Peterka

After they won the World Cup, Italy finds itself in one of the biggest match fixing scandals in the decade. Four of the biggest clubs on the Continent have been recently found guilty of paying to have the marches fixed and the severe punishments include demotion and points deductions.

Juventus, the champions, where relegated from Serie A to Serie B and they were given a 30 point deduction for next season. Fiorentina was also relegated to Serie B and hit with -12 points for next season; Lazio, relegated to Serie B and docked seven points. Milan docked 44 points in last season's standings, dropping them to eighth place and outside the qualifying places for European competition, the Milan was not relegated and they will start next season with -15 points.

The scale of the punishment is difficult to comprehend for many. Only Roma among the champions of the past 15 seasons remain untouched. Those four have won all but two of the past 20 titles. But the response to the sentences has been mixed within Italy. It definitely strikes around 20 million fans of the soccer in that country, since their best players are now forced to play abroad.

Some say that the sentences are not fair since the sport of soccer as a whole is not corrupt, and some thought that this kind of justice is what it takes to clean the calcio from corruption. And some say that the next step should be to rewrite the rules of Italian soccer in order to prevent this from happening again.

Ally White is a top senior copy writer on sportsbook action for http://www.instantactionsports.com Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety on your site, make sure to leave all links in place and do not modify any of the content.