Italy's Alberto Gilardino answers questions during a news conference in Duisburg during the World Cup soccer tournament June 15, 2006. [Reuters]

Italian champions Juve , which has five players in the national squad playing in Germany, could be thrown out of the top league if the sports tribunal rules its top officials influenced the appointment of referees in key matches.

AC Milan, which also has five squad members, risks the same penalty over allegations concerning the selection of linesmen.

Rossi, a lawyer who was appointed commissioner after the board the Italian Football Federation resigned over the scandal, said the tribunal would make its ruling between July 7 and July 9.

Any team or individual found guilty will have one chance of appeal at hearings that would conclude no later than July 20, Rossi said, giving the football federation time to tell UEFA the list of teams to play in its European tournaments next season.

"There will be no delay to the start of the (Italian) championship," Rossi told a news conference. The 2006/7 soccer season starts on August 28.

Rossi also announced on Thursday he had replaced the head of the tribunal which will hear the case after its former president was named in a list of people investigated by Naples prosecutors who are also investigating the affair.

Besides Juve and AC Milan, other other top teams with players at the World Cup are implicated, such as Lazio and Fiorentina.

The enthusiasm of the usually soccer-mad Italians has been dampened by the scandal. Spirits were lifted, however, by the team's 2-0 opening win against Ghana, meaning they will pass through to the second round if they beat the United States on Saturday.

A member of parliament from Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party, Maurizio Paniz, has suggested there should be an amnesty for all concerned if Italy brings home the trophy which it last won in 1982, a suggestion rejected by Rossi and Italy's sports minister Giovanna Melandri.

"That sounds like twaddle," Melandri said. "The problem must be confronted, whatever the result of Azzurris' World Cup."

Rossi's chief investigator, Francesco Borrelli, said he will wrap up his report after an interview on Friday with Riccardo Garrone, the chairman of Sampdoria, another club implicated in the scandal.

Borrelli will hand his findings to the federation's prosecutor who will decide by next Wednesday which people or teams to send to the tribunal.