Thiago Motta fired as coach of slumping Juventus. Igor Tudor named as replacement

TURIN, Italy (AP) — Thiago Motta was fired as coach of slumping Juventus on Sunday, with Igor Tudor named as a replacement for the rest of the season.

“The club would like to thank Thiago Motta and all of his staff for their professionalism and for the work they have carried out in recent months with passion and dedication,” Juventus said in a statement. “The club wish them the best of luck for the future.

“Juventus FC also announce that the men’s first team will now be led by Igor Tudor, who will take charge of his first training session tomorrow,” the club added.

Juventus conceded seven goals and scored none in its last two Serie A matches — 4-0 and 3-0 losses to Atalanta and Fiorentina, respectively — leaving the record 36-time champion in fifth place and at risk of not qualifying for the Champions League.

Motta, who was in his first season at Juventus after guiding Bologna to a Champions League spot in the last campaign, reportedly lost support of several key players in the changing room over recent weeks as Juventus was eliminated from the Champions League and Italian Cup.

Juventus was also eliminated by AC Milan in the Italian Super Cup semifinals in January.

Tudor played for Juventus for nearly a decade from 1998-2007 and has previously coached Udinese, Hellas Verona and Lazio in Italy.

Tudor was also an assistant coach to Andrea Pirlo at Juventus in 2020-21. Pirlo and Tudor were fired at the end of the season.

The 46-year-old Tudor will make his debut against Genoa next Saturday.

Juventus will also play in the enlarged Club World Cup in the United States starting in June.

Motta has struggled all season to shed the defensive tactics instilled by his predecessor, Massimiliano Allegri, and Juventus has drawn 13 of its 29 Serie A matches.

Allegri was fired for his ugly outburst toward the referee and others in the Italian Cup final won by Juventus last season.

As a player, Tudor helped Juventus to win two Serie A titles, two Italian Super Cups and an Intertoto Cup — plus the 2007 Serie B title after the Bianconeri were relegated due to the Calciopoli scandal. He was then loaned to Siena before returning to Juventus but didn’t manage to play again for the Turin club due to injury.

Tudor was a starter in the 2003 Champions League final that Juventus lost to AC Milan in a penalty shootout.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

FILE - Lazio coach Igor Tudor gestures during the Serie A soccer match between Monza and Lazio at the U-Power Stadium in Monza, Italy, Saturday May 4 , 2024. (Alberto Mariani/LaPresse via AP, File)

Juventus' Randal Kolo Muani reacts during the Serie A soccer match between Fiorentina and Juventus at Florence's Artemio Franchi stadium, Italy, Sunday March 16, 2025. (Alfredo Falcone/LaPresse via AP)

Atalanta's Marten de Roon, left, celebrates scoring during the Serie A soccer match between Juventus and Atalanta at Allianz Stadium in Turin, Italy, Sunday March 9, 2025. (Spada/LaPresse via AP)

Juventus' head coach Thiago Motta watches the Serie A soccer match between Fiorentina and Juventus at Florence's Artemio Franchi stadium, Italy, Sunday March 16, 2025. (Alfredo Falcone/LaPresse via AP)

Juventus' head coach Thiago Motta looks down during the Serie A soccer match between Fiorentina and Juventus at Florence's Artemio Franchi stadium, Italy, Sunday March 16, 2025. (Alfredo Falcone/LaPresse via AP)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s truth commission has concluded that the government bears responsibility for facilitating a foreign adoption program rife with fraud and abuse, driven by efforts to reduce welfare costs and enabled by private agencies that often manipulated children’s backgrounds and origins.

The landmark report released Wednesday followed a nearly three-year investigation into complaints from 367 adoptees in Europe, the United States, and Australia, representing the most comprehensive examination yet of South Korea’s foreign adoptions, which peaked under a succession of military governments in the 1970s and ’80s.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a government-appointed fact-finding panel, said it confirmed human rights violations in 56 of the complaints and aims to review the remaining cases before its mandate expires in late May.

However, some adoptees and even a senior investigator on the commission criticized the cautiously written report, acknowledging that investigative limitations prevented the commission from more strongly establishing the government’s complicity.

That investigator, Sang Hoon Lee, a standing commissioner, also lamented the panel’s decision-making committee’s 5-4 vote on Tuesday to defer assessments of 42 other adoptees’ cases, citing a lack of documentation to sufficiently prove their adoptions were problematic. Lee and the commission’s conservative chairperson, Sun Young Park, did not specify which types of documents were central to the discussions.

However, Lee implied that some committee members were reluctant to recognize cases in which adoptees had yet to prove beyond doubt that the biological details in their adoption papers had been falsified — either by meeting their birth parents or confirming information about them.

Most Korean adoptees were registered by agencies as abandoned orphans, although they frequently had relatives who could be easily identified or found, a practice that often makes their roots difficult or impossible to trace. Government data obtained by The Associated Press shows less than a fifth of 15,000 adoptees who have asked South Korea for help with family searches since 2012 have managed to reunite with relatives.

Lee said the commission’s stance reflects a lack of understanding of the systemic problems in adoptions and risks excluding many remaining cases.

“Personally, I find yesterday’s decision very regrettable and consider it a half-baked decision,” Lee said.

After reviewing government and adoption records and interviewing adoptees, birth families, public officials and adoption workers, the commission assessed that South Korean officials saw foreign adoptions as a cheaper alternative to building a social welfare system for needy children, including those born to poor parents or unwed mothers.

Through policies and laws that promoted adoption, South Korea’s military governments permitted private adoption agencies to exercise extensive guardianship rights over children in their possession and swiftly transfer custody to foreign adopters, resulting in "large-scale overseas placements of children in need of protection,” the commission said.

Authorities provided no meaningful oversight as adoption agencies engaged in dubious or illicit practices while competing to send more children abroad. These practices included bypassing proper consent from biological parents, falsely documenting children with known parents as abandoned orphans, and switching children’s identities, according to the commission’s report. It cited that the government failed to ensure that agencies properly screened adoptive parents or prevent them from excessively charging foreign adopters, who were often asked to make additional donations beyond the standard fees.

The commission’s findings broadly aligned with previous reporting by The Associated Press. The AP investigations, which were also documented by Frontline (PBS), detailed how South Korea’s government, Western countries and adoption agencies worked in tandem to supply some 200,000 Korean children to parents overseas, despite years of evidence that many were being procured through questionable or outright unscrupulous means. Western nations ignored these problems and sometimes pressured South Korea to keep the kids coming as they focused on satisfying their huge domestic demands for babies.

The commission recommended the South Korean government issue an official apology over the problems it identified and develop plans to address the grievances of adoptees who discovered that the biological origins in their adoption papers were falsified. It also urged the government to investigate citizenship gaps among adoptees sent to the United States — the largest recipient of Korean children by far — and to implement measures to assist those without citizenship, who may number in the thousands.

South Korea’s government has never acknowledged direct responsibility for issues surrounding past adoptions, which have drawn growing international attention amid criticism that thousands of children were carelessly or unnecessarily separated from their biological families. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, the government department that handles adoption issues, didn’t immediately comment on the commission’s report.

Around 200,000 South Koreans were adopted to Western countries in the past seven decades, forming what’s believed to be the world’s largest diaspora of adoptees.

Most were placed with white parents in the United States and Europe during the 1970-80s. South Korea's then military leaders focused on economic growth and saw adoptions as a tool to reduce welfare burdens, erase the “social problem” of unwed mothers and deepen ties with the democratic West.

The military governments implemented special laws aimed at promoting foreign adoptions, removing judicial oversight and granting vast powers to the heads of private agencies, which bypassed proper child relinquishment practices while shipping thousands of children to the West every year.

Recent reforms, including a 2011 law that reinstated judicial oversight by requiring foreign adoptions to go through family courts, have led to a significant decline in the overseas placements of South Korean children, with only 79 cases in 2023.

Peter Møller, left, Boonyoung Han, co-founders of the Danish Korea Rights Group, and adoptee Yooree Kim, right, attend a press conference at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Peter Møller, left, Boonyoung Han, second from left, co-founders of the Danish Korea Rights Group, and adoptee Yooree Kim, second from right, attend a press conference at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Truth and Reconciliation Commission Chairperson Park Sun Young, right, comforts adoptee Yooree Kim during a press conference in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)