Luciano Moggi

Luciano Moggi (born July 10, 1937) is a controversial Italian football managing director. He was the general director of Juventus F.C. from 1994 until May 2006.

Biography

Moggi was born at Monticiano, in the province of Siena.

He worked as railway station caretaker until the early 1970s, when he met Italo Allodi, then Juventus' managing director, who appointed him to minor roles at the club.

Before being called as chief managing director by Juventus in 1994, he worked and collaborated for several teams, such as Torino, Napoli, AS Roma and Lazio. He has a son, Alessandro, who works as agent for several football players and managers, and is head of GEA World, a consortium of football agents and managers.

Luciano Moggi is one of the most controversial figures in the Italian football world, and during his career there were many, though unconfirmed, rumours about his unconventional methods of enforcing power and businesses for Juventus and his former teams, thus earning the nickname "Lucky Luciano", a reference to the notorious gangster.

In 2006 he was the main figure involved in a football scandal, after the publication of several wiretappings in which he suggested and asked for particular referees' names to Pierluigi Pairetto, the former Italian referee nominator. The scandal, which also involved his son, undermined the figure of Moggi, and fueled several inquiries by the judicial courts of Rome and Naples. As a consequence of the scandal, which is still unfolding, the Italian Football Federation president Franco Carraro and the president of the Italian Referee Association both resigned. As for Moggi, after the season's final match of his team against Reggina, he announced that he would resign from his position and would retire from the world of football altogether:

I don't have either the strength nor the willingness to answer any question. I miss my soul, it has been killed. Tomorrow I'll be resigning, since tonight the football world isn't my world anymore. I'll think only to defend myself from all allegations and wicked actions.

During his administration Juventus won the following trophies:
* 7 Scudetti
* 1 Italian Cup
* 4 Italian Supercup
* 1 Intercontinental Cup
* 1 Champions League
* 1 European Supercup
* 1 UEFA Intertoto CupAlthough none a the above have ever been prooven to have been acquired through any impropietythe club has been stripped of the 2004-05 and 2005-06 Scudetto wins however as part of the match-fixing verdict.

Moggi has been banned from football for five years, and fined 50,000 euros for his involvement in the scandal.

ee also

*Serie A scandal

External links

* Jonathan O'Brien, "The Sunday Business Post", 16 July 2006, [http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2006/07/16/story15710.asp "The Italian Job"]
* Jason Burke, "The Observer", 30 July 2006, [http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,,1830656,00.html "Paradiso to inferno"]