From the Sidelines Is football fixed?
If you have at all wondered whether football matches are rigged, the short answer is: of course they are, silly. At least some of them. Wherever there is money and influence -- and football is loaded with both -- then hanky-panky is afoot, so to speak.
Recently speaking about soccer corruption were two big names in the sport. Franz Beckenbauer, the former World Cup-winning German skipper and coach, stirred up a row after hinting that his club Bayern Munich deliberately threw a Bundesliga match 36 years ago to ensure city rival TSV 1860 Munich did not win the title for a second year running. And Manchester United's manager, Alex Ferguson suggested that the Champions League quarter-final draw of two months ago had been fixed.
Ferguson was questioning the authenticity of the quarter-final draw after his side were drawn to play Real Madrid. The Italian teams and their Spanish counterparts each avoided playing clubs from their own country in the last eight. "Real Madrid -- they have a nice draw, they must have picked it themselves," the Old Trafford boss said after the draw. "The Spanish or Italian teams don't play each other. How do you think they work that out? They don't want us in the final, that's for sure."
The Beckenbauer row revolves around a late-season 5-2 defeat of Bayern by Eintracht Braunschweig in the 1966-1967 campaign which eventually handed Eintracht the title, two points ahead of TSV. Bayern finished sixth.
"We lost 5-2 in Braunschweig and that suited us," Beckenbauer, now a Bayern executive, told German television. "I can say it now. We did not want our local rivals to win the title again. I'm not saying that we lost on purpose but our resistance was limited to the minimum."
Who to believe, the cantankerous coach or the great libero? Ferguson is guessing but Beckenbauer is confessing outright. Heaven knows, allegations of rigging are nothing new. People have been talking for ages; of bribes offered, of accounts not fully rendered, of all sorts of creepy creatures crawling out of the woodwork. UEFA soccer chief, Lennart Johansson, the losing candidate for FIFA boss in 1998, wanted allegations of vote-rigging that year to be "thoroughly investigated". The Daily Mail had alleged bribes of $100,000 were paid to persuade FIFA members to vote for Sepp Blatter in the elections before the World Cup in France.
Gheorghe Hagi, Romania's best-known star, alleged important matches were decided for up to $60,000.
There was, too, the Marseille affair. Bernard Tapie, former Socialist politician, millionaire and president of Olympique Marseille, brought France the glory of its first European Cup in 1993 and, almost overnight, the removal of that trophy when the club was disqualified following evidence of bribes to players of Valenciennes to "go easy" in a league match against Marseille.
Tapie was accused of spreading $20 million over systematic match- rigging and -- get this -- the examining magistrate was charged with dipping for four years into Marseille's corruption.
Fingers are forever being pointed at goalkeepers and referees, for in football there are no two figures more important to the outcome of games. Argentina's controversial referee Javier Castrilli, who went up to the quarter-finals in France, accused his country's College of Referees and its head of leaning on referees to rig games.
Bruce Grobbelaar, for 13 years in Liverpool as one of the most successful goalkeepers in the British game, faced allegations of match- fixing between 1991 and 1995. A Malaysian businessman was accused of providing $65,000 for Grobbelaar to let Newcastle United score and beat Liverpool in 1993 so that a betting syndicate in the Far East could beat the pools.
Grobbelaar was found not guilty. The case was closed, but the inevitable sullying of soccer's image continues.
The appetite for corruption apparently abounds. It is said that former FIFA supremo Havelange knew little about soccer but a great deal about wheeling and dealing, as was supposedly proven in Frankfurt in 1974 when he ousted Sir Stanley Rous from the presidency and got away with it. Reportedly, it was just a question -- as with the Olympic Committee -- of sweetening the executive members.
To be sure, accusations are easy; proof is another matter. A few years ago David Yallop's devastating book How They Sold The Game gave us chapter by repugnant chapter. But backdoor deals are never made in front of cameras. What proof did Ferguson offer? He has since apologised for making the remarks and has written a letter of explanation to UEFA's disciplinary body. Ferguson was fined £2,000 in 1999 for similar remarks and was fined 6,620 euros this time although the money is small change for a man who receives 100,000 sterling a week.
The UEFA firmly believes there are crooks who move in all the time on soccer's money bags but its hands are full. Corruption has a decades-old head start on UEFA's tiny special investigating committee, formed of two people a few years back to sniff out corrupters in all of Europe.
Football is a ruthless business and trying to put a lid on soccer corruption, wrote Rob Hughes of The Times of London, "is like trying to trap odious vapor in a colander. The poison seeps out."
Is there anyone still wondering?
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 12 - 18 June 2003 (Issue No. 642)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/642/sp5.htm