Twenty years after Calciopoli, the relationship between Luciano Moggi and Antonio Giraudo — the two men who built the most dominant Juventus side of the modern era and fell together in the scandal of 2006 — has publicly fractured. Speaking on the Centrocampo podcast, Moggi was in no mood for diplomatic ambiguity.
“We Were Always Like Brothers — Now I Don’t Even Like Him as an Acquaintance”
The opening line establishes both what existed and what has been lost: “We were always like brothers. Now, after those things, I don’t even like him as an acquaintance.” And then the more resonant institutional observation: “But Juventus is a place where betrayal is practically the order of the day.”
The Source of the Rupture — Giraudo’s Podcast and the Calciopoli Narrative
The specific trigger for Moggi’s remarks was a recent Giraudo interview in which the former CEO addressed Calciopoli, its causes, and the personalities involved. Moggi’s reading of that interview is scathing: “Giraudo naturally spoke about the envy that created Calciopoli — he could have added some other things, like the ownership change, but he didn’t. He even praised John Elkann, which is hard to understand, because Elkann is the one who got rid of him — or rather, it was not even Elkann who got rid of him. It was Gabetti and Grande Stevens.”
The specific claim — that Giraudo’s departure from Juventus was engineered not by the Elkann generation of ownership but by Franzo Grande Stevens and Gianluigi Gabetti, the two senior Agnelli family advisors who dominated the club’s governance structure — is not new from Moggi but is deployed here with unusual directness, presumably because Giraudo’s praise for Elkann struck him as an act of historical revisionism.
“He Said I Entered Without Signing Power — True. But He Forgot the Rest”
On Giraudo’s characterisation of the power structure within their shared Juventus years: “He made a poor showing when he said I had entered without signing power. True — I entered without signing power and the boss was Umberto Agnelli, and the deputy boss was him. That is true. But he forgot to say that as time went on his boss Umberto Agnelli not only gave me signing authority but actually gave me an open-ended contract — which signifies that I was the most secure member of the Board of Administration. An open-ended contract abundantly covered with money.”
“I Always Spoke Well of Giraudo — But Then He Said They Won the Championship Because of Romy Gai”
The final passage combines a residual generosity toward the partnership with the sharpest of the specific grievances: “I always spoke well of Giraudo because for me he was an important support — I have nothing to say or object to. But hearing him say that they won the championship because of Romy Gai, who concerns himself with everything except football…” The sentence trails off, but its direction is clear. The relationship that built a dynasty, survived a scandal, and endured for two decades has reached a terminal point. At Juventus, as Moggi himself puts it, betrayal is the order of the day.
