The returning wrath against FC Barcelona while uncovering the largest betting scandal in football history…

Europol announced today that they uncovered a football fixing scandal run from Singapore, which involves about 680 suspicious matches all over the world. According to the European police, even matches in the UEFA Champions League, World Cup qualifying matches, as well as matches for the European championship are allegedly involved. It is a very sad day in the world of football.

Football, also known as soccer in some areas of the world, is the most popular sport on the planet. Billions of dollars are involved, not only when it comes to huge player salaries of superstars in the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

When I first heard of these news today, I immediately remembered the UEFA Champions League matches involving one team: FC Barcelona. Now, before you expect me to remain unbiased in this article, let me inform you that this will not be possible for me, not only because I am a fan of FC Barcelona’s largest rival – Real Madrid, but also because I cannot stand the fact that nothing happened in the last couple of years, even though not only Real Madrid fans were crying out for some form of justice when players of one team are treated unfairly in a match.

So, I will now let my anger out in the form of this article, looking at numerous matches involving one of the largest football clubs in the world – and also one of the most successful ones, well at least so we thougth…

Apart from the political issues involved when taking a look at the history of Spain, there have always been tensions between Catalans and the rest of Spain. Since I am not of Spanish descent, I never had any reason not to like FC Barcelona. Success is not a reason for me to hate a rival football club. But a couple of years ago, that changed whenever Real Madrid was treated unfairly by a referee, in my eyes at least, when playing FC Barcelona. Let’s take a look at the individual incidents involving very questionable referee decisions in the UEFA Champions League, as well as the Spanish La Liga and Copa Del Rey, when Barcelona were facing Real Madrid.

1. UEFA Champions League: FC Barcelona – AC Milan (26.04.2006) semi-final
AC Milan lost the first leg at home to Barcelona by 0:1. The return leg in the Camp Nou took place on 26.04.2006. Interestingly, Andriy Shevchenko scored a goal that was disallowed by German referee Markus Merk because he supposedly saw a foul by Shevchenko on Barcelona defender Carles Puyol. The match ended 0:0 with Barcelona progressing to the final, where they beat FC Arsenal by 2:1. I have added the link to a video on YouTube, where you can judge yourself:

2. UEFA Champions League: FC Chelsea – FC Barcelona (06.05.2009) semi-final
The first leg in Barcelona ended 0:0. The return leg in London was to be a very difficult match for FC Barcelona and this can well be the match that was announced by EUROPOL today. The referee, Tom Henning Övrebö, denied the Chelsea team six potential penalties, of which not a single one was given! The match ended 1:1, with Barcelona progressing on away goals. Again, Barcelona won the Champions League that season by beating Manchester United in the final. Check out these six chances in the video below:

3. UEFA Champions League: FC København – FC Barcelona (02.11.2010) group stage matchday 4
This time it was “only” a group stage match, when at ten minutes into the match FC Barcelona keeper Victor Valdes storms out of his goal and does a Kung-Fu-like kick to stop FC København striker Dame N’Doye. This is one of the most dangerous and most brutal fouls I have ever seen in football and should easily have been fined with a red card for Victor Valdes. But referee Pavel Cristian Balaj did not even show him a yellow card. Barcelona ended up winning the group, FC København coming in second and receiving the disadvantage of having to face a group winner team in the round of 16. The video of the foul:

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/81170758/

4. Primera División: Real Madrid – FC Barcelona (16.04.2011) match day 32
In this clásico, striker Lionel Messi shot the ball into the Real Madrid crowd at the Santiago Bernabéu and did not receive the yellow card, as is custom when provoking the fans. Though this did not influence the outcome of the match, as this would have been Messi’s first booking in the match, it is a clear violation of FIFA regulations. Looks like he received some special treatment.

5. UEFA Champions League: FC Barcelona – Inter Milan (28.04.2010) semi-final
Again, Barcelona in a Champions League return leg at the semi-final stage. Inter Milan player Thiago Motta, who played for Barcelona before he transferred to Inter, was shown a red card for a controversial tackle on Sergio Busquets, who built up a reputation for diving and acting. Barcelona lost the first leg 3:1 and had to win the return leg in order to progress to the final, but even though Inter were reduced to ten men with only 28 minutes played, Barcelona could not take advantage. Justice remained. Make up your own mind, whether it was a tackle worthy of a straight red card:

6. UEFA Champions League: FC Barcelona – FC Arsenal (08.03.2011) round of 16
And once again the UEFA Champions League, this time Barcelona lost the first leg in London against Arsenal by 2:1. The return leg in the Camp Nou was won by Barcelona with 3:1. Arsenal striker Robin Van Persie received a second yellow card because he took a shot at goal after the referee Massimo Busacca blew his whistle due to offside. Imagine the noise that the crowd of over 90.000 people make in the Camp Nou and keep in mind that Van Persie kicked the ball about 1 second after the referee blew his whistle. Check out the incident and Van Persie’s view on the decision:

7. UEFA Champions League: Real Madrid – FC Barcelona (27.04.2011) semi-final
And yet another semi-final which Barcelona won under some very controversial circumstances. In the first leg of the semi-final Champions League clásico at the Santiago Bernabéu, Real Madrid defender Pepe received a red card for a supposedly brutal tackle on Dani Alves. Admitting that it may have been dangerous play, it is quite clear that Pepe played the ball during the tackle and never touched Dani Alves. Again, the Barcelona player acted and made German referee Wolfgang Stark, who has been a controversy ever since, fell for the acting of Dani Alves. Now compare this tackle to the one from Victor Valdes and tell me that everything is correct…

8. UEFA Champions League: FC Barcelona – Real Madrid (03.05.2011) semi-final
The return leg of this tie continued just as controversial as the first leg did, which Real Madrid lost 0:2. The fact that defender Pepe was sent off due to the controversial tackle on Alves, which is mentioned above, Real Madrid found themselves in a very difficult starting position in the return leg at the Camp Nou. But things started quite well – at least until referee Frank de Bleeckere, who was already mentioned earlier in this article, disallowed a goal by Gonzalo Higuaín, which should have counted, as Cristiano Ronaldo did not foul Mascherano in my opinion. I think most people would concur:

All in all, I really hope that Europol will uncover at least some of these incidents and show that FC Barcelona did not win all the trophies in a fair way. I also want to point out that I think Barcelona is a great team and plays very impressive football. This is what makes it even more sad in my opinion, because FC Barcelona does not need such controversial referee decisions – they are good enough as is. But nevertheless, such unfair referee decisions need to be punished and set right.
In my opinion, Barcelona should lose the titles they won due to unfair referee decisions, if Europol manages to proof that the concerned games have been manipulated due to betting scandals or whatever reason.

Football is a great sport and I think all of us fans want it to be clean and that the better team wins in the end – without unfair help from the referee. This NEEDS to STOP.

UEFA Euro 2012

Many of us have been looking forward to this years European Championship, since European club competitions and domestic leagues have come to a pause. Spain, Germany, Netherlands and France came into the competition as favourites to win the cup. Nevertheless, we expected teams like Russia, or the two host nations, Poland and Ukraine, to be in for a surprise as well.

Unfortunately, some key players in the likes of Carles Puyol and David Villa for Spain, Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard and Gareth Barry for England, as well as Domenico Criscito and Giuseppe Rossi for Italy, among others, will all miss the Euro 2012 due to numerous reasons. The most disturbing of these is another huge corruption and bribery case due to a new betting scandal in Italy. It will be interesting to see how this will affect the squadra azzurra during the competition. So far, they performed remarkably well, considering the circumstances.

But it was not just Italy in the spotlight of the media before the start of the competition. Certain racism and fascism allegations made the headlines in numerous western European countries, claiming so-called ultras in Poland and Ukraine depict a serious problem and potential threat to tourists visiting the two nations during the sports event. Furthermore, politics also got into the way of a clean start, as big-name politicians in the likes of Angela Merkel as well as the entire French government decided to boycott the matches taking place within the Ukraine. This is due to the political situation concerning the former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the conditions of her prison arrest. Animal cruelty also played a huge part for many tourists deciding not to visit the Ukraine, as a large number of stray dogs were brutally killed off by the government, allegedly. Photos of the extermination have been posted across many social networking sites like Facebook for example. However, the authenticity of these photos should be viewed with a certain amount of objective skepticism.

But let’s leave politics and related topics off the football pitch and get back to the sports part. The group stage is now over and half of the teams progressed to the quarter-finals, the other half had to go home. Let’s have a look at each group individually.

Group A:

Host nation Poland was in with Greece, Russia and the Czech Republic for some interesting football. Poland played quite well and tried very hard to get to the quarter-finals, but in the end they were unlucky. Russia started quite strongly, beating the Czech Republic by 4:1 on the very first match day. Greece on the other hand already seemed to be out of the competition after losing 1:2 to the Czechs and facing Russia on the last match day, people did not really expect the Greeks to come home with anything but a loss. But we were all in for a surprise, as the Czech Republic finished as group winners and Greece managed to beat the Russians in an intense match to progress to the quarter-finals.

Group B:

This group was named this years group of death by the press. And they had every reason to call it that: Netherlands, Germany, Portugal and Denmark faced each other in this face-off among European heavyweights. The big surprise: the Dutch sucked! They lost all three matches and went on home with no points and only two goals scored. The Netherlands have never been this bad in the European Cup. The second surprise was Denmark. They played some pretty solid football with great team spirit and made the Germans tremble in the last match of the group stage. Still, Germany went on to the quarter-finals with a pretty solid performance overall, as well as Portugal, who managed to beat the poor Dutchmen with a 2:1 win.

Group C:

Spain and Italy. The last two world champions in one group. It really sounds to good to be true. And it sort of was. The other two teams they faced in this group were the Irish and Croatia. Spain and Italy were a rather big disappointment in the opening match of group C, as they only managed a 1:1 draw and neither side managed to dominate the match. On the other side, one can applaud Italy for playing quite well, considering they are handicapped due to the scandal.  The Irish tried their best under coach Trapattoni, but in the end they did not stand a chance against the other teams. Their fans did not know how to support their team, you’ll have to give them that, as the Irish singing in the football stadiums is always lovely. Croatia nearly managed to cause an upset, as they would have kicked out Spain if they had won the last match. Nevertheless, Croatia showed a solid performance in all three matches.

Group D:

Ukraine, Sweden, France and England complete this years competitors for the Euro 2012. Andriy Shevchenko made Ukraine, the second host nation, shine and nearly managed to get his side through to the quarter-finals, if it wasn’t for England winning with a Wayne Rooney goal and a “Wembley goal” denied by the referee in the last match. France and England were expected to get through to the quarter-finals and they did, but it was a close call. France lost their last match against Sweden by 2:0 and overall, the Swedes showed us some pretty good football.

Now, the quarter-finals start on Thursday, June 21st. Some interesting fixtures are included and will bring us some impressive football, hopefully:

Czech Republic – Portugal

Germany – Greece

Spain – France

England – Italy

My personal tip for the final is Germany vs. Spain, but somehow I see Spain as the winners in that match, considering the last two meetings of the teams all went in Spain’s favour…
Let’s see how it will work out 😉