The debate has not only been known since the discussion about the soccer World Cup in Qatar: soccer stars should not only be role models on the pitch, but also show social or political commitment.

During the pandemic in 2020, for example, a number of Italian football professionals declared "salary waivers" because either there was no play at all or the arenas were empty - a sensitive loss of income for the clubs.

That went down well with the public.

In March 2020, the sports portal "tuttosport" rejoiced that record champions Juventus Turin had given "a clear signal" because he was the first to announce that his players would waive their salaries for March, April, May and June 2020.

This allegedly brought relief of 90 million euros.

Christian Schubert

Economic correspondent for Italy and Greece.

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Juventus' share price gained more than 5 percent.

Cristiano Ronaldo, then still on the ball for "Juve", had to suffer the most because he missed more than 10 million euros, it was said.

Nevertheless, the team and the club management agreed on the gesture of solidarity.

"Ronaldo's charisma, along with Gianluigi Buffon and Leonardo Bonucci, were crucial to the agreement," wrote tuttosport.

But the reality was quite different: it was not a waiver, but largely just a deferral of payments.

This was the result of the ongoing investigations by the Italian public prosecutor's office and the stock exchange supervisory authority, which relies heavily on tapped telephone conversations.

According to this, the players should forego four monthly salaries in 2020, but receive up to three quarters of them afterwards.

Cristiano Ronaldo apparently demands additional payment

Secret agreements stipulated that two and a half to three of the four monthly salaries would be spread over the following years or offset in the form of severance payments if someone left the club, as reported by Italian media with access to the investigation results.

Captain Giorgio Chiellini wrote to his teammates via Whatsapp: "For stock exchange reasons, the announcement that will come out only mentions the waiver of the four months.

You are asked NOT to discuss the details of this agreement in interviews.”

According to the sports newspaper "Gazetto dello Sport", it also knows which of the players is particularly insistent on the additional payment: Cristiano Ronaldo, who left the club in the summer of 2021.

He is said to have demanded an additional payment of 19.9 million euros from Juventus through his lawyers in early November.

Because it was agreed in black and white at the time, according to the lawyers of "CR7".

Juventus, on the other hand, says there are no arrears.

Market value of Juve on the decline

In any case, the players should have known about the – to put it mildly – ​​incomplete communication from the club, as surveys by the prosecutors would have shown.

Of course, the main responsibility lies with the club management, because they did not announce a salary deferral at the time, but a waiver.

This type of manipulation of the stock market value is punishable by up to twelve years in prison in Italy.

Last week, the board of directors led by Andrea Agnelli and his deputy Pavel Nedvěd, as well as several top operational managers, resigned.

The club's market value continues to plummet.

He is now worth around 700 million euros.

In April 2019 it was still five times as high, although the price was also very low in the years before.

The majority owner of Juventus is the Exor holding of the Agnelli family of industrialists (Stellantis, Ferrari, Iveco), which holds 64 percent of the capital and 78 percent of the voting rights.

The second largest shareholder is the British investment company Lindsell Train with 11 percent of the shares.

24 percent are in free trade.

"everybody knew"

The investigations are now always opening up new abysses: One of the other allegations is balance sheet falsification based on fictitious player ratings.

High and unrealistic ratings are said to have been made when players were swapped with other clubs.

In the telephone conversations it can be heard that other clubs could have acted in a similar way.

The question of who knew what now affects the highest management levels.

"Everyone knew it," emphasized the public prosecutor's office in their investigation files, starting with the president of Juventus Turin, who has since resigned.

In addition, the accounting situation of the association is said to have been known to John Elkann, head of the Agnelli family and president of Exor Holding.

There is no investigation against him.

"The majority shareholder in the person of the legal representative Elkann or the executives concerned from time to time seems to be fully aware of the financial problems of Juventus and above all the corrective maneuvers (particularly the capital gains)," says the prosecutor's file.

Juventus' financial situation remains desolate: in the past few days, the club has presented a corrected balance sheet as of June 30, 2022.

It contains a deficit of 239.3 million euros.

For the three most recent accounting periods, the deviation from the previously presented balance sheets is only around 5 million euros.

The public prosecutor's office and the stock exchange supervisory authority are unlikely to be satisfied with this revaluation.

It remains controversial how much subjectivity can prevail when setting transfer prices for players.