Since Europol’s revealations, a lot of questions are being raised about teams, players and officials over the match fixing scandal.
British newspaper The Sun has revealed that the Manchester United against Zalaegerszeg TE, that took place at Old Trafford, was fixed. United had lost 1-0 to the side in Hungary but it took the Red Devils only 20 minutes to score three goals against them in the second leg. The match ended as a 5-0 victory for United, and the keeper Sasa Ilic was red carded during the match.
A Serbian ex-gangster called Karesz told The Sun that he was the middle man and was working as a translator for a network that was running all over Europe. He had arranged talks a week before the match in August 2002, where the discussions were made over how to fix the match.
“I arranged a meeting at a café in Zalaegerszeg,” said Karesz.. I sat at a different table until business was taken care of. Huge bets were going to be laid that ZTE were to lose by a minimum of three goals.”
Football Supporters Federation chief Malcolm Clarke said: “If this is true, it’s absolutely disgraceful.
“We’d call on authorities to pursue it very rigorously. Even the most passionate fan wouldn’t want to feel they won 5-0 because someone else threw the game.”
For Manchester United, Ruud van Nistelrooy scored two while David Beckham, Paul Scholes and Ole Gunnar Solskjær scored one each. However, there are no reports of Manchester United being involved in this.
Karesz revealed that a lot criminals met each other in Budapest, Hungary and rigged games.
Europol are however not distracting theselves with any claims that the ZTE is making, and they said, We can’t confirm or deny involvement in specific games.” ZTE managing director Attila Dezsi insisted: “We’ve not been investigated, ZTE has no involvement.”
United said: “We are unaware of any such allegations.”
-Rida Mehtab ( @RidaaMehtaab on Twitter)
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