Corruption, Mafia Power and Italian Soccer

Alberto Testa, Anna Sergi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351971102
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Criminologie

Whilst corruption and organized crime have been widely researched, they have not yet been specifically linked to sport. Corruption, Mafia Power and Italian Soccer offers an original insight into this new research area. Adopting a psycho-social approach based mainly on Pierre Bourdieu's praxeology, the book demonstrates that corruption and the mafia presence in Italian soccer reflect the Italian socio-political and economic system itself.

Supported by interviews with security agency officials, anticorruption organisations and antimafia organisations, and analysing empirical data obtained from a case study of 'Operation Dirty Soccer', this important study explains why mafia groups are involved in soccer, what the links are to political corruption and what might be done to control the problem. It also examines the mechanisms that make it possible for mafia groups and affiliates to enter the football industry and discusses how mafia groups exploit and corrupt Italian football.

This is important reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers and academics working in the areas of sociology, criminology, policing, anthropology, the sociology of sport, sport deviance, sport management and organised crime. It is also a valuable resource for practitioners in the football industry.

Chapter 1
Introduction

In 2017, Italian media reported that two Italian and three Spanish men were arrested in Spain; this group comprised the coach, the assistant coach, the general manager (Nobile Capuani) and two Spanish players of the Eldense Soccer Club (Segunda B division). The coach was arrested for corruption, as the Eldense FC had allegedly ‘adjusted’ the match (by losing) with the Barcelona B team.

The Spanish authorities also investigated another five soccer matches involving Villareal B, Atletico Baleares and Cornella, because they suspected that the high amount of betting on these matches concealed match-fixing; the newspaper El Confidencial also pointed out that the ‘ndrangheta, one of the most aggressive Italian mafia groups, was behind these episodes and suggested that it was trying to infiltrate Spanish soccer to strengthen the business of illegal betting derived from Asia.¹ The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera² also reported that the former coach Mario Cartagena was replaced by the arrested coach, explaining:

The Italians [Nobile Capuani’s entourage] brought players who paid to play [to be included in the first team], but who were not skilful enough for our championship. He brought them here to Di Pierro [the arrested coach], they called them ‘wire transfer’ players.

The Corriere della Sera also argued that Capuani allegedly worked with the former soccer player Ercole Di Nicola, already allegedly involved in cases of illegal betting and match-fixing in Italy, particularly in a criminal operation alongside the ‘ndrangheta.³ The Eldense FC case demonstrates that corruption and mafias⁴ are not only active in the Italian business and political systems but also emerge in very different socio-cultural practices such as soccer, and beyond Italian borders.

It is always unsettling for fans when the media report on the dark side of soccer. Violence, racism, doping and, most importantly, corruption are becoming common features of twenty-first-century soccer, and more widely, competitive sports. At first sight, this connection is counterintuitive.

Sport is one of the world’s most popular social practices; since the era of ancient Greece, physical activity and sport have played a major part in youth education. Social scientists have stressed the importance of these activities; Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1949) pointed out that the values of playing were among the most important human needs, emphasising the important connection between games and culture.

American sociologist Erving Goffman (1961) perceived games such as sport as an instrument of simulation – a symbolic location where individuals experienced social dynamics safely, without any effects on their real lives. Simulation is one of the game’s traits; the other trait is the uncertainty of the result. As simulations, games allow individuals to reproduce and test socio-cultural aspects occurring in society without ‘taking the fall’.

Sport is also a powerful symbol to make sense of numerous human experiences. For instance, individual and team sports such as soccer are both symbols of resilience. This resilience is captured when athletes show their spirit in suffering during important performances, often playing while injured; this metaphorically can be translated into the abilities of individuals to face life’s adversities doing their best and to never give up. Sport, with its rules and values, also tends to promote ethical principles ​​that are embodied in the concept of fair play, which reflects the ideals of honesty, dignity and respect for one’s teammates, opponents and the referees during a competition (Loland, 2002).

However, with time, modern sport (and soccer) has gradually become an occupation and clearly reflects one of the most significant values of a modern society founded on capitalism. American sociologist James Coleman (1987) identified this value in what he terms ‘the culture of competition’, wherein being wealthy and successful are the main goals of human life.

The problem is that the culture of competition seems to play an important part in the diffusion of corruption-related practices, and this is true also for sport and ultimately for soccer. Huizinga (1949) identified a degeneration in the historical development of sport in its ‘winning at any cost’ logic. Huizinga’s reasoning supports French sociologist Roger Caillois (2001 in Salvador),⁵ who argued that games are reflections of human evolution, pointing out the socio-political and cultural transformations which are currently occurring or which have occurred in the past.

Soccer, the most popular sport in the world,⁶ displays all the negative features explained earlier, including corruption, as the Eldense FC scandal symbolises. This scenario should not surprise; sport, as Eitzen (2006) argued, “is not a sanctuary . . . corruption, law breaking, unethical behaviour and other crimes are endemic to human societies” (p. 8). Eitzen’s statement is certainly suitable to describe the origin and the current state of affairs of soccer in Italy (Cf. Spaaiji and Testa, 2016; Testa and Armstrong, 2010; Testa, 2013), where soccer not only tends to reflect the extensiveness of corruption-related practices in Italian society but also underlines the important role played by the mafias in the evolution of this country (Lodato, 2012).

A recent project by Transparency International – the Corruption in Sport Initiative⁷ – advocates for keeping sport clean as a global imperative. In 2017, this organisation issued a report titled ‘Agenda Anticorruzione’⁸ (Anti-Corruption Agenda), which positions Italy, a G7 member, the third-largest economy in the Eurozone and the eighth-largest economy in the world, in 60th place out of 176 countries in the Corruption Perception Index ranking list (which ranks countries in relation to their perception levels of corruption). Within the European ranking, Italy is the third highest, with only Greece and Bulgaria ranking higher.

That mafias and corruption go together is not new (Ruggiero and Gounev, 2012), but the severity and pervasiveness of this problem has reached new heights. In 2017, the Italian media reported⁹ that an immigration centre located in Calabria, in a location called Island of Capo Rizzuto – which hosted 1,500 migrants and was considered to be the largest reception facility in Europe – was allegedly infiltrated by the clans of the ‘ndrangheta. ‘Operation Johnny’ saw among the arrested Leonardo Sacco, governor of the ‘Fraternity of Mercy’, the organisation that managed the centre. The operation uncovered a network which was led by a ‘white collar’ of the ‘ndrangheta clan ‘Arena’ that managed public procurement and supply contracts linked to the Prefecture (central government institution on a county level). According to the investigation, of over €100 million allocated to the immigration centre, at least €30 million was sent to the ‘ndrangheta clan.

Operation Johnny caused media uproar because the police also arrested Padre Edoardo Scordio, a local parish priest, with a charge of mafia association and the accusation of having facilitated the movement of the funds to the ‘ndrangheta clan. The operation had uncovered a corrupt ‘system of power’ aimed mainly at exploiting immigrants and refugees by profiting on managing immigration centres and the money provided to fund them by the local, national and European authorities.

Operation Johnny not only confirmed the pervasiveness of Italy’s crime syndicates, as the link to ‘ndrangheta and local church showed (Dalla Chiesa, 2015), but also how systemic corruption is crucial for mafias to operate in the country (Ruggiero, 2010; Ruggiero and Gounev, 2012). The operation is a clear example of when individualistic explanations of corruption, frequent in literature (cf. Rose-Ackerman, 1978; Klitgaard, 1988), do not capture the phenomenon in its entirety, certainly not in the Italian context. As argued by Ruggiero (2010), in Italy “corruption has played the function of a foundational conduct, one that lends itself to be imitated” (p. 103), therefore becoming a system.

When institutions appear corrupted, when corruption appears to become the ‘rule of the game’, when it becomes so worrying that the president of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella in2015 called upon the nation to fight the widespread corruption and the mafia groups,¹⁰ it makes little sense to dwell on why a person is willing to risk his or her job or reputation to obtain some sort of advantage.

Within this social context, one should not, therefore, be surprised that soccer in Italy, with its recurrent scandals and with the amount of money that it generates, would become a centre of corruption and a thriving business for the mafia groups. Padre Luigi Sturzo – a Sicilian priest and one of the founding fathers of the Italian Christian democratic party – was the first politician to point out the pervasiveness of the mafia, arguing:

The mafia clamps in its tentacles justice, police, administration, politics; the mafia that today serves to be served tomorrow, protects to be protected, penetrates into the ministerial cabinets, in the corridors of Montecitorio [Italian Parliament], pursues secrets, seeks documents, forces men believed to be honest to [commit] dishonourable and violent acts. It is the scary revelation of Italy’s moral ‘pollution’, it is the wretched wounds of our country.¹¹

Mafias certainly find fertile ground in soccer to reinforce their power. In 2012, Sport Radar, the world leader in sports data analysis, listed Italy second in its ranking (of 53 countries) for corruption in soccer in relation to match-fixing, which is one – albeit not the sole – criminal activity that involves mafia clans. The Italian police and all the country’s security agencies, always at the forefront of the fight against the mafias, have a clear idea about their involvement in soccer. In 2017, the Italian Chief of the Police, Prefetto Franco Gabrielli, stated:¹²“Crime groups see in the goal economy an opportunity to expand illicit trafficking as well as their power in the social fabric.” Gabrielli points out the two main reasons (which will be explored in this book) why the mafias are ‘playing’ soccer – namely money, but also social consensus and prestige, hence control of the territory where they operate. The latter is somewhat overlooked by academic analyses, but crucial to make sense of the mafia-soccer link. It is the same mechanism as the one behind the reason why mafia fugitives are often captured in the region where their clans operate. Deputy Chief Constable ‘G’ of the Central Directorate Anti-Crime (Italian Police) underlines how significant this dynamic is to explain the mafias and especially the Calabrian ‘ndrangheta logic:

Having successful fugitives shows that the clans are able to protect their members; it shows their capillary control of the territory. And the strong social consensus [. . .] that fugitives can escape arrest for several years also shows that in some territories the major value of the mafia ‘omertà’ [code of silence] and population’s attitudes – in the form of non-cooperation with authorities and non-interference with illegal behaviours of others – are quite strong. For the fugitives, being free is also a power test, especially if they can hide where their clans operate.¹³

Fabio Giuliani, exponent of the Campania region section of Libera (Italian antimafia charity) and soccer fan, argued:

Knowing the phenomenon of organised crime in Campania, I can safely state that the crime syndicates are interested in any licit and illicit business; the camorra [Campania region mafia] try to infiltrate soccer because it is an important means to create social consensus and access powerful social networks at local and national levels.¹⁴

‘Il calcio’, as a popular and institutionalised social practice, has historically mirrored the political and social conditions and issues present in the country (Testa, 2013), so it is not surprising that the ‘tentacles’ of the mafias are clamping it.

Structure of the book

This book reflects the first scholarly investigation on corruption in Italian soccer, focusing on the role that the mafias play in this important socio-cultural practice, and originates from the spirit of sharing, collaboration and mutual learning between Alberto Testa and Anna Sergi.

Alberto Testa has researched and published widely on soccer and its ‘darker sides’, focusing also on far-right activism and violence since 2007. His theoretical approach is psycho-social in nature, informed by Bourdieu’s praxeology but also by (neuro-)psychoanalytical theory, especially the role of the unconscious in making sense of social behaviour.

Anna Sergi has widely researched and published on organised crime and particularly on the notorious Calabrian mafia ‘ndrangheta; her research approach is socio-legal in nature, mostly on the behavioural aspects of criminal networks and on emerging complex structures of power and alternative or c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Corruption, mafia and the Italian power ‘field’: a Bourdieuian analysis
• 3 Scandals, the ‘sins’ and ‘sinners’ of Italian soccer
• 4 Hidden power: the ‘Calcio’ mafia style
• 5 ‘Ndrangheta and ‘Dirty Soccer’
• 6 Conclusion – mafia and Italian soccer: the state of the game
• Index