Matteo Gianello is probably the most hated man in Naples at the moment. He was the one who walked up to teammates Paolo Cannavaro and Gianluca Grava before a game against Sampdoria in May 2010 and asked them if they wanted to rig the game for him and some friends. The two defenders did the right thing, they refused. Afterwards however, they did not report it to the authorities either. This is what now has led to Napoli being deducted two points in the league and Cannavaro and Grava themselves facing 6 month bans.
Matteo Gianello was Napoli’s third choice goalkeeper during the 2009/10 season. After a chaotic 2008/09 season, where Napoli had been forced to use no less than five keepers due to injury problems, he had settled for one last season as a back-up for new first choice Morgan de Sanctis and his former rival Gennaro Lezzo.
Gianello was not in a position where he could influence the game directly, and in order to make his shady plans successful, he had to get help from some of the people who were actually chosen to play the match. The central defenders were the natural target, since their position on the pitch makes it easy for them to make costly errors. The position that makes the central defender’s errors horrible in the eyes of the fan makes them lucrative and accessible in the eyes of the cheat. As seen with Bari’s Andrea Massiello’s clumsy looking but well planned own goal against local rivals Lecce, of all teams, a couple of seasons ago.
According to the testimonies in the court, Gianello worked with a pair of brothers called Michele and Federico Cossato and a fourth guy called Silvio Giusti. The deceitful lot knew each other from their time in Chievo, and now Gianello became their liaison in Napoli. We do not know what he offered Cannavaro and Grava in order to fix the game, but we know that they both declined. According to Gianello, who admittedly has changed his version of the story a couple of times in court, no other Napoli players or staff were contacted.
As it is now, SSC Napoli is being punished both in the league and economically for their indirect responsibility of a crime that that only took halfway place and that they did not know anything about. The severe punishment, which no doubt will be softened after the appeal, serves to show players and staff that silence is not an option. Match fixing is a disease that should be eradicated, and the verdict shows that it is now seen as mandatory to report any knowledge of rigging attempts.
The case with Cannavaro and Grava is the same kind of case that send Juventus coach Antonio Conte to the stands for four months due to his failure to report attempts of cheating during his time in Bari. Conte however was still allowed to train his team, which were not involved in the case at all, all week. Napoli captain Cannavaro’s situation and ban is much more severe, since a player that cannot play is quite meaningless compared to a coach who is still allowed to coach. Grava is still in the team, but he is never playing, so this is just a sudden retirement, that some might argue should have taken place in the summer anyway.
Matchfixing is a horrible crime since, it takes the whole point of the game away. With the matches pre-arranged it is not sports any longer. The storytelling is dead and the fans become a laughingstock for cynical moneymen and gangsters. There is no doubt that both the acts of fixing matches and attempts to do so deserve more than just a slap on the wrist.
In the case with Napoli and Gianello we are left with a feeling that the Italian sports court is still searching for the right kind of punishment. The verdict this time around seems less aimed to punish Cannavaro and Grava as people than to tell everyone else that if they should become witnesses to this kind of crime, their failure to report it will end up in punishment not only for themselves but also for their club and their fans.
The question is if the strong symbol will still last after the case has gone through a couple of appeals, which in true Italian fashion is guaranteed to lessen the punishments to some degree. Until then we are all free to discuss what kind of punishment Cannavaro and Grava deserve and if they did anything wrong at all. And what is the club’s real responsibility? The answer is still blowing in the wind. Hopefully, not for long.
Written by Thorbjorn Thaarup
You can follow the author on Twitter: @TThaarup
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