Juventus’ claim of ‘entry procedures' turns out to be false

More controversies are brewing around Juventus F.C., a prominent football team in Italian league Serie A, after Cristiano Ronaldo’s no-show incident. It was revealed that the Italian football team not only lied and made unreasonable requests in regards to the procedures of entering South Korea and the details of the match but also engaged in illegal marketing activities.

It was 3 p.m. on Friday, the same day of the friendly match with the K League All-Start team, when Juventus left the arrivals hall of the Incheon International Airport. A series of events, including the Italian team’s fan meeting scheduled at 3 p.m., were either canceled or delayed, and the match itself began one hour later than the originally planned kick-off time. “It took a very long time for us to be processed for entry at the airport,” said Juventus’s manager Maurizio Sarri. “It took over two hours for the entry procedures – all of our passports were collected at the same time,” another staff member of Juventus said to TheFasta, the organizer of the match.

However, it turned out that their story was quite different from the actual event according to the Dong-A Ilbo’s investigation with the Korea Immigration Service under the Ministry of Justice. “Juventus arrived at 2:38 p.m. at the immigration checkpoint. It took a total of 26 minutes for all 76 members to be processed. Passports were not collected unlike the claim, and face-to-face screening was carried out as it is the case for all entrants,” said an official of the Ministry of Justice.

It was reported later that Juventus, which came up with a false explanation about their delayed entry, even threatened K League to have the match canceled unless it is postponed to 9 p.m. “We turned down the proposal by Juventus to reduce each half and half-time from 45 to 40 minutes and from 15 to 10 minutes, respectively,” said K League. K League sent a letter of complaint to Juventus F.C. and Serie A for the team’s irresponsible behavior.


Won-Joo Lee takeoff@donga.com · Yun-Cheol Jeong trigger@donga.com