Surprisingly good news for Juventus and Antonio Conte today after an Italian sports tribunal cut the Juventus coach’s ban for involvement in a match-fixing scandal from 10 months to four.
Conte was banned on 10 August for failing to report two incidents of match-fixing in the 2010-11 season when he was coach of then Serie B side Siena.
The Italian Olympic Committee tribunal, the final appeals court for sports disputes, for some reason decided today to cut the ban handed down by the football federation. Conte will now be on the touchline on 9 December when Juventus travel to Palermo.
The slashing of the sentence is a bit confusing. What did Conte do to warrant that his punishment be more than cut in half? Unfortunately, the Italian Olympic Committee tribunal did not provide any reasoning today for the clemency as they said they would not announce the reasons for their decision until mid-November.
That is six weeks away! How long does it take to type up meeting notes?
Having already been on the sidelines since August, Conte now has only around two months of the ban left to serve. While he is excluded from the team’s dugout and changing rooms on match days, Conte has been allowed to train Juventus during the week.
So far the side have shown no ill-effects from his absence during matches. They are joint top of Serie A after six games and are unbeaten in all competitions.
