England’s attempts at an important-sounding scandal of its own have once again been thwarted by the Italians, says James Richardson of the Guardian, who writes: “In an elegant twist, the Juve-match rigging affair now appears to have itself been rigged.” Oh good lord. No other club benefited so handsomely from Juve’s downfall than Inter Milan, which was awarded Juve’s Scudetto last season by default after a sports tribunal relegated the Italian giants to Serie B with a hefty point-penalty. But now it would appear that Inter President and owner Massimo Moratti had a major hand in the downfall of Juve GM Luciano Moggi and others last spring. Phone records at Telecom Italia, Italy’s telecommunications giant and a part-owner of Inter Milan, show that certain key players at Juventus and other big Italian clubs have been monitored since 2003, way before the police or anyone else was involved in last season’s match-fixing scandal. Says Richardson: “Inter were thus at the very least party to the evidence-building against their rivals in Turin and possibly took an even more active role in compiling that evidence.” The records show that Inter also hired a private detective to watch referee Massimo De Santis, who was known to be close with Juve’s Moggi. De Santis has since been banned from the game for four years for his part in the scandal. Incidentally, regardless of what happens with the investigation nothing will happen to Inter, as the three-year old situation was deemed to have taken place too long ago for the charges to still be valid. But, ugh, what a mess!