Euro 2008 fixed?

I've got a close friend in Italy who has a relative working for Milan as a trainer. What I reveal might be somewhat shocking...yet, not so shocking. For those who don't believe me, MilanFan009 can confirm what I'm about to say.

Berlusconi, at the start of the Euro's wanted to hike up the value of his midfield players gattuso, ambrosini and pirlo. Naturally, pirlo was the only one he didn't intent on selling. He called up Donandoni, and asked him for this "favour", because Berlusconi had "don so much for him" while he was a Milan player in the early 90's. He payed Donadoni quite a lot of money, around 3.5 million for this. So Berlusconi wanted to hike up the prices of ambro and gattuso, so he told donadoni to make them play alot, hoping that they would put in good performances. He also told donadoni to not make quagliarella play so that his price tag would go down, and he told him to play dinatale with toni at first, because he knew that those two were in constant argument and hated each other. He knew they would not play well together and that di natale would be relegated to the bench, thus his price tag lowered.

Naturally, the skeptics might say, there is no evidence of this, but why did Donadoni never play quagliarella except for a few minutes? Why was di natale never given a second chance even though toni was having a nightmarish tournament. Why were ambro and gattuso still being played even though they had a tournament to forget?

On another note, why did Russia dominate vs. Holland and then throw away the match vs Spain...with Spain usually a team with a very suspect defense? The mob in St. Petersburg didn't want to have their best players leave the country so they paid the players very large sums of money to throw the game.

This is in a nutshell what I heard from my "sources". Maybe MilanFan009 can add any details I may have forgotten. He and I were both shocked when our friend was telling us this. He is very reliable, and the skeptics may decide to rubbish this, but I would bet my life that these are very reliable news.

Every tournament is fixed. Nobody ever knows what's really on behind closed doors, but I don't agree with your sources' information. Both Ambrosini and Gattuso were dropped for the Romania clash evidently after their poor showing against the Netherlands. Ambrosini didn't start against France either. Any reason why Donadoni selected Milan's midfield was because of their combination.

Di Natale was argueably Italy's best performer coming into the tournament and warranted to be the first player picked in the squad. When Quagliarella did play he made no impact whatsoever.

I heard that France did shit because Raymond Domenech is mates with Nicolas Sarkozy who was pissed because his hot wife had a penchant for Mexes so told his old mate not to select him.

So you see the French are actually still an amazing team, and would have won the Euro's had Sarkozy not got involved. It infact had nothing to do with the fact that France, (like Italy), are over-rated, played terrible and are managed by an idiot.

Things like this happen all the time, I'm surprised that you find this 'shocking'.
If you think 'why the fuck is that player called up ?' Then 9 out of 10 reasons is to make his value rise.
Because 'internationals' cost more, I'm not saying everybody does it but their are always players who never play at an EC or WC, so why not earn some bucks with calling up some dumbasses who need to increase their value ?

Of course there are some little fixing at every living tournament, but the Russia one is just a joke.
You say like they really didn't want to win this match otherwise they would thrash Spain right ? And they didn't want to win the first match in group stages and accepted the humiliation of 4:1? C'mon now.. don't make them world-class. They didn't win against Spain because they couldn't handle their talent. End of Story.

I don't understand how people still believe in this stories

Not hard to believe, but I don't believe it.

Why would he want Pirlo, Gattuso and Ambrosini's transfer prices to increase when he has no intention of selling any of them?

i believe tournaments are fixed, every now and then little fixing such as team selection, tactics, coaches and maybe referees decisions
but players would never trade success for a bonus package of money, they earn loads as it is, they wnt success, trophies, go into heistory books etc
as for values increasing that only applies to 2-3 players per tournament, i mean good performers like villa would have cost the same before the tournament, only prehaps arshavin value increased along with couple of others, gattuso n ambro wouldnt go up in value, partly due to their age

Kaka_Milan said:

Why would he want Pirlo, Gattuso and Ambrosini's transfer prices to increase when he has no intention of selling any of them?

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so as nobody comes and bid for them!!

so youre saying were gonna sign quagiarella and di natale? nooo for the first, ok why not for the 2nd... and keep ambro and rino

ps this is a load of crap, spain were the ebst team, playing dazzling football, the only team that controlled the ball, everyone else sucked, thats why this tournament sucked, and russia couldnt handle spain

Interesting story, but still I find it hard to believe. Like Sao Paulo said, how is this possible, I dont remember gattuso and ambro even starting every game. Di Natale didnt play too bad either, it was Toni that could not finish any thing he was fed so it was all Toni's fault not Di natala.