We went shopping, Naber said. The contracts promised forty-nine million euros to Pogbas agent, Mino Raiola, who represented all three sides in the deal. When he appeared, led by two thickset Hungarian police officers, he looked like a student on a Eurail trip gone wrong. I had no interest in it.". But they struggled to compete and some huge names have slipped . England coach Steve McClaren's agent has turned up the heat in football's bung controversy . identit. The rest of the Spiegel team believed that their e-mails and movements were being tracked, too. The men discussed a possible contract between Doyen and Lobuzov, worth three hundred thousand euros over five years. Having fielded some of the all-time greats with the likes of Paulo Maldini and Franco Baresi, the Rossoneri are the tenth most successful European football club having won a total of 34 major . Pinto claims that he learned to read by listening to soccer commentators and matching the names that he heard against what was written on the players shirts. He started skipping classes. If you look at the Portuguese people, most of the young people, they dont want to get involved in any of this, he said. 2023 Cond Nast. Theyve bought some of the best and most expensive players in the world, at least one of whom really doesnt want to play for them, and theyve done this Nike collaboration thing with Michael Jordan targeting fans beyond football. Jean-Jacques Eydelie was the individual asked to make the connection as he had previously played with some of the Valenciennes squad at Nantes. Thats a bad start, but the club also has on its payroll former Brazilian sensation Robinho, who has been sentenced to nine years in prison for sexual assault. It was kind of interesting to find out what was going on, he said. Se hai dimenticato i tuoi dati d'accesso inserisci il tuo indirizzo email per ottenere l'accesso diretto In 2016, Buschmann asked Pinto where his information came from, and he replied, Some of our sources do not realize that they are our sources. One afternoon with me, Pinto mused out loud about why none of his insiders had gone public. were preparing their second wave of Football Leaks articles. We are the worst and it shouldn't be accepted. NK Zagreb/Zagreb 041 Croatia One of Croatia's oldest clubs, NK Zagreb also had a reputation for being its most progressive. After he returned to Budapest, Pinto resolved to move to France in February. Has your address, insurance, or family relationship changed since you started filling out these forms?, Look, Im bored, youre boredwhy dont you let me go down there and shake things up a bit?, Actually, Chuckles is more of an observational clown, because sometimes the funniest things in life are all around us! The bank refused to name the victim of the first transaction and the lab at the university did not keep computer-use records for more than seven days. They also have hugely successful academy and national team programs that feed into their success. Pintos face was on the cover. . Its an interesting and laughable decision, as the Portuguese club is likely pointing the finger at rivals Porto, who are listed as the third most corrupt club. He came very happy to class, Falco recalled. The emails discussed the bribing of referees and other scandalous activities. The first was about how the most profligate clubsnamely, the Qatar-backed Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City, which is owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of Abu Dhabis royal familyhad been able to defy the sports spending rules. The World Cup shows how money and media saturation have changed the nature of fandom. They think they are untouchable. One transaction that Pinto pieced togethera loan deal between F.C. During the summer of 2014, Anbal Pinto reached a deal with Caledonian Bank, in which his client agreed to return half the first transaction and keep the rest, a total of 17,313.50. team worked on this for weeks, Buschmann said. Marseille were stripped of their 1992/93 Ligue 1 title because of corrupt actions of then president Bernard Tapie after he instructed one of his players to offer bribes to three Valenciennes players in the final domestic game of the season. Pinto is now thirty, but his fresh face and adolescent haircut give him the look of a student who has missed his last deadline. When I was in Lisbon last month, an impersonator was playing him on Portuguese late-night TV. All this situation was a bit stressful, he told me. Berlin Football Club Dynamo, for those of you not fully up to date with your Cold War history, were the Bayern Munich of East German Republic. After German reunification, East Germany's top football clubs were integrated into the Bundesliga pyramid. IPHONE - Pinto took Buschmann to a Serbian restaurant to watch the game, and ordered a meat platter. I've had that and pretended to be deaf and dumb for the next few minutes and talk about something else. Pinto didnt have that problem. Brazilian law means he cant be extradited. Money above all. In his first months in the city, Pinto went for interviews at a few call centers, where he could use his English and Portuguese. In 1885, the English FA decided to make it permissible for a club to pay players, but only if they were born or had lived for at least two years within a six mile radius of the club's ground. In 2017, prosecutors from Frances Parquet National Financier, an anti-corruption unit, had made contact with Football Leaks, inviting John to share his data. If he wanted it, he would probably be the best pupil from the class, but he was not.. Twente, of the Netherlands. They were real documents.. And Mielke wasn't backward in coming forward to ensure his team had the best of everything. On Friday, October 11th, Pinto received a second windfall from Caledonian Bankthis time from an account belonging to NetJets, the private-jet-rental companyof 227,332.80. That March, the head of Benficas legal department, Paulo Gonalves, was arrested on suspicion of bribing three judicial officials to provide him with updates on the case. In the following three years, Pinto supplied Der Spiegel with four terabytes of confidential information, more than eighty-eight million documentsa leak almost twice the size of the Panama Papers and sixty times that of Edward Snowdens. Pinto became part of what is known as Portugals gerao rasca (generation in trouble). He added: "The Football League trumpet about how the agents' fees are dropping. Money scores goals, as the German saying goes. The first stories went live at nine on a Friday night. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. You know, that Communist lot who had a thing for. One weekend, Pinto flew to Hamburg. Now we have four, Marques said. This is Euro Football Daily - your new home of football from across the continent. But he didnt make the idea sound entirely abstract, either. A poor, fragile cat. Extraditions between E.U. We were in his apartment in Budapest. After the initial stories about Sporting Lisbon and F.C. Trinidadian businessman and politician Jack Warner served as a FIFA Executive Committee member for 28 years and as CONCACAF president for 21 years, until his blanket resignation from all roles in 2011. Or one that was named after, lets say, Sunny Delight. To be able to comment you must be registered and logged in. Pinto watched the game in a pub in Budapest. Budapest was rich in ephemera from the industrial revolution and the early twentieth century, which the Pintos sold for ten or twenty euros per item online. Maybe this word applies to me. Again Ukraine shares scores with Uganda and the Comoros as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. The question is, what is the other side of his personality? As soon as Football Leaks appeared, it had the air of an illicit enterprise. Benfica Sport Lisboa e Benfica seem like a pretty cool team. Having received only one additional point, in comparison with 2013, Ukraine remains in the club of the most corrupt countries. Accedi ora alla tua casella di posta e clicca sul link che ti abbiamo inviato e in pochi secondi But, yeah, its just nonsense., By the time Pinto met Buschmann, from Der Spiegel, a few weeks later, he was considering abandoning the project. It was a rape case. The documents included a settlement agreement, signed on January 12, 2010, between a Ms P and Mr D, in which Ms P was paid three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. In all the 121 years of league football in Scotland, the club never left the top flight. The competition is not fair.. "Simon Jordan sells a mobile phone company and nobody bats an eyelid. Uefa said European clubs made a combined profit of 600m in 2017, compared with combined losses of 1.7bn in 2011. It will be like plastic, he said. Maybe she got some bruises when I grabbed her. In one instance, he shared secret briefings distributed to pro-Benfica commentators on Portuguese TV. Pinto sometimes refers to real fans, who will demand a financial and moral overhaul of the sport, as the intended audience for Football Leaks. With a high-school diploma and no formal I.T. Fifa, football's world governing body, has been engulfed by claims of widespread corruption since Swiss police raided a luxury hotel in Zurich and arrested seven of its top executives. No, he said. The presentater on Benfica's channel said the list was made by the Daily Mail but they said this list was never published. How Football Leaks Is Exposing Corruption in European Soccer While Rui Pinto sits in jail, his revelations are bringing down the sport's most famous teams and players. Mielke was president of the larger SV Dynamo sports club, but was a particular fan of BFC Dynamo, a club established from the earlier Dynamo Berlin. They play in Lisbon (great), they have a massive stadium and they've had players like Eusebio, Pablo Aimar, Simao Sabrosa and Angel di Maria. As he ran to make his train, a wiry older man with a passing resemblance to Clint Eastwood switched platforms, too. Plays. Highlight of this match for me was in the first half when Jim Beglin said "Is this mediocrity?" Between 2011 and 2015, Doyen invested around three hundred million euros in T.P.O. Definitely not a guy you want to be your father-in-law!! Der Spiegel bought new servers and created a secure network to handle the data. Comments. RasenBallsport gives you wings, but corporate ownership gives you a soulless football club like RB Leipzig. Not just that, but according to Colin Gordon, English football is considered 'the dirty man of Europe'. But its part of the job. Porto, was leaving a restaurant near Portos stadium when he received a message from an encrypted e-mail platform called Tutanota. Then he'll be in the shadows again. Just that. His father now traded in old posters, photographs, railway maps, and flyers, mostly from the nineteenth century. Marques asked the sender how he could be sure that it was real. Paris Saint-Germain are trying really, really hard to be a global brand. When he attempted to open it, the file installed malware, which forwarded the contents of Doyens London servers to a Russian e-mail address. The fact that I got such a confirmation coming from so close to Porto make me decide to act., During the summer, Pinto acquired thousands of internal e-mails and contracts from Doyen. A driver picked him up from the airport and took him to a roadside caf on the A5 highway, around ten miles west of the city. I once asked Pinto whether he was an idealist, and he surprised me by seeming not to know the word. He excluded personal gossip and salacious material, and focussed on evidence of Benficas attempts to control the Portuguese game. Mohammed bin Hammam Formerly the chairman of the Qatar Football Association and later president of the Asian Football. Together, they gave a sense of seeing the business of soccer for the first time. It is maybe something paranoid, he told me. Pinto is being kept away from the other prisoners, for his own protection, but when he is allowed to exercise or to venture outside his cell he sometimes hears them yell his name, in what he takes to be encouragement. A few revelations leaped out. The only relationship he's ever had with football is when he wore a Chelsea shirt in bed. Benfica is currently suing F.C. We pretend we're holier than thou, but I've spoken to people over there and the English game is considered 'the dirty man of Europe'. The idea was to ensure that Marseille were injury free for the inaugural Champions League final against AC Milan a few days later. Ronaldo, a five-time winner of the Ballon dOr, for the worlds best player, is a near-mythical figure in Portugal, and Pintos favorite player. He was found to have spiked water bottles with tranquilisers that made the Cremonese team tired and lethargic. Suffering is an essential part of the story that we Argentines tell about ourselves. Pinto alerted Buschmann, who was at work on a book about Football Leaks with Wulzinger, and writing at home in Mnster, a two-and-a-half-hour train ride from Hamburg. "You get Sports Minister Richard Caborn on TV ranting about corrupt agents and overpaid footballers. Red Bull Salzburg are the same, only worse. Clubs and companies implicated in the first wave of Spiegel stories had mostly reacted with silence, or with fury that the information had come to light. Pintos father, Francisco, designed dress shoes at a local factory. Paoloni was allegedly considered to be a central figure in the organised fixes, himself going as far as drugging his own team-mates at Cremonese in order to fix one specific game. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. The first documents released by Football Leaks related to a controversial investment model known as third-party ownership. When Buschmann looked at the clock, twenty minutes had passed. It was the late Chuck Blazer's whistle blowing and informing that helped the FBI-led investigation that brought about the 2015 FIFA corruption arrests, but the New Yorker himself was by no means an innocent bystander when it came to bribery and tax fraud. The investigation showed that Doyens staff had been the victims of a phishing attack during the summer of 2015, in which they received replicas of Dropbox folders from contacts at various soccer clubs. , Zubair (@ZubiDoobiDoo) September 30, 2019. FA oppose their OWN independent panel's verdict that John Yems is 'not a conscious racist' - and wanted former Crawley Town boss to be given a LONGER ban after he told Muslim players 'your people blow up stuff with vests' and used the n-word 'as banter, The FA ask diversity recruitment firm to lead their search for a new anti-discrimination director with the urgency to fill the role sharpened by the criticism of a panel finding John Yems was 'not a conscious racist', Antonio Conte on criticism as he previews trip to Man City, Spurs head coach calls on club officials to put criticism to bed, Arsenal 2-0 Tottenham: Antonio Conte not disappointed on performance, Steve Borthwick names his squad taking part in the Six Nations, Moment 'porn noises' play out during BBC's live coverage of FA Cup, Man Utd boss Erik ten Hag says Marcus Rashford is 'unstoppable', David Moyes: 'You have no class or style to not deliver bad news', Rafael Nadal waves to cheering fans as he exits Australian Open, Grant Wahl expresses excitement for state of soccer in the US, Mikel says that the team could correct it's mistakes to improve, Mikel Arteta previews North London derby ahead of clash with Tottenham. When I asked Pinto if he had anything to do with the Benfica scandal, he denied it, in Pintoesque fashion: Ive never seen a statement from the police or the Portuguese authorities linking me to this. He worried that his gargantuan data set, of which Der Spiegel possesses only around fourteen per cent, might be lost or destroyed if it were handed over to the Portuguese police. According to the arrest warrant issued by the Portuguese authorities, he was being held on six charges, relating to the alleged blackmailing of Doyen and the hacking of Sporting Lisbon contracts in the fall of 2015. Between clubs, its not only that we dont trust each other, a director of a top European club told me. The Football Leaks data showed that, in the summer of 2012, P.S.G. English football 'most corrupt in all Europe'. In a football supporting climate dominated by racists and xenophobes, Arsenal Kiev represent a brave pivot towards social justice and tolerance. For me, it was totally stressful, Buschmann said. They knew more than we would like, Wulzinger said. In the summer of 2018, the rape allegation against Ronaldo gained fresh impetus. By Sam Knight May 27,. Worse still, the bribes in question included prostitutes and hotel bills. Lucas reported the e-mail to the Portuguese police, who had already received a complaint about Football Leaks from Sporting Lisbon. Unfortunately, the sport we love so much is rotten and it is time to say enough. Below was a collection of previously unseen documents involving Sporting Lisbon, the eighteen-time winner of Portugals national league. In late December, 2016, officials from Europes top leagues had written to FIFA, saying that a breach of the Transfer Matching Systemthe global clearing house for soccer transferswas the only plausible source of the leaks. The biggest plot twist ever.. They decided to publish a list of the most corrupt clubs in Europe on the television show called "Pointed Spears". 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