Juventus shoot down talk they didn’t act promptly with Nicolo Fagioli’s gambling

For nearly three days, the Italian press has run wild with the latest gambling scandal that has now found some of the country’s best young players in hot water. During that same amount of time, Juventus had yet to issue any kind of statement on the matter despite the very obvious fact that one of their own, Nicolo Fagioli, had been the first name on the list of players involved in the still-growing scandal.

That was until Friday evening.

Juventus released their first comments on the matter since news first broke nearly 72 hours earlier, saying via a club statement that they contacted authorities immediately it was discovered that the 22-year-old Fagioli was involved in some sort of illegal gambling. The short statement posted to Juventus’ website read as follows:

Regarding what was has been reported by several media outlets, Juventus FC specifies that as soon as it received news of the possible involvement of player Nicolò Fagioli in the matter of betting, it immediately and promptly contacted the FIGC Federal Prosecutor’s Office.

This all stems from controversial gossip columnist Fabrizio Corona saying back in early August that Fagioli was dealing with serious gambling issues and that Juve hid the story at first and tried to do so by saying he was hurt. Where the dots don’t necessarily connect is that Fagioli was very much already dealing with a shoulder injury that he suffered in the spring and a major reason why he didn’t travel with the team on the U.S. tour.

Which, by the way, Juventus left for more than just a couple of days before Corona’s first story came out on Aug. 1.

In the last few days, we have heard from Fagioli’s legal team confirming that there was some sort of self-reporting following illegal gambling activity. Where the story goes from there depends on how much you want to get into the weeds, with reports Thursday from Corriere della Sera and Sportmediaset suggesting that Fagioli has bet on football but not involving teams that he played for. Corona has also stated further scuttlebutt about Fagioli, mentioning just how much debt the young Italian might have racked up as his gambling problem grew to be a bigger and bigger issue.