ROME, May 31: The scandal threatening to bring Italian football to its knees is now starting to affect the national team's World Cup preparations, according to the Italian press on Wednesday.

With 41 people and most of Italy's big clubs being dragged through the mud, the press said a “morbid atmosphere” has descended over the camp in Coverciano near Florence ahead of the June 9-July 9 football bonanza.

“It is futile to deny it, the scandal is weighing heavily,” claimed Corriere della Sera.

The Gazzetta dello Sport heaped pressure on the national squad adding that it was playing the role of “a tow-boat that will pull the country as a whole from the depths of the troubled waters of the Moggi system to the crystal-clear waters of a wholesome spirit.”

Former Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi is the man at the centre of the whole scandal and his name has become synonymous with anything corrupt in Italian football.

It has become so bad that Italian sports minister Giovanna Melandri paid the team a morale-boosting visit on Tuesday and her picture, alongside forward stars Francesco Totti and Alessandro Del Piero, is splashed across the nation's newspapers.

“She wanted to bring us some encouragement,” said coach Marcelo Lippi ahead of his team's Wednesday night friendly against Switzerland in Geneva.

Lippi himself was one of the people interviewed by prosecutors over the scandal, along with top goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon who was accused of illegal betting but remains with the squad.

“The calcio (Italian league) is in difficulty, help us to turn the page,”Melandri told the players on her visit.

Meanwhile, Lazio's president Claudio Lolito has become the latest name to be implicated in the scandal, accused of abusing stock market information about his club.

He is accused, along with his wife's uncle Roberto Mezzaroma, of trying to block the club's capital. Both men deny the charges.

And on Monday Fiorentina's honorary president Diego Della Valle was detained by Naples prosecutors for nine hours, questioned over match-fixing allegations.

The Italian football scandal erupted at the beginning of May when newspapers published transcripts of telephone conversations in which Moggi told Pierluigi Pairetto, head of the Italian referees' association and member of the UEFA's referees' commission, which referees he wanted assigned to certain league and European matches.

Italian football federation (FIGC) president Franco Carro quit after it was revealed that Turin prosecutors had passed the tapes to the FIGC in February but nothing was done about it.

Prosecutors then started investigations into the dealings GEA, Italy's largest firm of footbal agents, which is run by Moggi's son Alessandro.

Moggi and the entire Juventus board were forced to resign and then Naples prosecutors formally placed Juventus, AC Milan, Lazio and Fiorentina under investigation for alleged match-fixing.

Lippi was then dragged into the mire when transcripts of conversations he had with Moggi over the national team were published.—AFP