At least German footy cannot be tarred with the same brush of corruption as that of the Italian game.
Oops, wrong again.
Only 16 months before the World Cup tournament kicks off in Germany, this soccer-crazy nation has been hit by one of the biggest scandal in German sports history. ... German soccer roiled by match-fixing charges. Referees allegedly bought off; scandal hurts ahead of World Cup ... international competition, is now immediately associated with corruption ...
Witness the scandal that broke in 2005 in Germany. Referee Robert Hoyzer has admitted his involvement with match fixing to his lawyer, according to TV News channel N24, Suddeutsche Zeitung and the tabloid newspaper Bild have reported the suggestion of involvement of Croatian criminal gangs in the scandal. Hoyzer has been suspended by the German FA, the Deutscher Fußball Bund (DFB), and he may spend ten years in gaol. More suspensions and arrests seem likely as investigations continue. Not too pretty an image for a country less than 18 months away from hosting the 2006 World Cup.
In 2000 there was the Christoph Daum affair, in which the former manager of Bayer Leverkusen, in line for promotion to national team supreme, at first denied taking cocaine, but then he consented to having a hair tested for the drug. The positive result meant he was on the next plane to Florida rather than the national team HQ.
Prior to that, in the 1970s, corruption was up and attendances down for Deutscher Fußball Bund (DFB) Bundesliga matches. As for the 60s, Hesse-Lichtenberger states that in the Bundesliga ‘.. there were probably more hidden accounts and suitcases filled with cash than in all the world's dubious offshore tax havens put together.'
The book from which the above quote was taken - Tor! The Story of German Football - is a fascinating account of the game in Germany: its roots in the athletic clubs of the eighteenth century; the World Wars; the first international successes; the subsequent formation of the DFB in West Germany; the game in East Germany; and up to the present state of the game.
Written by Dortmund fan Hesse-Lichtenberger, who doesn't shirk passing judgment on those with whom he disagrees, the book also goes into the geo-political reasons for the health or otherwise of German football.
Oops, wrong again.
Only 16 months before the World Cup tournament kicks off in Germany, this soccer-crazy nation has been hit by one of the biggest scandal in German sports history. ... German soccer roiled by match-fixing charges. Referees allegedly bought off; scandal hurts ahead of World Cup ... international competition, is now immediately associated with corruption ...
Witness the scandal that broke in 2005 in Germany. Referee Robert Hoyzer has admitted his involvement with match fixing to his lawyer, according to TV News channel N24, Suddeutsche Zeitung and the tabloid newspaper Bild have reported the suggestion of involvement of Croatian criminal gangs in the scandal. Hoyzer has been suspended by the German FA, the Deutscher Fußball Bund (DFB), and he may spend ten years in gaol. More suspensions and arrests seem likely as investigations continue. Not too pretty an image for a country less than 18 months away from hosting the 2006 World Cup.
In 2000 there was the Christoph Daum affair, in which the former manager of Bayer Leverkusen, in line for promotion to national team supreme, at first denied taking cocaine, but then he consented to having a hair tested for the drug. The positive result meant he was on the next plane to Florida rather than the national team HQ.
Prior to that, in the 1970s, corruption was up and attendances down for Deutscher Fußball Bund (DFB) Bundesliga matches. As for the 60s, Hesse-Lichtenberger states that in the Bundesliga ‘.. there were probably more hidden accounts and suitcases filled with cash than in all the world's dubious offshore tax havens put together.'
The book from which the above quote was taken - Tor! The Story of German Football - is a fascinating account of the game in Germany: its roots in the athletic clubs of the eighteenth century; the World Wars; the first international successes; the subsequent formation of the DFB in West Germany; the game in East Germany; and up to the present state of the game.
Written by Dortmund fan Hesse-Lichtenberger, who doesn't shirk passing judgment on those with whom he disagrees, the book also goes into the geo-political reasons for the health or otherwise of German football.