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Old 08-03-2006, 07:06 PM   #287
Katon
College Benchwarmer
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Providence, RI
Winning titles is sort of the point of playing the games (and trying to rig them). It's obviously not going to be as painful for Milan as if they'd won those titles in regular play, but denying them two titles is definitely a noticeable punishment.

The Marseille punishment was a year or two before I got hooked on soccer, so I'm not sure who exactly kicked them out of the CL. In any case, UEFA's completely capable of changing the competitors in their tournament by fiat (*cough*Liverpool*cough*), so their press release is almost entirely about saving face rather than about accurately describing the legal situation. Not that that's particularly surprising.

I don't think Marseilles are a very good analogy, though. In that case, there was evidence that Tapie had paid off an opposing team - fixing matches more directly than Moggi ever did. In this case, there's evidence that an associate director (or something like) called an official to ask for a 'fair' (read: not one of Moggi's favorites) ref. Definitely not something he ought to be doing, but I think the current punishment is sufficient for that. If you've seen actual evidence of some other crime then please point it out to me, but everything I've seen suggests that the rest of the case is mostly built on a refusal to believe that Berlusconi can be even tangentially related to corruption like this without playing a major part. There's some logic to that, but not the sort that any judicial body ought to be paying attention to. UEFA and the Italian sporting courts have to make their judgements off of factual evidence rather than speculation, and there isn't much there against Milan. Again, if I'm missing some specific allegations then please point it out to me, but general speculation/dislike of Berlusconi is not a valid reason for an official body to punish anyone.
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