Red Star Belgrade face bigger problems than battling to qualify for Champions League Last 16

When we were kings | Red Star Belgrade celebrate winning the 1991 European Cup
Getty Images/Simon Bruty
Jonathan Wilson24 October 2018

As Red Star Belgrade prepare for tonight’s tie at Liverpool, the club are fighting on two fronts.

They are not just scrapping to stay in the hunt to reach the Champions League knockout phase, they are also battling to clean their reputation from match-fixing allegations made after their 6-1 defeat at Paris Saint-Germain three weeks ago.

L’Equipe reported that Uefa had requested that French authorities open an enquiry into the match, specifically an allegation that a senior figure at Red Star had bet £4.4million on PSG to win by five goals.

They went 5-0 up in the 70th minute and, although Marko Marin pulled one back four minutes later, Neymar completed his hat-trick with eight minutes remaining to make it 6-1 and restore the five-goal margin.

Red Star rejected the allegations “with the highest anger and abomination”, while PSG expressed their “amazement and indignation”.

Slavisa Kokeza, the president of the Football Federation of Serbia, meanwhile, has offered his support. He said: “That news has cast a shadow on Red Star and Serbian football. I think the writing of L’Equipe is inappropriate and is not based on facts.”

Dismissing unpleasant allegations as “fake news” is standard practice these days but that’s not to dismiss Red Star’s defence. A 2-1 victory over Liverpool at Anfield in the European Cup in 1973 remains one of their greatest nights and there’s no doubting the upset felt by many that Red Star’s return to the stadium, after a 26-year absence from the Champions League, should be overshadowed by the affair.

Whispers of corruption have long since haunted Serbian football. In 1966, when Partizan Belgrade lost to Real Madrid in the European Cup Final, there were rumours certain players had been bought off.

Gyorgy Vadasz, the Hungarian referee who took charge of the second leg of Madrid’s semi-final against Inter that year, reported an approach from a fixer supposedly working for the Italians.

Even Red Star’s great triumph, when they beat Marseille on penalties to win the European Cup in 1991, comes with its tale of skulduggery, of players being persuaded at the last minute not to give in to the fixers by a patriotic appeal for them to bring one last victory to the collapsing Yugoslavia.

More recently, the issue has been a simple one of poverty. Third-party ownership began as a way for businessmen to help their local clubs keep players for a little longer by buying a share in their contract. However, the practice was soon corrupted, with players instructed to ensure their teams didn’t win certain games.

That, admittedly, was a decade ago but there are many in Balkan football who acknowledge that a lack of resources is an issue, as it was when similar allegations were made against Dinamo Zagreb after they let in seven in half an hour against Lyon seven years ago.

When the disparity of resources is such that one team feels defeat is inevitable, the temptation for players who earn comparatively little to accept money to lose by the right margin is necessarily greater.

That is not to prejudge the Red Star case and it seems unlikely anything was arranged on a club level. However, it is to point out that the way resources are allocated in the modern game have made the conditions ripe for match fixing.

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