Arsenal manager ponders the match-fixing scandal that hit French football and recent allegations in the UKFor a man of 64 to reflect on it as one of the most difficult periods of my life emphasises how the scourge of match-fixing is a stain that is not easily cleansed.More than two decades have passed since Arsène Wenger was confronted with the realities of such a scandal – and it was a monster of a scandal that scarred the reputation of the biggest and best-supported club in France, Marseille.This was not a non-league corruption, it stank at the highest summit. The protagonists were not unfamiliar names, they were infamous.Wenger, who takes his Arsenal side to Cardiff City on Saturday, was in charge of Monaco in the early 1990s and long held suspicions of a nasty smell in the air around Marseille. In 1993, Marseille reached the Champions League final against Milan and only a few days before needed to win at Valenciennes to clinch the domestic title.It later came to light that four Valenciennes players were offered 250,000 francs to take their foot of the gas. Marseille won the match but the opposition players turned whistleblowers. A bombshell struck the French game, Marseille were stripped of their title and the clubs supremo Bernard Tapie was discredited and imprisoned.During the period leading up to the 1993 revelations, Wengers Monaco had been Marseilles strongest rivals on the pitch and had finished the runners-up behind them for the previous two seasons.Were those titles honest? Were Monaco denied trophies that should have been theirs? These are not easy questions to contemplate even years later.Wenger brings a rare perspective as one of the few top-level managers currently working to have been directly affected by the consequences of such a blight on the game.It is difficult to imagine just how personally challenging that period was. The constant, nagging doubts but the inability to do anything about it while it was only the subject of whispers and shady gossip.You hear rumours and after that you cannot come out in the press and say: This game was not regular, Wenger said. You must prove what you say. To come out is difficult. It is very difficult to prove it. From knowing something, feeling that it is true and after coming out publicly and saying Look I can prove it is the most difficult.The effects still hurt. It is a shame. Once you dont know any more if everyone is genuine out there, that is something absolutely disastrous. I think we have absolutely to fight against that with the strongest severity to get that out of the game.Wenger remembers that uncomfortable feeling as he tried to analyse events that did not ring true. There are little incidents added one to the other. In the end, there is no coincidence.One of Wengers most loyal assistants and a right-hand man since 1994, Boro Primorac, was caught up in the events. He was the Valenciennes coach for the fateful game that exposed Marseilles malpractice. Primorac gave evidence.Wenger admired his courage and invited Primorac to work with him when he was ostracised from the French game as it tried to recover from the scandal. He did very well because its not always the fact that you stand up against it, its the consequences of it after, Wenger said. I can tell you that story one day and you will be surprised … Wengers reaction to the allegations of match-fixing in the lower reaches of the English game was to reassert his certainty that the Premier League is clean. He knows from experience what it feels like to be deeply suspicious about what is going on around him and appears not to sense anything similar.I still think that 99.9%, the English game is completely clean. I hope thats an isolated incident, he said of the case exposed this week in the Conference.When you see the happiness of the players when they score goals, even in the lower divisions, the passion of the fans when I was at Barnet for example, I cant believe that there is a match-fixing problem in England.Can it be eradicated completely? Im not sure. Even when it was happening in France or in Europe, I always felt that in the end the game will come clean again.Arsène WengerArsenalMarseilleMonacoAmy Lawrencetheguardian © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 22:36:06 +0000
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