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The Archive

Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.

 

Rumour has it

A new website tracking the accuracy of transfer rumours has started up. Adam Powley assesses the implications for football journalism

It’s the silly season, and while some fundamental questions are raised about the media, police and political establishment, it is business as usual for football. The contrivances of the transfer windows mean that almost as soon as a season ends in May, the speculation and gossip about which millionaire wants to play with which other group of millionaires begins to flow. It is easy to just blame the journalists, but there is undoubtedly a public appetite for human dramas of ambition, loyalty and greed that the business entails.

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Kicker conspiracy

It’s the 40th anniversary of a season that began with a dramatic garden party, a tape recorder and a set of match-fixing allegations that shocked West German football, writes Gunther Simmermacher

A pall of gloom hung over the Bundesliga as a new season started 40 years ago. The clouds had started to gather just over two months earlier, at a garden party to celebrate the 50th birthday of a fruit importer. June 6, 1971 was a sunny day. Horst-Gregorio Canellas, the gravelly-voiced Kickers Offenbach president, welcomed the luminaries of the German FA (DFB) and influential journalists to his home in the Rosenstrasse in the village of Hausen. At exactly ten minutes past noon, a sound engineer clicked the play button of a centrally-placed tape recorder, Canellas sat back as he theatrically flourished a cigarette, and West Germany’s biggest football scandal broke.

Film footage shows a perplexed national coach Helmut Schön hearing Bernd Patzke of Hertha Berlin – who had played in the World Cup semi-final against Italy a year earlier  –  and another Hertha player, Tasso Wild, proposing to fix games to manipulate the relegation battle that had concluded only a day earlier, followed by Schön’s number three keeper, Manfred Manglitz of FC Cologne, offering to throw his club’s game against Kickers.

That final round of the 1970-71 season had ended with Offenbach’s relegation after a  4-2 defeat in Cologne  –  Manglitz didn’t play after Canellas alerted FC captain Wolfgang Overath to the goalkeeper’s corruption. Rot-Weiss Oberhausen had saved themselves on goal difference with a suspect draw at Braunschweig, and Arminia Bielefeld survived with a 1-0 win in Berlin  –  as the crowd’s perceptive chants of “fix, fix” echoed through the Olympiastadion.  

Much as the revelations on Canellas’ tapes shocked the public, the clues had been there before. Schalke’s home defeat against Bielefeld in April had been regarded as highly suspicious (as if to make up for it, Schalke went on to lose also against Offenbach and Oberhausen).  Canellas first became aware of match-fixing in early May when he received a telephone call from Manglitz, who asked for an incentive fee to not accidentally “let in a few” against Offenbach’s relegation rivals Rot-Weiss Essen, who would finish bottom of the table. Canellas paid, and Cologne won. He could do nothing about Cologne’s 4-2 home defeat to Oberhausen three weeks later  –  that game was fixed.

Astonishingly, some players claimed to be unaware that they were breaching ethics. Braunschweig’s international Max Lorenz even wanted to issue receipts for the bribes he received, as if these were legitimate business transaction. His teammate Franz Merckhoffer later recalled in a TV interview: “I didn’t think much of it. If the senior players were taking the money, I thought I was entitled to do so myself”.   

Canellas hoped that the incontrovertible evidence would move the DFB, whose secretary-general was present at his birthday party, to relegate Bielefeld, thereby saving his club. Instead, the federation swiftly banned Manglitz, Patzke, Wild  –  and Canellas, on the grounds that he had admitted to having made bribery payments. Offenbach went down; Bielefeld and Oberhausen were allowed to kick off the new season in the top flight. Feeling betrayed, the whistleblower turned sleuth, uncovering an impressive quantity of dirt. He had even warned the DFB of corruption, in early May, when he reported Manglitz’s approach in regard to the Essen game, the one he paid for and for which he would be punished. The DFB had dismissed his allegations as “vague suspicions”.

When Canellas uncovered evidence of Schalke’s fixed defeat against Bielefeld, eight Schalke players sued for libel. These players, who included the great Reinhard Libuda and future West Germany internationals Klaus Fischer and Rolf Rüssmann, eventually were found guilty of perjury and fined, earning their club the moniker FC Perjury. That game would become emblemic of the scandal.
Their hand forced, the DFB initiated a thorough investigation, headed by its relentless chief prosecutor, the judge Hans Kindermann. More than 50 players from seven clubs, two coaches and six club officials were punished. Altogether 18 games were officially declared fixed (remarkably, none of the results was annulled).

As a result of the scandal, attendance records dropped sharply over the next couple of seasons, from a match average of 20,661 in 1970-71 to 17,932 the following season and a record low of 16,387 in 1972-73  –  at a time when all members of the West German sides that went on to win the European Championship in 1972 and the World Cup two years played in the Bundesliga.

Indeed the 1971-72 season was something of a high-water mark for the quality of football. Bayern Munich and Schalke (strengthened by the arrival of the Kremers twins from relegated Offenbach) played brilliantly in their neck-to-neck race for the championship which culminated in a title-decider on the last day of the season, held as late as June 28. In the inaugural game at the new Olympic Stadium, Bayern won and became the only side ever to score more than 100 goals in a Bundesliga season.

The following year, Schalke’s young squad fell apart as several of their scandal-tainted players were banned or left West-Germany. A purple patch in 1976-77 apart, the club never recovered. Bielefeld might have started the 1971-72 season like everybody else with 0 points  –  but that’s the points total with which the club finished. In mid-April, the DFB finally pronounced its punishment: Arminia would be relegated with 0 points, with all their results counting only for or against their opponents. Bielefeld was allowed to play out their final six games, winning only one of those, a 3-2 before 9,000 spectators that helped send Dortmund down with them. With 19 points, Bielefeld would have been relegated anyway. Taking their place in the following season was Kickers Offenbach. Rot-Weiss Oberhausen was not punished and survived for another year.

The DFB was proactive in fixing the root causes of the scandal: the federation abolished the maximum wage system, and it set up a second professional tier, starting in 1974, to cushion the harsh consequences of relegation on players.

And soon the spectators returned in even greater numbers than before. West Germany’s success in hosting and eventually winning the 1974 World Cup reignited a passion for football in the country. The clouds of the scandal were lifted.

From WSC 295 September 2011

Facing the property ladder

There are problems with the Brandywell but, as Aidan Bonner explains, Derry City’s frustrating search for a new stadium continues

Derry City are a club that is neither here nor there. Located in Northern Ireland but competing in the Republic, they have often found themselves caught between two worlds. Based in the Irish FA’s jurisdiction, the club were forced to leave the Irish League as the political situation and sectarian tensions worsened around them. After kicking around junior leagues for 13 years, Derry eventually re-emerged in the Republic of Ireland’s national league in 1985. This bout of border-hopping can still cause the club problems from time to time.

Drowned by a saga of double contracts and financial mismanagement in 2009, Derry City returned as a new, debt-free entity last season. Although the new DCFC were initially left to explore the delights of the lower of Ireland’s two senior leagues (dubbed the “Discover Ireland” division by fans) their budget still outstripped many of their rivals and they were promoted at the first time of asking. Back in the Premier Division, things are going swimmingly. But many fans have long viewed the club’s Brandywell home as being in a location that discourages potential new supporters.

Situated in the heart of what was once the predominantly nationalist “Free Derry” district – a no-go area for the RUC at the time – the ground remains unpoliced, with the club relying on the services of a dedicated band of stewards. This arrangement has been largely successful but can still prove problematic on occasion, as potential flash-point fixtures with the big Dublin clubs have recently shown.

Health and Safety officials reduced the Brandywell’s capacity by 700 this year. With the ground’s slightly dilapidated state, the promise of one new 2,500-seat stand does little to satisfy supporters, many of whom would prefer a more permanent move to either the vacant Templemore or Fort George sites in the city. The Fort George site is in the hands of Ilex, the company set up to take charge of the regeneration of the city, who have yet to engage DCFC.

Proposals and projects are nothing new to City supporters. In mid-2006, the club unveiled plans for a new £15 million complex to be built on the site at the Brandywell, complete with 6,000-seat ground, synthetic 3G pitches and retail development. This bid fell apart and the eventual demise and rebirth of Derry City brought them back to square one – a “new” club with an old ground, hoping to be gifted what they cannot afford to build.

But who is going to hand them anything? The Maze Stadium project was an ambitious plan to build an all-encompassing home for Northern Irish sport which collapsed. Instead, the money set aside for this plan has been dispersed to football, rugby and GAA clubs around the country. The cost for the proposed new stand at Derry is to be drawn from this funding, but that alone would be a poor return.
Derry City officials have watched as new stadium projects for clubs such as Crusaders began at great pace. In fact, across the town work is nearing completion on major improvements to the home ground of Institute, Derry’s Drumahoe-based Irish League neighbours. Meanwhile, just over the border in Donegal, a new 6,800-seat home for Finn Harps has been given the green light. For Derry supporters, seeing the door to 21st century facilities opened to a host of “smaller” clubs has raised serious questions.

The belief that Derry City playing across the border could harm their chances of receiving funding from the Northern Irish executive grew to the extent that in 2008 local MLA Raymond McCartney challenged Gregory Campbell, the minister for culture, arts and leisure, to acknowledge publicly that the club’s cross-border status would not be an issue. Recently, however, the lack of progress has mostly been blamed on the apathy of local politicians and the failure of club officials to apply any pressure.

For the time being, as the city council, rather than the club, own the ground, they must apply for funding and also have the final say on any proposed improvements. The suggested changes are unlikely to attract new supporters or to appease those already there. On the positive side, all signs indicate that money may be available for the right project, with the right pitch. The drawback is that this may be a brief opportunity for clubs seeking funding, and that local officials seem content to sit on their hands and let it drift by.

From WSC 294 August 2011

One-way mirror

The FA took a principled stance over the FIFA presidential election but they remain as equally flawed in their governance of the Premier League

For the England squad the season ended with the Euro 2012 qualifier against Switzerland. But it was to have gone on a few days longer. After the Swiss match the national team – or more likely a second-string – were due to play a friendly in Thailand. In exchange for seeing Bobby Zamora and Kyle Walker jogging around at half speed, the Thai FA chairman Worawi Makudi was expected to support England’s 2018 World Cup bid.

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Changing the tunes

Football journalists were made to eat their words when a Lionel Messi-inspired Barcelona produced a stunning performance to beat Manchester United in the Champions League final

Opinions can change quickly in football. Only a few months ago sections of the press were berating the BBC for having the temerity to expose corruption at the top of FIFA. The broadcasting of a Panorama episode that outlined why FIFA need to reform was deemed “disgraceful”, “ridiculously unpatriotic” and “laughable” in the Sun. This month Sepp Blatter was placed beside Colonel Gaddafi on the paper’s front cover above the headline Despot the difference.

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