Thursday, February 08, 2007

Perugian football

My colleague from Perugia has been telling me the scandals of his home football team. When there was the match rigging scandal, a couple of years ago, when referees were discovered to have been accepting bribes to fix results, Perugia was at the top of League B and trying to get into League A. The President of the club, Signor Gaucci, was involved in this scam and swiftly emigrated to Santa Domingo, leaving his two sons to be arrested and imprisoned in Italy. The Perugian team was promptly relegated to the bottom of League C2. Another reason for Perugia's team to be notorious is that Colonel Gaddafi's son used to play for them. Apparently he was an awful player but was good for the local economy as he rented two floors of the best hotel while he was there.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ms Whisperer, J'accuse...I don't think you are a Winchester Whisperer at all!!

No one person could possibly have such an entertaining, informative and enlivening blog. I am sure that you are a crack team of out-of-work journalists fired by the Daily Telegraph, due to the huge costs of re-inventing themselves as an 'online' news source.

The cunning plan of this dozen journalists is to write a supremely entertaining journal about sport, food, business, travel, religion and current affairs. Soon, by word of mouth, fame will be achieved, they will come out of the shadows [they are currently 'holed up' in a nuclear bunker between Wiltshire and Winchester] and announce their presence and supersede the efforts of their one time employers.

The site will become known as the 'Winchester Wanderers' and will have the motto 'You can take the team out of the Telegraph, but you can't take the fun, enthusiasm, joie de vivre, style, good taste, and journalistic skills out of the team..[Is this quite right?Ed]

'You're nicked' as the Sweeney might say..

12:00 pm  
Blogger Whispering Walls said...

Ha ha! I'm just a bored hedge fund manager...

12:08 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maybe a different approach is required in Italian football. Do away with poaching players, the transfer market with its vast fees, and 'star strikers'.

Players would be allocated to the teams totally at random at the start of the season, using one of those 'lottery' style 'ball-spinning' machines.

That way, each team would, very roughly, be equal in terms of talent and skill.

That way, the competition to win and lose would focus ENTIRELY on the off the pitch wheeling-and-dealing and other shenanigans !! Sounds crazy.

But accepting that such things cannot be fully eliminated, the current modus operandi, where 'honest' teams are beaten by 'dishonest' teams would then disappear, as they would all be given 'carte blanche', thus levelling the playing field for those currently losing out by being sporting and playing fairly.

It would also make the 'commentary' more interesting, as many Italian games are dull, defensive, 1-0 efforts. But if the highlights started with 'fly on the wall' filming of the delivery of bags of cash to the referee, or show the surprise on the faces of young players as they find a wad of rolled up lire in their football togs..

12:13 pm  

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