Wiretapped Conversations Reveal Controversies Surrounding Former Serie A Referee Designator

Wiretapped conversations involving Gianluca Rocchi have been published, offering a glimpse into how Serie A’s former referee designator discussed Inter’s unhappiness with certain officials, including the appointment for a match against Verona in May 2025.

According to Corriere della Sera, Rocchi was recorded on 29 April 2025 telling colleague Andrea Gervasoni: “Since these Inter lot are seriously pissing us off, I was thinking… what if we swapped things around, and for Inter-Verona we put Piccinini instead of Sozza?”

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In a separate exchange, AIA club-liaison Riccardo Pinzani relayed that Inter’s referee-matters contact had called, adding that president Beppe Marotta was said to be discussing it with a senior federation official.

“Yes, they called me, they drove me mad, I’m telling you,” Rocchi replied.

The paper notes, significantly, that no call between Rocchi and any Inter director was ever intercepted; if such contacts happened, they occurred on unidentified lines or via apps, and an attempt to install monitoring software on Rocchi’s phone failed.

Rocchi later confirmed to another colleague that he had replaced Simone Sozza because “Inter are still complaining like mad, and I prefer to use someone who’s clean with Inter,” prompting Dino Tommasi to protest that it was “absurd that Sozza can no longer referee Inter.”

AIA chief Gianluca Rocchi (Photo by Paolo Bruno/Getty Images)

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Prosecutors Request Dismissal for Rocchi and Inter

The transcripts emerge with the criminal case effectively winding down.

On Tuesday, Milan prosecutors requested the dismissal of the investigation into Rocchi, who had self-suspended, concluding after two years that while individual episodes of interference occurred, there was no structured system and no sports fraud capable of altering matches.

Inter, briefly registered under Italy’s corporate liability law, were archived immediately for the same reason, and neither Marotta nor then-FIGC president Gabriele Gravina was ever placed under investigation.

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The matter is not entirely closed: the files have been passed to the FIGC’s federal prosecutor and CONI to assess possible disciplinary relevance, while a separate strand concerning alleged interventions at the VAR centre in Lissone has been transferred to Monza, where the former AIA chief remains under investigation.