Juventus
Elected in 1955 by a council of members, including his older brother, who was president of the club, he became the youngest person to assume the highest managerial position in the history of Juventus. His management was characterized by the signings of important players, such as John Charles and Omar Sívori, who proved to be decisive for the conquest of three Serie A championships and two consecutive Coppa Italias from 1958 to 1961.[27][28] Before he died, Agnelli was instrumental in signing Fabio Capello as Juventus coach in 2004.[29] He also had transformed the club into a modern publicly listed company with important investment projects.[30] After leaving the presidential role in 1962, Agnelli remained tied to Juventus. In 1994, he took over the management activities previously carried out by his brother, exerting greater influence on the club as honorary president during the following decade, a period in which the club won another five Serie A titles, one more Coppa Italia, four Supercoppa Italianas, one Intercontinental Cup, one UEFA Champions League, one UEFA Intertoto Cup and one UEFA Super Cup, for a total of 19 trophies in 18 years. By virtue of the sporting successes achieved during his managerial sporting career, Agnelli was jointly inducted by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) and the Coverciano Football Museum Foundation into the Italian Football Hall of Fame in 2015.[31]
In 1999, Juventus improved their own record of having won all five major UEFA competitions by winning the Intertoto Cup, the next year was voted the seventh best of the FIFA Club of the Century and in 2009 was placed by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics second in the European best club of the 20th-century ranking, the highest for an Italian club in both; by the early 2000s, the club had the third best revenue in Europe at over €200 million. This all changed when, three years after his death, Calciopoli controversially hit the club,[32][33][34] which was demoted to Serie B for the first time in its history, despite the club being acquitted and the leagues were ruled to be regular;[35][36] it was his son, Andrea Agnelli, who built the club back up in the 2010s.[37] When Agnelli died in 2004, Juventus had won the
Some observers allege that Calciopoli and its aftermath were a dispute within Juventus and between the club's owners that came after the deaths of Umberto and Gianni Agnelli,[46] including Franzo Grande Stevens and Gianluigi Gabetti who favoured Agnelli's grandson, John Elkann, over his nephew as chairman,[47] and wanted to get rid of Luciano Moggi, Antonio Giraudo,[48][49] and Roberto Bettega, whose shares in the club increased.[50] Whatever their intentions, it is argued they condemned Juventus: first when Carlo Zaccone, the club's lawyer,[51] agreed for relegation to Serie B and point-deduction, when he made that statement because Juventus were the only club risking more than one-division relegation (Serie C), and he meant for Juventus (the sole club to be ultimately demoted) to have equal treatment with the other clubs;
Several observers, including former FIGC president Franco Carraro, argue that had Agnelli been alive, things would have done different, as the club and its directors would have been defended properly, which could have avoided relegation and cleared the club's name much earlier than the Calciopoli trials of the 2010s. It is argued that Agnelli would have taken the same position as his son, but much harder.[37] Moggi, one of the two Juventus directors involved in the scandal,[57][58] said that Calciopoli only happened because "l'Avvocato Agnelli and il Dottor Umberto died",[59] and had the two Agnellis not died, "nothing [of this farce] would have happened."[60][61] According to observers, Juventus was weak after the deaths of the Agnelli, with Moggi saying this "made us orphans and weak, it was easy to attack Juve and destroy them by making things up."[62]
