Taxing time as Torino battle for survival Italian

Serie A: The strutting Juventus has a scruffy younger brother who has been in a spot of bother with the authorities of late. Meet Torino, Turin's much less famous football team.

At the end of June the perpetual underachievers won promotion to Serie A after a two-year absence. Elated supporters were looking forward to a Turin derby in the new season. But they had no idea that within days Torino would become the focus of the Italian fraud squad.

Documents were seized from the club in a dramatic overnight raid, with officials suspected of providing false financial guarantees to the taxation authorities.

It soon emerged the club owed €40 million in unpaid taxes for the last few years.

These debts will have to be cleared before Torino can play football again - in any league. Understandably, the banks have not exactly been queueing up to bail the club out, although the newspaper Tuttosport yesterday reported Milan-based UniCredit might be prepared to provide the cash.

On July 15th Torino were officially expelled from Serie A by the Italian Football Federation (the FIGC - Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio) because of the poor state of their finances.

The case went to CONI (the Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano), which rejected Torino's request to retain their Serie A status. And on Tuesday another blow: an appeal to the Tar del Lazio failed.

There is one final chance for owner Francesco Cimminelli. He has to somehow get the support of one of the big banks this weekend and pray the Consiglio di Stato accepts his appeal to allow his team to remain in the top league. A tall order. The verdict is expected to be announced in Rome on Monday afternoon at the earliest and Tuesday morning at the latest.

The club that finished behind Torino in Serie B - Treviso - is naturally hoping for a bad result for the Turinese.

The consensus seems to be that a much-changed Torino will be back in Serie B when the new season gets underway. For a while some pessimistic supporters were predicting a humiliating relegation to C2 - but these fears seem to have abated.

It's expected that, if Cimminelli fails, the "Lodo Petrucci" rule will be invoked, under which clubs with problems like Torino's can be declared bankrupt and go down a league with a new management team and an official name change.

Torino manager, Renato Zaccarelli, describes this as "a type of solution", laughingly explaining that if Manchester United ran into a similar crisis they could rebrand themselves "New Manchester".

Zaccarelli captained the team to victory in their last scudetto back in 1976. He is respected by fans and has a reputation for not fearing hard work.

One devotee says: "He is a good man, not a show-off. He prefers working to talking."

Supporters hope he will remain if there is a change of management.

Silvia Garabrino is Torino correspondent for the Turin-based newspaper La Stampa.

"If Cimminelli finds the money for Monday and the Consiglio di Stato accepts his proposal, Torino stay in Serie A with Cimminelli in charge.

"If this last appeal is rejected they will play in B if they find money. If they go to B Chimminelli will go. The club will be sold and recreated. Another owner will buy Torino. Probably this is what will happen," she says.

She says two new names have already been lined up for the ownership of Torino: an industrialist and a prominent lawyer. The city's mayor is expected to name another major financial backer next week.

Meanwhile, emotionally exhausted fans have been taking part in pilgrimages to the Superga, a hill on the outskirts of Turin, where there is a shrine to Italy's equivalent of the Munich air disaster.

On a foggy night in May 1949, a plane coming from Lisbon carrying the legendary "Grande Torino" team - with more than a fair share of international players and a string of Italian titles - crashed into the hill.

There were no survivors.

The story is a reminder that Torino have not always played second fiddle in their home city.

A spokesman for the the independent Torino supporters group, Ultras Granata, says: "This is our story. We always have movements of excitement and then times when you can't see the end of the darkness.

"We have a glorious story and we'll keep on fighting."

But he says fans are still shaken at what has emerged about the club recently.

"Our president (Attilio Romero) always said our economic situation was one of a team that could make the Champions League. Not as rich as Juve or Chelsea but everything was right, everything was okay. There was equilibrium between the money we were giving out and the money we were taking in.

"I had no idea. I knew Torino could not buy great football players but could not imagine our situation was so tragic. I could not believe taxes were not being paid to the State."

It is clear that the fans relish their underdog status a little, frequently focusing on Juve's enjoyment of the long-standing patronage of Fiat and the Agnelli family.

"The rivalry between us and Juve is not only about football. It's also a social situation. We see in Juve power and riches. It's a little like United and City in Manchester.

"It's like David and Goliath. We have always been really poor in front of them because they have Fiat. In Turin, Fiat is everything. Almost everybody works for Fiat. We're about rebellion against power."

The group will travel to Rome next week to hear the final verdict on Turin's future.