Totonero: The Scandal That Relegated Milan

Chart illustrating A.C. Milan's performance with their leagues’ positions from 1930 to 2010, highlighting championship victories and periods of adversity.

Once Milan's Scudetto drought was over(1950-1951), the club returned to its winning ways in Serie A and beyond, stacking up trophies and becoming a symbol of greatness in world football. Over the next two decades, Milan added seven more Scudettos, two Cup Winners’ Cups, and four Coppa Italia titles to its name. But all that success didn’t come without trouble.

In 1980, Milan was hit with one of the biggest scandals in Italian football history: the Totonero Affair. When people talk about match-fixing in Serie A, they usually think of Juventus in 2006. But like many other things in Italian football, Milan did it first.

It all started at a restaurant in Rome called La Lampara, a popular spot for football players, coaches, and other insiders. The two main figures were the owner of the restaurant, Massimo Cruciani, and a produce supplier named Alvaro Trinca. At the time, legal football betting was barely a thing in Italy. So if you wanted to place a wager, it had to be through illegal channels. That’s where Cruciani and Trinca saw their opportunity.

They built an underground gambling ring called the Totonero, and it quickly turned into a massive operation. Over the course of a few seasons, they were moving tens of billions of lire. Eventually, they began fixing matches in Serie A and Serie B to boost their profits. They weren’t working alone either. Players were in on it. So was the president of A.C. Milan at the time, Felice Colombo.

Everything started to fall apart when Cruciani and Trinca lost a ton of money on a match they thought they had fixed. Instead of paying up, they decided to go to the authorities and expose the entire operation.

That decision blew the lid off the scandal. Arrests followed. Cruciani, Trinca, players, club officials, even Colombo were taken in. Milan was punished severely. The club was relegated from Serie A, something that had never happened before.

The next season, Milan managed to return to the top flight. But in the 1981 to 1982 campaign, the team was relegated again. This time, it wasn’t due to scandal. It was because of results on the pitch. That would be the last time A.C. Milan has ever been relegated.

Since then, Milan has had major success and rebuilt its reputation. But the Totonero Affair remains one of the darkest chapters in the club’s history. It was a painful chapter, but one that Milan moved on from, rebuilding its identity both on and off the pitch.