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OR Inter has become addicted to the headlines in Italy. Last night it secured the 21st in its history and third in the decade we are going through, but the shadow of a scandal may fall heavily on this championship which – if confirmed – the “neratzuri” will shoulder it entirely.
In the next few days in the office of the prosecutor of Milan will be found Giorgio Senoneits referee manager Interwho will be asked to prove that he does not have special relations with the leadership of the Italian arbitration, to the benefit of the club and to the detriment of its competitors.
The prosecution’s investigation into him is already underway Gianluca Rocchiits chief referee Serie A who left a few days ago and is accused of having set up an entire circuit to favor certain teams, but also to protect certain referees, so that they could avoid bad evaluations.
His involvement in the Rocky case Senone she seems to be big. He is the first Inter “name” to officially end up in the files of the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is investigating the refereeing scandal. There are reportedly phone conversations in which Rocky mentions the Milanese and the referees they want or don’t want in their games. According to the investigation, in April 2025 Rocky had taken care to remove the referee Danielle Dovery from Inter’s big games in the final matches of the season because he was not liked by the club and opted for Andrea Colombo instead. What the prosecutor wants, therefore, is to know how the referee knew who Inter wanted and who they didn’t.
Rocky’s “chosen” assistant
The relationship with Senone will certainly not be able to be denied by the former leader of the Italian arbitration. Coincidentally (?), he was very often an assistant in the matches that Rocky “whistles”. They have refereed together not only dozens of games in the Italian league but also in European competitions, one as a referee and the other as an assistant referee. They have even shared the same hotel room, on many trips, on the eve of games.
And as “La Repubblica” wrote, in one of the telephone surveillances carried out by the prosecution, on the eve of the first semi-final of the Italian Cup between Inter and Milan at San Siro on April 2, 2025, Rocky, talking to someone, mentioned Senone’s name and that Doveri does not want Inter to whistle. “She doesn’t want to see him, or even hear about him,” she is quoted as saying.
Also in focus are several Serie A matches (Udinese v Parma and Bologna v Inter), as well as Salernitana v Modena for Serie B. Investigators are also looking into the 2023-24 Inter v Verona match, particularly the incident involving Bastoni’s elbow on Duda which was not penalized by either the referee or VAR.
The link to the referees
But who is Senone and what is his job within the Inter “organization”? From 2009 to 2020, he was an assistant referee between Serie A and Serie B. On and off the pitch, he shared many appointments with top referees, including Andrea De Marco, building a reputation and professional relationships that today demonstrate his in-depth knowledge of the Italian refereeing system.
He is a figure who rarely appears in the media, yet is central to the club’s internal organization in terms of relations with the refereeing ‘community’. As of 2020, he holds the role of club refereeing director, a relatively new role in Italian football but increasingly important for the big teams. Essentially, he is responsible for managing all aspects of the relationship between the club and the referees.
He explains regulatory updates to players and staff, trains the team on the characteristics of certain referees, analyzes techniques and behaviours, organizes the reception of the match referee and his assistants on the pitch and acts as a point of contact between the club and the AIA (Italian Referees Association). This role of liaison, education and institutional management is also critical in regulating the behavior of registered members on the field.
Senone is highly regarded within the club. Management, starting with Giuseppe Marotta, has repeatedly praised him, highlighting his excellent work, particularly his contribution to reducing yellow cards and improving the team’s sportsmanship. Some recent comments praising him are illustrative: “We need to understand the importance of his role. There used to be a “Cup of Discipline”, but now it’s gone. Last season, we were the team with the fewest yellow cards thanks to the work of Giorgio Senone,” the Inter president said recently. Apart from the first team, Senone also teaches in the youth sector and works with the technical sector of the Italian federation.
In… the words of Mourinho
If Senone acted in an irregular way in favor of his team it will be seen along the way, from the statements of all the suspects of sports fraud and also from the content of Rocky’s conversations, which only the prosecutor knows. Part of the Italian press, yesterday shortly after Inter’s victory over Parma and securing the Scudetto, recalled that Jose Mourinho during his years at Roma had stated that “there are teams that tell the referee which referee they want in their games and you don’t say anything”, while Gian Piero Gasperini also referred this year to teams that “have hired former referees, who teach the players how to dive How to stay on the ground, what their reactions should be, to be convincing to the referees.
»Teams protesting en masse to the referee without getting cards. This is how things are in our football now. In football, the point is to steal.”
In the spring of 2006 Calciopoli broke out, the biggest scandal in the history of Italian football. At the center was Luciano Mozzi, then general manager of Juventus, who was accused of having set up an extensive system of influencing dietary definitions.
Mozzi was tried by both the sporting and criminal courts, and the sporting justice relegated Juventus to Serie B and stripped them of two championships.
Exactly 20 years later, with the same content but different protagonists, Inter are threatened to find themselves in the dock if Senone’s actions prove to be fraudulent. And if in 2011, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office closed due to the statute of limitations an investigation involving the involvement of the “nerazzuri” in Calciopoli, history repeats itself and when it repeats, it is often no joke.
