Juventus, the most dominant soccer team in Italy, will be required to give up 15 Series A points after an Italian court effectively determined that it had rigged transfer-related expenses.

The point deduction will be implemented for the current season, barring appeals. It will be a fatal blow to Juventus’s chances of staying among the top teams in European soccer. A few years after winning nine straight championships, it will drop the Turin-based team from third place down to joint-10th at the halfway point of the season.

After prosecutors revived the “plusvalenza” investigation on Friday, the Italian soccer organization announced the point deduction. The phrase translates to “capital profits” in Italian, which is what Juventus is accused of making by artificially increasing the value of departing players when they were sold away from the club.

The Case of ‘Plusvalenza.’

Juventus, which is also a publicly traded company, first came under the Italian government’s attention in or around 2021. CONSOB, the government agency overseeing the stock exchange, investigated numerous transfer deals because it believed they may have violated either soccer’s financial regulations or even the law.

Although not the only club looked into, Juventus was the first. All parties involved were exonerated in May following a protracted investigation. However, a federal prosecutor had chosen to appeal and reopen the investigation, the Italian soccer federation revealed last month.

One month later, it made the sanctions related to the appeal public on Friday. Andrea Agnelli, the chairman of Juventus, will be suspended from Italian soccer for two years in addition to the point deduction. Several other executives were suspended as well.

According to reports, the Italian court that made the decision will explain its reasoning in 10 days. Then Juventus will have 30 days to file an appeal. It’s unclear if the Serie A standings would change while a possible appeal is pending.

The Actions of Juventus

Who exactly gets to determine what a soccer player is worth was the case’s key issue.

Many high-profile moves have an easy solution. Several clubs haggle over a price. When a player transfers in one direction, the selling club receives millions of dollars, and those millions are used to value the player on the club’s books.

But when a transfer is player-for-player rather than just player-for-cash, the answer becomes hazy (and cash). Take the 2020 trade between Juventus and Barcelona, for instance. Juventus sent Arthur Melo to Barca for Miralem Pjanic and almost $14 million. Then how much was each player worth in terms of money?

Juventus and many other teams learned they could artificially inflate player values in those swap agreements. Despite neither player being even quite that Juventus and Barca valued excellent, Pjanic and Arthur at 60 million euros ($67.8 million) and 72 million euros ($81.4 million), respectively. In order to aid their accountants, they may then record such inflated values in their records.

They have maintained that only the clubs have the authority to determine how much a player is worth, and in May, authorities agreed. Juventus has refuted any misconduct based on these arguments.

Why Are Sanctions Imposed Solely on Juventus?

Several Italian clubs have used this kind of transfer trading more than Juventus, and according to soccer’s laws, it was legal.

However, this was not a soccer-related probe by European authorities. Authorities from the Italian government were looking into it. Juventus is now the only team that has received a punishment, most likely because it is accused of deceiving shareholders and using dishonest accounting methods as a publicly traded company.