Canavarro on Calciopoli (article)

Mr. Presentable

From Tribalfooball.com - November 29, 2006

Real Madrid defender Fabio Cannavaro admits he never would have left
Juventus if he had been younger.
Cannavaro left the Bianconeri to join Real Madrid in the summer after
the Old Lady was demoted to Serie B for their role in Calciopoli.

"Playing in Serie B was not a sacrifice," Cannavaro told France
Football. "Had I been younger I think I would have stayed in Turin, but
then I received the offer from Spain.

"Had I stayed with Juventus I might have returned to Serie A at 35,
when many players start to consider the idea of retiring.

"I had a unique chance to wear the Real Madrid outfit and continue
playing at the highest level. For any other club, except Napoli of
course, I would have never even considered the offer."

Cannavaro then moved on to speak about the Calciopoli scandal, although
the player insists that the trophies won by Juventus were all deserved
on the pitch.

"Everyone knew of Luciano Moggi's contacts and how powerful Juve were,
but we had no idea how far that could go. In any case, that does not
change the fact that we were the best club.

"I still remember when Mahamadou Diarra came to me and said ?Ah, Moggi
- money!'. I tried to explain that Moggi did not visit referees to
offer them money.

"With the power he had he could influence the assignment of a referee
to one match instead of another, which I know is not a normal
procedure," explained the Azzurri captain.

"The problem is that people, especially abroad, believe that Juve
bought the matches, but that is not true.

"It was a huge abuse of power that must be condemned, but that was also
useless. We were the best and we proved it.

"On July 9 there were eight Bianconeri, plus some former players like
Zinedine Zidane and Thierry Henry, on the Berlin pitch for the World
Cup Final."

eirebhoy

I wish people would listen to what Cannavaro said. He said "we would have won the league without Moggi" and he still regards his 2 seasons at Juve as title winning seasons. Assigning a few refs to a few matches isn't going to change much. They hardly fixed matches as many people seem to think.

Mr. Presentable

Correct! Also, the team shouldn't have suffered for what one man in the organisation attempted to do.