customs and Monopolies Agency) is not a crime, but an athlete according to article 24 of the Sports Justice Code cannot bet on own discipline. Violation of the sporting code can trigger a penalty ranging from a simple fine to a disqualification of 3 or more years, to which a fine can be added.

Without going into the merits of the names and waiting for clarity to become clear, it is still impressive to think that young people who potentially have everything in life, starting from the money and the fame that the most beautiful job in the world gives, can ruin everything by throwing themselves away, getting into the habit of playing off the field. Psychologists and psychiatrists will now explain to us the folds and wounds of gambling addiction. The evil of living, the emptiness, the depression, the demon of the game. On the other hand, many people get ruined like this, why can’t it happen to athletes who live from gaming and have ample financial resources? The issue involves not only a sporting aspect, but a socio-cultural, deontological, ethical, moral, legal one and is obviously difficult to deal with: here we are not talking about the whim of those who bet every now and then or try their luck with “scratch cards”, but of those who compulsively bet on everything, ruining themselves. It’s no longer a game, it’s a disease. While we investigate and question ourselves, our national team is inevitably shaken. An unexpected problem to resolve for Spalletti who will have to add to the preparation of the decisive double match with Malta and England also the task of protecting the Azzurri group and making it as impervious as possible with respect to this new scandal whose boundaries are not yet known.