If you watched German news last night from either public network, the topic of the 2006 World Cup came up as a massive story. Rather than tell the long drawn long 'saga'.....I'll limit this to 30 lines.
So back in the 2002 period, a number of countries were competing for the World Cup soccer games of 2006. It was fairly well known to the sports journalists that this 'club' or group that was responsible for selecting the country.....were open to bribes (into the hundreds of thousands of dollars/Euro).
So the Germans wanted the 2006 games badly, and a ranking member of the establishment sat down and figured out the cost level (in the range of six-million Euro). The guy? Franz Beckenbaurer. Yes, you've probably heard of him as a big-name player, and later a big-name coach. Franz was heading the German group to bring the games into Germany.
To make this deal happen....Franz needed six-million Euro. And he couldn't really come up with the money in an official way (via his group, or a bank).
So Franz apparently went to a sports shoe company based in Germany (Adidas). They arranged for the money to go over to Franz, and he arranged for the payment to the judges.....at least that's the way that the story is told.
Down the path....after the games were rewarded, Franz found another way for the German group heading the games.....to pay Adidas the money back. No one says anything about interest.
Sports journalists have been bumbling around on this story for a decade. There were bits and pieces that came out, and the Swiss folks have assembled this for a court case. Those to be charged? Three ranking members of the DFB (the German national football organization).....not Franz though (at least not yet).
Is there a time-limit? That's part of this legal business....they would need to conclude this by roughly 2022/2023. Will the guys go to jail? No one says much about that part. If guilty, there's probably a fine.
So what is the bigger part of this whole discussion? As you advance toward the World Cup games for the next thirty years....there's virtually zero chance that the games will be chased after by Germany, and if they do chase after them....there can be no bribes. So the odds of getting the World Cup games again? I would suggest zero. Maybe in thirty years, people will have forgotten this, and gotten back into bribes once again.
I ask one single odd question.....did anyone lose money on this? No, that's the funny thing about this deal. Adidas made money off the games in Germany, and there appears to be no one profiting from the DFB (at least not yet). So other than bribes.....that's really the whole negative here? Yes.
And this took five minutes at the beginning of the 9:45 PM news last night.....as the lead story? Yes.
So you'd expect that Germans are all hyped up about this? No. I suspect if you walked into a pub and brought the topic up.....roughly 90-percent of German guys know the story, and just laugh. Without the bribe, the 2006 games would NEVER have been in Germany. Then they start laughing over the fact that almost 17 years have passed since the money went from one hand, to another. Then they laugh over the news journalists trying to pass this as a top number one story of the day.
That's it....a short and simple story, without an end.
2 comments:
Lets be honest here, without bribery the games would never have been in the majority of the venues over the last 40 years.
Same as the IOC, they desperately wanted to give the OG to Beijing in 2000, but it was too close to Tienamen Square so the bribery money from Australia won out even though it was smaller.
Oh, I agree. But here with the Germans....they will fall upon their sword, and absolutely forbid bribes for the next three or four decades, and the World Cup games will never return until they resort to the bribe system.
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