🤔 ❓ What if ... Calciopoli never happened? | OneFootball

To this day, Calciopoli remains one of the most controversial and polarising incidents ever to hit Italian football.

Lines were drawn on all sides and football’s full tribal nature took over and things got quite ugly and out of hand during the summer of 2006.

When all was said and done, the biggest match-fixing scandal since Totonero in 1980 had rocked Italy like a hurricane.

By the time the dust settled, the final punishments (original ones handed down were soon vastly reduced) were severe.

But what if all had behaved impeccably and the situation had never happened?

Juventus stay a superpower

After exiting the top flight in disgrace in 2006, it took Juventus six long years to climb their way back to the Serie A summit under the stewardship of Antonio Conte in 2011/12.

They floundered in the following years like a superhero who had been stripped of their powers – something that would not have been the case if the whole thing hadn’t happened.

There’s no doubt that they would have remained a perennial Scudetto contender throughout the end of the noughties.

Zlatan Ibrahimović, Patrick Vieira, Fabio Cannavaro, Emerson, Lilian Thuram and Gianluca Zambrotta could have been the backbone of continued success at their cavernous former Stadio delle Apli home.

Instead, they are reviled as mercenaries among fans who will never be remembered with any great fondness as they jumped ship at the first chance they got (even if you can’t blame them), while several others such as Gianluigi Buffon and Alessandro Del Piero stayed to become legends.

There would have been no real reason for such superstar talents to push to leave and it is safe to assume that they would have won at least two more Scudetti in the years before the end of the decade.

That way, they would have been able to count their additional titles won ‘sul campo’ (on the field) fair and square.

The Inter era doesn’t happen

Inter’s rise to prominence again in the latter half of the noughties was a result of circumstance rather than any great work on their part.

Massimo Moratti would have kept throwing stupid amounts of money at it trying to make the Nerazzurri ‘grande’ once more, as his father had.

But they were only put in a position of power due to Juventus’ fall from grace – which allowed Inter and Roma to step out of the shadows and become the newest forces.

Having finished outside the top two in each of the previous three seasons, there were no signs that an era of Biscione dominance was coming.

It quite simply would not have happened. Which means neither would their stunning season in 2009/10 in which they conquered all and finally got their hands on the Champions League once more.

José Mourinho wouldn’t have been attracted by a struggling side and building a project at San Siro – meaning that magical night in Madrid fails to come to fruition.

Coaching ripple effect

Sensing what was coming in the summer of 2006 as sentencing prepared to be handed down to Juventus, coach Fabio Capello walked out of the club.

There was no reason for him to do that other than that scandal, meaning he would not have departed for Real Madrid that year.

The 73-year-old had a good thing going at the Bianconeri and it wouldn’t have been unfathomable to see him continue his success for a further four or five years.

That means Real Madrid wouldn’t have won LaLiga under his tutelage in 2006/07, nor would he have likely taken over the England job – given his comfort in Turin.

It also rules out the revolving door of subpar coaches who the club experimented with as they looked to find their footing again before striking gold with Conte.

One of those men was Ciro Ferrara, a club legend who was widely regarded as one of the brightest young coaches in the country when he got his chance.

It was perhaps a case of right man at the wrong time and who knows what he may have gone on to achieve. His career never recovered from his disappointing spell, a brief stint at Sampdoria bookended by an Italy Under-21 job and a season at Wuhan Zall.

Speaking of which, the current climate proves how much one incident in one place can impact so many across the globe – much like the influencing of officials in Italy did to the footballing landscape.

No World Cup win?

Italy’s national team appear to be at their best when banding together in the midst of chaos.

That was the case in 1982 when they won the World Cup and history repeated itself in 2006 when they shut out all of the negativity at home to lift the trophy for the fourth time in Germany.

Let’s not overplay that point. It was a richly talented group of players peaking at the perfect time who had been building to that triumph after their Euro 2004 humiliation and who may have won it anyway.

“It is too easy to put it all down to Calciopoli,” captain and player of the tournament Fabio Cannavaro insisted. “You had to be a part of it to truly understand it.

“But in our individual roles, we were among the strongest in Europe. We were so motivated. As professionals, we stuck to our task and wanted to deliver at the top level.”

Who knows how much of a galvanising factor the scandal truly played among the group and whether or not they would have triumphed that summer regardless.

It may be reaching for a narrative that isn’t there but it is plausible that the Azzurri don’t do the business that summer if they weren’t faced with Calciopoli.

Marco Materazzi would have never been anything more than a journeyman who evolved into the Matrix character he became.

And Zinedine Zidane may have gotten the ending his glorious career deserved by riding off into the sunset with another World Cup win …