Fancy a Flutter, David?
By: Martha | June 26th, 2007
On the very day Sampdoria terminated the contract of Francesco Flachi, he of the two-year cocaine ban, a new sin-scandal has reared its entertaining (if depressing) head in the world of Italian football: Gambling. And when I say “new,” I mean “one we’ve not heard about for several months.” Given that he missed the first two months of the season because of a gambling-related ban, this is an offense with which Flachi is intimately familiar, as are folks like Gigi Buffon and former teammate Antonio Chimenti, both of whom faced (and beat) gambling charges of their own last summer.
Joining this illustrious crowd of alleged gamblers today are David Di Michele (I told you he was annoying), Thomas Manfredini and Serie B players Massimo Margiotta and Vincenzo Sommese, as well as the clubs for which they played at the time the gambling took place (Udinese, Vicenza and Mantova). As far as I can tell from the awkward Google translation, the first three players are charged with betting (”directly or through third parties”) on Italian league matches, while the charges against Sommese extend to matches overseen by UEFA and FIFA, as well as FIGC. Gambling on any sort of football matches was finally made illegal for professional Italian footballers in 2005 and, if found guilty, the four face bans of up to three years.
Of course, they can perhaps take some encouragement from the happy news which accompanied the announcement of their charges — 15 other players (including Zeljko Kalac, Marek Jankulovski, and Di Michele’s former Udine teammates Vincenzo Iaquinta and Morgan De Sanctis) have been cleared of wrong doing. This new dirty quartet can only hope to follow in their slightly sullied footsteps.
Some Related Serie A Posts:
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