Spiralling debts and threats ‘to break your legs’: What Fagioli’s deposition tells us

Nicolo Fagioli sat on the bench in Reggio Emilia and broke down.

Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri had hooked him minutes after the eventual Serie A Young Player of the Year made a mistake away to Sassuolo in April. His scuffed clearance from a corner had landed at the feet of Gregoire Defrel and the wily attacker took full advantage, turning in what turned out to be the only goal of the game.

“As soon as I came off, I started to cry in front of the TV cameras,” Fagioli said. At the time, the 22-year-old’s distress was put down to making an individual error amid the strain of playing for a club whose place in the final top four was already in doubt on account of the points penalties imposed amid the Prisma investigation.

But in a deposition seen by The Athletic, Fagioli told the federal prosecutor of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) what was really on his mind. He was overwhelmed. His “problems linked to gambling debts” were consuming him.

Fagioli’s legal team declined to comment when contacted by The Athletic. 

On Tuesday, Fagioli was banned from football for seven months and fined €12,500 (£10,840; $13,180) after he was found to have violated Article 24 of the FIGC’s sporting justice code. He had placed over-under bets on games — foreign and domestic — using an illegal online betting platform. The midfielder will still be allowed to train with Juventus, and did so on Wednesday, while he undergoes therapy and does community service, which is to include five months of speaking engagements at amateur football clubs, federal training centres and charities dealing with gambling addiction.

Juventus said on Thursday that the club “confirms its full support for Nicolo Fagioli”.

The fact Fagioli did not wager on the teams he played for, Cremonese (while on loan for the 2021-22 season) and Juventus, and the level of his cooperation with the authorities helps explain the leniency shown in the plea bargain he struck. Violating Article 24 is otherwise punishable by a minimum three-year ban for “placing or accepting bets, directly or indirectly … on the results of official matches organised within the framework of the FIGC, FIFA and UEFA”.

Fagioli’s tears at the Mapei Stadium were those of someone in too deep. He had received threats of physical violence — “I’ll break your legs” — from third parties he assumes must somehow be linked to any one of the illegal betting platforms on which he staked money. He spiralled, betting more in an attempt to recover his losses. His gambling debts to illegal and legal bookies totalled almost €3million.

A year ago, he had even got Juventus team-mates Federico Gatti and Radu Dragusin, who is now at Genoa, to loan him money (€40,000 each) under the pretext that he wanted to buy a watch but was unable to do so because his mother looked after his bank accounts. Unknown to them, Fagioli sought the loans to pay down his gambling debts.

As of September 28, when Fagioli was deposed by the FIGC’s federal prosecutor, Gatti and Dragusin had not got their money back. While he intends to honour his debts to them, he does not plan to settle those with illegal online platforms because, as his deposition states, “I have already handed over so much money and because these are null and void bets in violation of Italian law”.

In hindsight, it is frankly astonishing to think that Fagioli was able to play with all this going on in the background.

Fagioli was involved in eight goals for Juventus last season and his form was rewarded not only with the Young Player of the Year award in Serie A but his first senior cap for Italy against Albania in the November. Allegri had already flagged him up as one to watch five years ago when Fagioli, then only a teenager, was already generating great excitement within Juventus’ academy.

“There’s a boy born in 2001 called Fagioli,” Allegri said, his eyes lighting up. “And it’s a joy to watch him play football because he was born in 2001 and you can see that he understands the game. He has the timing, he knows when to get unmarked, when to pass the ball, how to pass the ball. Watching him play is lovely.”

When Fagioli joined second-tier Cremonese on loan the season before last, he screengrabbed a WhatsApp message he sent to his friends bullishly claiming “I’ll get them into Serie A” after 26 years away from the top flight. He duly delivered, apparently able to bend things to his will.

So how did it come to this?

In his interview with Giuseppe Chine, the FIGC federal prosecutor, Fagioli drew attention to the amount of free time footballers have at their disposal. The “thrill” of gambling was a way to “overcome the boredom”. He recalled an Italy Under-21 training camp in Tirrenia, a seaside resort near Pisa. That’s when Fagioli started to bet. “It was (AC Milan and now Newcastle United midfielder and fellow subject of this investigation into gambling activity Sandro) Tonali, a close friend of mine, who suggested I play on the illegal site Icebet,” he said. “I happened to see him playing and asked him what he was doing. He told me I could play because there was no trace of the bets.”

Fagioli would later specify: “I can’t say whether (Tonali) was betting on football or non-football events and whether he had accumulated debts with the illegal platforms he was betting with.”

To begin with, Fagioli only bet on tennis. It was becoming a habit; one only his mother and non-football friends knew about. He did not inform Juventus executives or his team-mates of it “because I didn’t trust anyone”. While he was helping Cremonese to promotion, his mother advised him to visit SERT, an addiction clinic. There was concern that, if word of his gambling habit got out, it might get in the way of his contract renewal he eventually signed with Juventus in August 2022.

Fagioli had a few sessions but abandoned them in the belief he could beat it himself. However, by last September, “I was gambling in front of the TV on any sporting event I was watching, including football.”

At the end of that month, he’d racked up €250,000 in gambling debts and the grip of the addiction tightened. Meanwhile, officers from the Turin flying squad began looking into illegal online betting platforms. The investigation is non-football focused and principally targets the sites’ organisers. However, anyone using these platforms is committing an offence typically punished with a fine.

One of Fagioli’s phones was confiscated by police in May and he was interviewed by public prosecutors in Turin the following month. In the meantime, he has been seeing a specialist and is undergoing treatment for gambling addiction. “I state that I am feeling better at the moment, that I have stopped gambling and that I intend to continue my treatment,” he said.

Fagioli’s case and those of Tonali and Aston Villa’s Galatasaray loanee Nicolo Zaniolo, each with their own nuances, have inevitably led to a debate about football and gambling in Italy and what more can be done to help players. Juventus, as Fagioli noted in his deposition, “informed us it was forbidden to make legal and illegal bets on football” since his days in the youth academy. Serie A also organises an Integrity Tour and summer workshops to educate players, too.

“Clearly, informing them has not been enough to create antibodies,” Umberto Calcagno, president of the AIC, the players’ union in Italy, said. “The system has done a lot but the world of football can’t resolve this on its own.”

Gabriele Gravina, the president of the FIGC, has shown compassion and understanding. “These boys are like children to me,” he said. “They can’t be used as cannon fodder. The way in which their names came out (via notorious paparazzo Fabrizio Corona) and left at the mercy of everyone is not the actions of a civilised country. You can’t throw out lists (of players) like that.

“Gambling addiction is a scourge of society. It is not only football’s problem. Figures from the AAMS (the Autonomous Administration of State Monopolies, Italy’s gaming authority) show 1.5million people are addicted to gambling (in Italy). There are 1.3million registered footballers. It’s clear some may be affected. Those who made mistakes must be punished — we are working to ensure that it all emerges with the utmost clarity. The punishment will be an afflictive one, but those who ask us for help will be helped.

“The FIGC must accompany these boys in a healing process, and we must start a process of recovery for these boys, which is fundamental.”

(Top photo: Daniele Badolato – Juventus FC/Juventus FC via Getty Images)