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.
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.