The words of the Juventus midfielder to the federal prosecutor Chiné: “I started gambling in 2021. They threatened to break my legs.”
A football player, with a lot of free time ends up trying the thrill of betting to alleviate boredom. Over time, it becomes an addiction. According to ‘Gazzetta dello Sport‘ Nicolò Fagioli recounted his gambling to the prosecutors:
“I started betting in Tirrenia during my stay with the Under-21 team’s training camp.” He explains that initially, it was just for “fun.” However, with time, “I found myself in a state of stress caused by debts.”
The toughest period “I went through was in March-April 2023 (…) during Sassuolo-Juventus, I made a technical mistake and was substituted, and I cried on the bench, thinking about my betting debts.”
Already in September 2022, Fagioli had accumulated €250,000 in debt. “When I was at Cremonese, my mother advised me to go to Sert for treatment, and I went there a few times. But then I stopped going: and in the subsequent period, I played compulsively in front of the TV for any sporting event I was watching, including football, Serie B, and Lega Pro.”
The Juventus midfielder told the prosecutors that “there are bets on fouls and bookings (…) I was proposed to do that, but I did not accept because it goes against my ethics.” In front of prosecutor Giuseppe Chiné, in the transcript of September 5th, he explained that “it was Tonali who suggested that I play on the Icebet website. Tonali himself registered me through an account.”
He also told the FIGC prosecutors that: “the first bets I made were on tennis events and then on football” clarifying: “I have never bet on Cremonese and/or Juventus.” So, here are some examples: “Torino-Milan on October 30, 2022 (…) I bet on a draw or Milan’s victory. I lost because the game ended 2-1 for Torino.”
However Fagioli denied that Juventus knew about his bets and talks about some loans to teammates who are not part of the investigation. He said:
“I asked Gatti for €40,000, but I told him I needed it to buy a watch and that my accounts were blocked by my mother.” Dragusin (now at Genoa) “lent me €40,000 in October 2022.” Then he explains that the money was used to repay the debt: “I would buy valuable Rolexes” with a bank transfer. “Sometimes I delivered the watches myself to the collectors, and sometimes they would pick them up at jewelry stores.”
He also accumulated a series of debts with illegal betting platforms: “About €110,000 with betar.bet and specialebet.bet, about €1.5 million with the illegal platform bullbet23.com, about €1.3 million with another illegal platform (…), about €17,000 with a legal agency (…) in the province of Pordenone, and about €31,000 with an illegal bookmaker (…) swissbet in the province of Como.” Consequently, “as my debt increased and I received serious physical threats (such as ‘I’ll break your legs’), (…) I thought about playing just to recover the debt.”
