In a twist that no self-respecting writer of fiction would have dared dream up in a millions years, Bruno Alves might well be stuck on the Ibrox wage bill because the club he was due to sign for, Parma, have been caught up in a match-fixing scandal.
You could not make this up. He tries to depart one cheating band of thieves and crooks and has wound up in talks with another, with the only difference being that the Italians get punished for their offences.
Perhaps Alves thought it worked the way it does in Scotland, where clubs get caught behaving badly and everyone in the media suggests that all the victims just “move on”. Not in Italy, where a raft of scandals down the years has resulted in everything from title stripping to relegation.
If the media and authorities here were half as invested in rooting corruption out in the game who knows what the SPL would look like?
Alves is on big money at Ibrox, so they must have been praying that they could get the Italians to take him off their hands, but with the club’s place in Serie A now looking decidedly bleak, the chances are that the Ibrox NewCo is stuck with him for a while yet.
The Italian Soccer Federation announced the charges today; they relate to attempts by Parma’s player, Emanuele Calaiò, to induce a group of players at Spezia not to try in their last game of the season, which Parma won 2-0 to ensure promotion to the top flight.
The scam was revealed in a series of text messages which have come to the attention of the authorities.
From 1999 until at least 2010, Rangers improperly registered over a dozen players for matches within Scotland and Europe. All the documentary evidence is there to back that claim up, and indeed it is not contested by anyone.
An SFA registrations officer provided a useful alibi at the inquiry into what the club had done, and a “no title stripping” guarantee signed in secret did the rest.
And to think we laugh at corruption elsewhere.
I am laughing at this story though.
It’s just too good not to.