Signor Pessotto, who was until last season a star player with the club, suffered multiple fractures and internal haemorrhaging and was said to be in a critical condition after the 15m (50ft) fall from a dormer window. Police are treating the incident as a suicide attempt.

News of Signor Pessotto’s fall was flashed to Duisburg in Germany, where Fabio Cannavaro, the Italian captain, was giving a jubilant press conference after his team’s World Cup victory over Australia. Cannavaro, a Juventus player, left the press conference in distress.

“I’m very upset. Pessotto was the nicest guy in the world,” he said later.

Ciro Ferrara, the national assistant coach, and two Italy stars, Alessandro Del Piero and Gianluca Zambrotta, flew in a private jet to Turin to be with their friend.

Signor Pessotto, 35, took up the post of Juventus team manager last month and had hoped to restore morale after the resignation of Luciano Moggi, the club’s general manager who is at the heart of the match-fixing scandal, and the entire Juventus board.

It appears that he climbed out of a dormer window in the roof of the club’s four-storey headquarters, then fell into an inner courtyard “clutching a rosary” in his hands. He landed between two parked cars, suffering multiple fractures and internal haemorrhaging. Last night he underwent surgery to clear a blood clot.

Turin police said that he had left his car keys and mobile phone behind on the roof and, unusually, had parked his car, a Grande Punto, in the underground car park instead of the courtyard. They said that they were treating the incident as a possible suicide attempt.

Signor Pessotto, who played 11 seasons with Juventus and 22 times for Italy, is not among those facing charges tomorrow.

However, he is said to have been “badly shaken” by the scandal, and some of the six Serie A titles that Juventus won while he was in the team are now under scrutiny.

“His world had collapsed,” the newspaper Corriere della Sera said, noting that he had dedicated his life to a game now tainted by corruption.

The scandal broke last month with the publication of intercepted telephone conversations between Signor Moggi and officials from the Italian Football Federation in which they discussed refereeing appointments and transfer deals.

After a judicial inquiry Juventus, AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio, as well as 26 individuals including eight referees and two linesmen, have been ordered to appear before the tribunal to be held at the Olympic Stadium in Rome tomorrow.

The four clubs are almost certain to be relegated from Serie A to Serie B or even — in the case of Juventus — to Serie C1, the third division. Juventus, 29 times Italian champions, could also be stripped of its past two league titles.

The effect of Signor Pessotto’s apparent suicide attempt on the morale of the Italian team, which plays a World Cup quarter-final against Ukraine on Friday, remains to be seen.

The tribunal is scheduled to deliver its verdicts on the first set of charges between July 7 and 9, before the World Cup final.

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