Milan, May 22 (DIN NEWS)<\/b>\u00a0Footballers Pepe Reina, Paolo Cannavaro and Salvatore Aronica have been ordered to appear before a Italian Football Federation (FIGC) panel over their alleged association with people linked to the mafia, according to reports in Italy today.<\/p>\n
Naples’ anti-mafia department opened an investigation and the FIGC’s chief prosecutor Giuseppe Pecoraro has ordered the three players to appear before a disciplinary committee hearing on a date yet to be decided.<\/p>\n
Both Cannavaro and Aronica played for Napoli for a few years, while former Liverpool goalkeeper Reina will leave Napoli this summer to move to AC Milan.<\/p>\n
The three players will be questioned over allegedly “maintaining inappropriate relations” with the Esposito brothers Gabriele, Francesco and Giuseppe, who are alleged to be leading figures in Naples’ Camorra mafia.<\/p>\n
Gazzetta Dello Sport reported that Reina, 35, held a farewell party in a popular Naples nightclub owned by one of the Esposito brothers.<\/p>\n
Reina and Cannavaro allegedly obtained free tickets for Napoli games for two of the brothers, with reports of an “exchange of favours”.<\/p>\n
FIGC prosecutors will also question representatives of three clubs, Napoli, Sassuolo and Palermo.<\/p>\n
Three Napoli employees including team manager Paolo De Matteis and former head of ticketing Luigi Cassano must also appear before the FIGC hearing.<\/p>\n
Cannavaro, 36, retired last December and joined his brother, 2006 World Cup winner Fabio Cannavaro, on the coaching staff at Chinese Super League club Guangzhou Evergrande.<\/p>\n
Reina — who was on Spain’s 2010 World Cup-winning team and is a two-time European champion from 2008 and 2012 — first joined Napoli in 2013 on loan from Liverpool.<\/p>\n
He moved to Bayern Munich the following year before returning to Naples in 2015.<\/p>\n
During his club career he won the UEFA Super Cup, FA Cup and League Cup with Liverpool, a Bundesliga title with Bayern and the Italian Cup in 2014.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Milan, May 22 (DIN NEWS)\u00a0Footballers Pepe Reina, Paolo Cannavaro and Salvatore Aronica have been ordered to appear before a Italian Football Federation (FIGC) panel over their alleged association with people linked to the mafia, according to reports in Italy today. Naples’ anti-mafia department opened an investigation and the FIGC’s chief prosecutor Giuseppe Pecoraro has ordered the three players to appear before a disciplinary committee hearing on a date yet to be decided. Both Cannavaro and Aronica played for Napoli for a few years, while former Liverpool goalkeeper Reina will leave…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11541,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11540"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11542,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11540\/revisions\/11542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}