February 3, 2005
BORING AND BENT?:
Soccer: Police raid 3 referees (The Associated Press, February 3, 2005)
Police on Wednesday raided the homes of three referees implicated in the widening match-fixing scandal in Germany, according to police and news reports.Posted by Orrin Judd at February 3, 2005 3:21 PMAmong those searched was the home of Jürgen Jansen, a referee who had been in charge of the only first-division Bundesliga game that has been mentioned in connection with the case, the police in his hometown of Essen said.
Two other homes were also searched, one of referee Dominik Marks in Berlin and the other of referee supervisor Wieland Ziller in Dresden, the mass-circulation newspaper Bild reported. The authorities in Berlin and Dresden declined to comment.
All three men were on a list of names given to Berlin prosecutors by Robert Hoyzer, the referee at the center of Germany's worst soccer corruption in case in more than 30 years.
They ought to give the three a bonus. How in the deuce can anyone fix a game where the contestants do nothing but run up and down the field? Neither team can kick a ball into a housetrailer sized goal from 20 feet away, cheating or otherwise.
Posted by: Tom Wall at February 3, 2005 4:09 PMIn other sports, you pay the players to do things like miss those free-throws, shank that extra-point kick or strikeout a few times.
But how can you throw a game when the chances for scoring are non-existent? And in those other games, it's not to change the win-loss outcome, but to manage the point spread. Does metric football even have such a concept?
So what are you bribing the ref to do, hand out extra corner kicks? Ignore even more tripping than usual? Wave the wrong little colored cards?
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at February 3, 2005 4:48 PMOJ: I was beginning to worry about you. It's been over 2 weeks since a good soccer-bashing story. Order is restored once again.
Posted by: John Resnick at February 3, 2005 4:52 PMHow can you fix a 0 -- 0 tie?
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at February 3, 2005 5:13 PMRobert,
"How can you fix a 0 -- 0 tie?"
Take the under. No wait a minute, take the over. Oh forget it.
Posted by: AllenS at February 3, 2005 6:00 PM