For me, the most satisfying event of this football off-season may not be the World Cup but rather the Italian Football Federation’s trial of the Juventus, Lazio, Milan and Fiorentina football clubs in the largest match fixing scandal in Serie A history. I’m a Roma fan. That means that I have long endured the dominance of Northern clubs in Italian football’s premier football league, and the potentially dramatic punishments for the clubs involved—relegating them to a lower division or deducting them points on their standings in the league —in the scandal will not just level the playing field for Roma, but also vindicate years of resentment regarding the suspicious ease with which Italy’s so called top clubs claim their titles.

For as long as I can remember Italy’s top clubs have been the seven sisters:

• Juventus
• Milan
• Inter
• Roma
• Lazio
• Fiorentina
• Parma

The latter two have fallen on hard times in recent years, but the near dynastic supremacy of either Juventus or Milan has always led to murmurings over the way these clubs always seem to get all the breaks during the course of a season. While you can normally consign this sentiment to “sour-grapes”, the sense of something not quite smelling right has always permeated the Italian Championship. The nation’s most storied clubs, Juventus and Milan, always seem to be able to gain a key advantage on or off the field whenever they most need it during the season. It’s an almost unstated assumption among Serie A fans that these two clubs have an unfair advantage in winning trophies each season. In fact, Roma was the last club to win the championship that is not accused of match-fixing, and that was in 2000-2001. The five years since have seen Juventus claim four championships and Milan take one. In fact, Roma’s previous title win is now all the more glorious considering the deep-sense amongst even neutrals that the game is rigged.

So, if the Gazzetta dello Sport’s rumours are even mildly close to right and Juventus is relegated and Lazio is punished too, I’m doing cartwheels.