http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010 ... kidnapping
"Mafia plot to kidnap Mourinho." It may make a great headline, but in the age of the internet, is all as it seems in a rapidly changing news environment?
According to tabloid reports, the Italian police have just smashed a Mafia plot to kidnap the Portuguese manager of Internazionale, his wife and two children. It is gripping stuff – except that the winding trail that leads back from today's headlines ends not at the luxurious waterfront mansion of a Sicilian godfather but in a shabby caravan on a Gypsy encampment at Grezzago, near Milan.
That is where, seven days ago, officers of the Carabinieri seized two members of a gang who were reported to have been plotting to seize "the Special One". Well, "gang" is one word to describe them, but "family" would do just as well.
The four-member gang – a husband and wife and their two grown-up sons – are accused of breaking into the houses of rich people in northern Italy.
"They'd take the number plates of big, expensive cars and go to the ACI [Italy's equivalent of the AA or RAC] and trace the address of the owner. Then, when they were sure there was no one at home, they'd deactivate the alarm system and break in through a door or window," Major Vito Di Gioia, who led the operation, said. He and his men found stolen goods worth some €500,000 (£440,000), including jewels and watches worth around €100,000 (£88,000).
Like any number of similar operations, this one would have passed unnoticed had not one of the Carabinieri found, in the prefab, a press cutting that referred to José Mourinho. "This was the only thing linking him to the operation," said Di Gioia.
Last Saturday a local paper in Genoa, the Corriere Mercantile, reported that Mourinho's home on Lake Como was among the suspected targets of a band of Gypsies accused of burglary. Its dispatch was picked up and reported by the Italian news agency Ansa, but only one leading newspaper, Milan's Il Giorno, bothered to publish a story.
But for the internet, no doubt, the affair would have died there and then. By Monday, however, it was all over the press in Mourinho's native Portugal, and somewhere in its passage from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic the story became a lot more interesting.
"José Mourinho escapes Mafia attack," declared Correio da Manha. A Bola told its readers the Gypsy band – "linked to the local mafia" – was "suspected of planning the kidnapping" of the Portuguese coach.
The Portuguese newspapers' coverage excited not only their readers but also several Italian national dailies, whose journalists had passed over the original story. Citing "the Portuguese press" as its source, Il Giornale reported on Tuesday that the gang were "linked to the Italian mafia" and had been found in possession of "videos and photos" of Mourinho. La Stampa said some of the photos had been taken of the coach "even while he was at the wheel of his car, and in particular as he was leaving the pinetina [training ground]".
By the time it reached the British press, both the kidnap plot and the Mafia link had become fact — at least in the headlines. "Mafia plot to kidnap José Mourinho foiled," proclaimed the Daily Mirror. "Gang bid to kidnap Mourinho," said the Sun.
Disappointingly, Major Di Gioia was not prepared to play ball. "We are not aware of any link between these people and organised crime," he said. Neither photos nor videos had been found on them, he added.
"These people are not kidnappers. They are just thieves and receivers of stolen goods," the Major said.
