Upheld on appeal the sentence of first instance: Antonio Conte, Juventus coach, will have to serve a 10-month ban for the football betting events. Now the Juventus coach has nothing left to do appeal to the Coni Tnas (the National Court of Arbitration for Sport), the last degree of sports justice. The long speech by Conte's defender, the lawyer Giulia Bongiorno, who yesterday seemed to have convinced the judges to grant a sentence reduction, was useless. On the other hand, the disqualification for the Juventus coach's deputy, Angelo Alessio, has been reduced from 8 to 6 months.
The facts contested against the coach date back to the 2010-2011 season, when Conte was on the Siena bench. According to the first instance judges, the coach was guilty of not reporting the agreements that distorted two matches in the Serie B championship: Novara-Siena and Albinoleffe-Siena. The Federal Court of Justice instead acquitted the Juventus coach "in relation to the indictment relating to the Novara-Siena match", but confirmed the ten-month disqualification on the basis of the omitted complaint for the second match.
As for the other defendants, the Court has rejected most of the appeals: those presented by the prosecutor Palazzi against the acquittals in the first instance of Pepe, Bonucci, Belmonte and Salvatore Masiello, and that of the Lecce, whose relegation to Lega Pro has been confirmed Di Vaio and Portanova: acquittal for the first and six months of disqualification for the second.
Instead, the appeal of Grosseto was accepted: the president of the Tuscan club, Piero Camilli, was acquitted. Finally, Novara, to whom the Regulations had inflicted 2 penalty points in the first instance, obtained a one-point discount. He will therefore start from -1 in the next Serie B championship.
