Ultras and Inter investigation: why disqualified Calhanoglu?

Hakan Calhanoglu will not play on Saturday evening against Verona and pay 30 thousand euros of fine. This is the outcome of the plea bargain with the Federal Prosecutor for the sports branch of the Ultras investigation. But what did Calha made? Why did he negotiate reaching a surely mild sanction but that will blow him up an important game for the Scudetto race?

the violated rule

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Calhanoglu was heard by the investigators of the Milan Mobile on 17 October and admitted the relationship with organized cheering. Report prohibited in particular by article 25 paragraph 10 of the Code of Sports Justice, which provides for the prohibition of relations with “exponents of groups or groups of supporters who are not part of associations affiliated with companies”. The Milanese police headquarters asked him for the interceptions of the now former Nerazzurri ultras head Marco Ferdic, now in prison with the aggravating mafia. The peculiarity is that Calhanoglu admitted the contacts with Ferdic and the other leaders of the curve, but specified that he had done so despite the club he had not recommended that kind of meetings.

Why this sanction

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To get to the disqualification and the fine, the nature of the meetings was probably important: the meetings between Calhanoglu and the ultras were characterized by a request for tickets and other favors. For others, like Javier Zanetti, it wasn’t like that. Calha admitted to having seen herself, not only with Ferdic, but also with her partboard in the climb of the North, Andrea Bellocco: it is the heir of a family of ‘Ndrangheta capable of infiltrating the curve, killed on September 4 in Cernusco sul Naviglio by another head of the organized supporter, Andrea Beretta. The Turkish director put in the verbal, however, that he had learned “who was really Bellocco only after seeing the photograph following the news about his murder”. On the alleged dinners with the ultras, however, he was categorical: despite the references in some intercepted conversations, he would never have been at the table with them, neither alone nor with the family.

Calha’s words

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These are the words of Calhanoglu: “I am an open person, because I am done so. I met Ferdica Seven, eight times, as I have already anticipated, at the Don Don or at the Zenzero restaurant for an aperitif. He usually came alone, but sometimes he came with his father, and once he presented himself with a very low boy of stature, he is the same person who is on the newspaper articles, as he was the person who was killed (…) Bellocco, precise that I memorized his name after knowing about the murder, I remember that one of these meetings also came another boy, whom they called, I know it was an ultrà (…). It seems that, in the report, the gratitude of Calhanoglu for the solidarity received from the ultras also had some role in the days of the earthquake in Turkey in February 2023. In the guest corner, during Samp-Inter in Marassi, a banner had appeared with the word “near Syria and Türkiye. Calha one of us”.