Hi @Marcotti@JamesHorncastle@acjimbo - I love your Golazzo podcasts and have been listening to a whole bunch of 'em. Gabi, just to correct you on something re: Calori and Famiglia Cristiana - that wasn't "3 or 4 years later" after his goal v Juve. It was the summer BEFOREHAND.
In other words, the summer following Milan snatching the title from a palpably superior Lazio and nobody quite understanding how. When the letter was published, suspicions circled around Udinese-Perugia, Perugia-Milan and possibly, Udinese-Milan.
The theory was that Udinese did Perugia a favour, then Perugia did Milan one too... though I've watched the highlights of all three games, and there's nothing obvious at all.
Calori sued (and won I think?) - and it probably wasn't him who wrote the letter at all.
Lorenzo Battaglia came under suspicion midway through 1999/2000: probably wildly unfairly too. That revolved around Nocerina v Castel di Sangro in Serie C - but it doesn't fit the letter author talking about helping a big club.
The other thing is: where is the line between playing half-heartedly and actually rigging a match? In 2000/1, four relegation strugglers played four leading sides on the last day and they ALL won - and had ALL been bookies' favourites too.
And James will remember Milan v Brescia at the end of 92/3. Frankly, if that wasn't at least informally fixed - a nod and a wink on the pitch, that sort of thing - I'm a banana. Ditto Milan-Reggiana a year later: a scandal in what it did to Piacenza.
But the thing is: they were ALL at it in one way or another. The lesson Piacenza seemed to draw from it when they returned to Serie A was "wait til late in the season when we're playing opponents who don't care... but don't draw. Win". So at Parma (for example), they did.
It was all very murky. Zeman saying Serie A was about politics, not football, was pretty close to the mark frankly. But it's also cultural. 'The system' was both formal and informal, it seemed to me. With Bari-Castel di Sangro at the end of 96/7 just another example of that.
Finally: I've always believed - and thought this at the time - that Collina playing on in Perugia suited Juve and Moggi perfectly. Because it meant his little game could continue - as he could always point to that game and say "see? We don't get any favours!"
There'd been such an incredible tumult after Cannavaro's disallowed goal that a Juve title would've had the most enormous asterisk. So we got a 'fairytale' (club bankrolled by criminal wins scudetto) instead... and Moggi could keep doing what he was doing, with no-one noticing.
That whole period under Moggi - mid-90s to mid-noughties - has so many question marks attached to it. Both in doping and in very dubious refereeing. Inter choked on the final day in 2002... but they were also robbed by absurd decisions in the run-in.
And the saddest thing of all is that whole period killed Serie A as the best league in the world; wrecked its credibility totally. Only now is it maybe, just maybe, starting to recover. But whatever Juve fans might say, I know what my eyes were telling me: from Juve-Inter '98 on.
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When I was a kid, such was the sheer quality of the news coverage on British television, I thought journalists told the truth. And were motivated by exactly that: holding truth to power, essential to any flourishing democracy.
I watched Newsnight and Channel 4 News avidly. I read the Sunday Times news review every weekend.
And the BBC's coverage of conflict in the Middle East, through fearless reporters like Jeremy Bowen, Orla Guerin and John Simpson, was consistently outstanding.
Back then, there were next to no fears on British journalism's part of being denounced as 'antisemitic' for telling the truth about Israel's conduct.
Media whitewashing went on all the time quite disgracefully in the US - but not in the UK or across Europe.
THREAD: The Supreme Court, trans rights, and the left.
Many times over the last 4 or 5 years, I've warned again and again about the ludicrous rabbit hole of its own making which the contemporary left was disappearing down over trans rights and women's rights.
A rabbit hole which would inevitably be exploited by the far right for its own appalling ends. As is currently happening, to the horror of so many looking on, in the United States and elsewhere.
I had hoped the Supreme Court's clarification would help the UK left see sense.
The Labour Party, thankfully, gradually has: bit by bit.
But the online left, very left wing Labour MPs, the Greens, large swathes of the SNP and of the US Democrats haven't at all. It's all too plain that hardly any of them have learnt anything.
That's not to say I'm in any way oblivious to the insane levels of inequality and unfairness now. I told her it was harder to buy a house now than at any time since the nineteenth century.
But very many boomers DIDN'T "have it easy". Not at all. Especially single ones.
- If someone failed the utterly appalling, disgraceful 11 plus, that consigned them to a massively harder life than the few who didn't
- Yes, university was free. But most people DIDN'T GO TO UNIVERSITY
- Wages were pathetic and there was NO minimum wage at all
There's already been plenty of complaints on here that the Prime Minister is 'sucking up to Trump'.
No folks. He's trying to maintain the most incredibly fine balancing act. And so is Macron by the way.
Both of them have to do that.
Macron has more leeway for several reasons.
1. He's known Trump for much, much longer. He's one of very few world leaders who's been in office almost as long as when Trump first became President.
2. He has no more elections to fight, so can be a little freer in what he says.
3. The long, long tradition of Gaullism in French foreign policy means that France usually sides with the US - but is more independent and critical in how it conducts itself.
Yet despite that, and the images yesterday of Macron challenging Trump, he also did the following.
UNPOPULAR OPINION (among the left and probably many of my followers): the modern liberal left, of whom I've always been a card carrying member, got it VERY wrong on mass immigration.
And all because it didn't try to remake society after Thatcher wrecked it and the working class.
What the UK has been crying out for for many decades now has been huge investment across the country.
When Johnson spoke of 'levelling up', he was more than onto something. He'd hit the nail on the head. But because the Tories are a bunch of shysters and crooks, nothing happened
Britain's has been a quite ludicrously unbalanced, unsustainable economy for as long as I can remember now.
Skewed completely towards property, financial services, speculators and billionaire leeches. And quite unbelievably skewed towards south-east England too.