Governing Bodies
Life ban for South African club who scored 41 own goals
After four clubs were banned for life from the fourth tier of South African football after fixing games in a bid to win the league, authorities have lined up a series of workshops to educate coaches, officials and referees.
For as table-topping rivals Matiyasi FC and Shivulani Dangerous Tigers battled for the title last month, so some extraordinary scorelines emerged.
The Tigers beat Kotoko Happy Boys 33-1 in late May, only for Matiyasi to improve on this with an eye-popping 59-1 victory over third-placed Nsami Mighty Birds.
Officials from the clubs have received suspensions of between five and eight seasons for their roles in fixing the games on 22 May, while the respective match officials have been given ten-season bans.
“These people don’t have respect for football, and we cannot allow it to happen again,” Vincent Ramphago, president of the Mopani region, told BBC Sport Africa.
“What is sad is there are young players involved because the competition rules stipulate that each team has to field at least five players under 21.
“Our main aim in organising leagues is to make sure we groom the young footballers into potential future Bafana Bafana players.”
Despite their efforts, the goals ultimately counted for little however, as Gawula Classic – who finished fourth in the league – were declared winners of South Africa’s Mopani region.
These came after the bans handed out to the three teams above them, with Shivulani having led by three points, not to mention being 16 goals ahead on goal difference, prior to kick-off of the final day.
“Our investigation found that Matiyasi and Nsami wanted to stop Shivulani from topping the log so they agreed on fixing the match to prevent this from happening,” stated Ramphago.
“After hearing that Matiyasi were leading 22-0 at half-time, Shivulani colluded to remove Kotoko Happy Boys players from the field. The players who came off said they were tired leaving their team with only seven players.
“In the Matiyasi game meanwhile, the referee gave players red cards so that Nsami ended up with seven players.”
When the teams had previously met in March, the scorelines were considerably more sober, with Matiyasi beating Nsami Mighty Birds 2-1 while Shivulani Dangerous Tigers drew 2-2 with Kotoko Happy Boys.
The disciplinary committee has already found evidence of collusion between the respective teams and the match officials to contrive the results.
Players from the four teams in South Africa’s northern Limpopo province will learn their fate in the next few days.
Heavy sanctions are expected after Kotoko Happys Boys’ players simply left the field in their 33-1 thrashing, while it emerged that Nsami Mighty Birds had scored 41 own goals during their 59-1 mauling – despite finishing the game with only seven players.
“When we investigated we discovered that some of the Matiyasi goals were not even [properly registered] because the referee was unable to interpret his report,” said Ramphago.
“We found the referee was just writing – ‘player number 2 scored 10 goals, player number 5 scored 20 goals’ and so on – but there were 41 own goals so how were they recording these?” added Ramphago, who is also the chairman of the region’s competitions committee.
Angry Birds
Nsami Mighty Birds coach Neil Thwala told a national radio station his players were angry going into the Matiyasi game.
“In the previous match we played, we were told the referee is part of Shivulane Dangerous Tigers,” the Nsami coach said.
“We scored four goals but all of them were disallowed by the referee but then they hit a side net and the referee said it’s a goal. When we reported the matter to Safa, we were told that the referee’s decision is final.
“The players’ minds were not on the game because even if they won, they knew it wasn’t going to help them in any way. I tried as a coach to push them but it was difficult – there was nothing I could do.”
Unlikely scorelines are nothing new in African football, with two Nigerian promotion rivals handed 10-year bans in 2013 after recording wins of 79-0 and 67-0.
Yet nothing beats the 149-0 win recorded by Madagascar’s AS Adema after their rivals SO l’Emyrne repeatedly scored into their own net after a disagreement between their coach and the match referee.
-BBC
A former member of the FIFA Council, Mamoutou Toure, has been released from jail in Mali after almost two years in detention for alleged corruption, Malian media reports said on Wednesday.
Toure, president of the Malian Football Federation since 2019, was released after 622 days in prison on Tuesday.
He served on the FIFA Council, world football’s all-powerful decision-making body, for four years until last month when he lost his seat after failing to contest new elections.
The 67-year-old was arrested in August 2023 on allegations of embezzling $28 million of public funds but was granted a provisional release order by the Malian courts, reports said.
He was accused of misconduct during his time as the National Assembly’s financial and administrative director from 2013-2019.
Toure denied all charges and, during his time in jail, was last August re-elected as Malian Football Federation president for a second consecutive term, with his supporters claiming he was a victim of a conspiracy fuelled by detractors.
While in jail, he received a letter of support from FIFA president Gianni Infantino. However, as of last month, Toure is no longer a member of the FIFA Council or the Confederation of African Football’s executive committee.
-Reuters
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The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has denied reports of an outstanding debt to former captain Christian Chukwu and has challenged anyone with verifiable documents to prove otherwise.
Chukwu, a former national team captain and chief coach, died last Saturday.
The Nigeria Football Federation decried statements in a section of social media that the football-ruling body was indebted to the deceased.
Reacting to one statement on social media that claimed NFF owed the 1980 Africa Cup of Nations-winning team captain the sum of $128,000, NFF General Secretary, Dr Mohammed Sanusi, said: “There is no record in the NFF of any outstanding indebtedness to ‘Chairman’ Christian Chukwu.
“During the first term of the Board headed by Amaju Pinnick, a committee was set up to diligently peruse the papers of coaches who were being owed, even from previous NFF administrations.
“That committee was given the clear mandate to verify all debts and ensure that the coaches being owed were paid immediately. I am aware that the ‘Chairman’ was in the employ of the NFF between 2002 and 2005, before he was relieved of the post following the 1-1 draw with Angola in a FIFA World Cup qualifying match in Kano in August 2005. There is certainly no record of indebtedness to him in the NFF.”
Sanusi challenged anyone with genuine and verifiable documents of NFF indebtedness to any coach, who has worked with any of the National Teams over the past two decades, to come forward and tender those documents.
“As a credible organization that is very much alive to its responsibilities, if we are confronted with any genuine document of indebtedness to any coach, we will offset the debt immediately.”
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Former FIFA President Sepp Blatter and France soccer great Michel Platini were both cleared of corruption charges by a Swiss court on Tuesday, two and a half years after they were first acquitted of the offences.
The pair, once among the most powerful figures in global soccer, were cleared of fraud at the Extraordinary Appeals Chamber of the Swiss Criminal Court in the town of Muttenz, near Basel.
The hearing came about after Swiss federal prosecutors appealed against their 2022 acquittal at a lower court.
Both men had denied the charge which related to a 2 million Swiss franc ($2.26 million) payment Blatter authorised for Platini in 2011.
The court said there were doubts about the prosecution’s allegation the payment for Platini, a former captain and manager of the French national team, was fraudulent.
The 2022 indictment had accused Blatter and Platini of deceiving FIFA staff in 2010 and 2011 about an obligation for world soccer’s ruling body to pay Platini.
“They falsely claimed that FIFA owed Platini, or that Platini was entitled to, the sum of 2 million Swiss francs for advisory work. This deception was achieved through repeated untruthful claims made by both accused parties,” the indictment said.
But the court cleared the pair, saying their account of an oral agreement for the payment could not be ruled out.
Platini had argued that the payment had been partly deferred until 2011 because FIFA lacked the funds to pay him in full immediately.
The court said the pair had both been consistent in their accounts of the payment, which covered consultancy work carried out by Platini for Blatter between 1998 and 2002.
Platini’s experience as a top footballer and coach, explained the size of the payment, said the court, which followed the legal principle that in cases of doubt, favour the accused.
“It can not be assumed that the defendants acted with the intention of enriching themselves in the sense of the charged offences,” the court said.
The scandal, which emerged in 2015 when Platini was president of European soccer’s ruling body UEFA, ended his hopes of succeeding Blatter, who was forced out of FIFA over the affair.
Blatter and Platini were suspended from football in 2015 by FIFA for ethics breaches, originally for eight years, although their exclusions were later reduced.
Platini said he was relieved the case was over, and he had received messages of support from 10,000 people.
“The persecution of FIFA and some Swiss federal prosecutors for 10 years is now over,” Platini told reporters. “It is now totally over. And for me, today, my honour has returned and I am very happy.”
The 69-year-old said he thought the case had been intended to prevent him becoming FIFA president, but he was now too old to return to football.
The money, which had been confiscated and held by the Swiss authorities, can now be returned to him.
A frail-looking Blatter hugged his daughter Corinne after the judgement and said he was relieved with the decision.
“It is a great relief for me because it’s been going on for ten years. It’s like a sword of Damocles hanging over my head,” he told reporters.
“And now it’s over and I can breathe,” the 89-year-old said.
Prosecutors had sought a sentence of 20 months in jail, suspended for two years for both Blatter and Platini.
The Swiss attorney general’s office said it would review the written judgement, before deciding whether to appeal again to the Swiss Federal Court, the country’s highest legal authority.
-Reuters
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