Factoring in the usual myopia of the Australian sporting press, it’s not surprising that potentially one of the biggest football stories of the year has flown under the radar in these parts.

There’s a fascinating article in the German magazine Der Spiegel regarding the case made by a Canadian journalist, Declan Hill, that the Ghana vs Brazil match at the 2006 FIFA World Cup was fixed.

Hill, well regarded internationally for his work investigating corruption in ice hockey, makes the sensational claim in his book The Fix, published in Germany, and has set up a website to promote it.

“This book will forever change the way you think and feel about professional sport,” it puffs. “The Fix is the most explosive story of sports corruption in a generation. It presents compelling evidence that some of the highest soccer matches in the world may have been fixed: European Champions League, Olympic and World Cup tournaments.”

Now we all know match-fixing is a cancer afflicting the Asian game and some smaller European leagues; that is not new. But a World Cup fix is a major story.

In the book, Hill claims to have met a Malay Chinese man he calls “Lee Chin” back in November 2005 and kept in close contact with him over the following six or seven months, during which time he was allegedly informed a thrown game was on the cards at Weltmeisterschaft 2006 featuring Ghana.

“[Chin] told me that people from his syndicate had already been in touch with a few of Ghana’s players during the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens and that he had succeeded at the time in getting Ghana to lose the final match against Japan,” Hill tells Der Spiegel.

“He claimed contacts existed now and that things [at the World Cup] would go ahead.

“Then, on 25 May 2006, he told me to come to a Kentucky Fried Chicken branch in a shopping centre in the north of Bangkok. I was to witness the deal being negotiated. Why was I allowed to be present? No idea. I sometimes got the feeling that Chin viewed my scepticism as a personal affront.”

Hill describes how one of the men present was a junior coach for the Ghanaian FA who “needed an initial down payment in order to secure the team’s trust”.

“Chin said the man had obtained the consent of eight of Ghana’s players. A few days earlier I had read in the newspaper that Ghana’s team would receive $20,000 for each victory at the World Cup. I asked Chin whether that wouldn’t be more important to Ghana’s players. He replied: ‘But a victory is not 100 per cent certain. And each player is guaranteed to receive $30,000 from me. Get it?’”

When Hill got to Würzburg in Germany for the match, he was told “the deal with someone in the Ghana camp was on, 100 per cent” and the team would ensure they lost by two goals.

Hill was sceptical, but watching the game he observed, “The Ghanaians played as though they were putting their whole heart into it, but then there were a number of stupid mistakes: passes didn’t succeed, the defence was careless, the team collected three stupid goals. After the game I was in the stands in Dortmund with tears in my eyes because I was convinced, at least emotionally, that the match had been fixed.”

My first thought reading this was that Hill hadn’t watched enough African football, but I digress.

Hill, wanting to confirm his hunch, thus flies to Ghana to meet the black guy from the KFC in Bangkok, who it emerges is Abukari Damba, former Black Stars goalkeeper and national under-17s coach and assistant to under-23s.

“[Damba] admitted that he had gotten the Malaysian access to the team and that the match fixer also approached the team captain Steven Appiah … [but he didn't] know what happened after that.”

Hill must have thought he had won the Pulitzer even before meeting Appiah, because nothing Appiah told him during their meeting in Accra, the capital of Ghana, added any credence to the story. What he did get Appiah admit to was taking money to win games, sort of like Shane Warne pocketing cash to give weather forecasts.

Appiah regarded them as match bonuses, incentives to perform. He did not make any admission regarding fixing the Ghana-Brazil match and if you read the transcript of the interview on Hill’s website it seems to back him up.

So it’s odd that Hill went ahead with the book without what I would regard as solid evidence and effectively makes the allegation anyway.

Appiah, rightfully, is livid and claims to have been quoted out of context.

His federation, the Ghana Football Association, is threatening to sue.

“What Declan wants [is to] create publicity for the book and drive up sales,” says Appiah. “The truth of the matter is that I have never accepted money to influence the outcome of a game and never will. If
anyone has doubts, they should look back at the game and what it meant to us. To suggest we will throw all that away for some $20,000 is ridiculous … the amount of money [Hill] talks about compared to the money we made from reaching the second round alone makes his claim even more laughable.”

I tend to agree, and for the first time in memory, I agree with FIFA, who have poured cold water on Hill’s claims.

From what I’ve read so far, his argument is weak and the evidence, truth be told, isn’t that compelling; when your star witness, Appiah, says he’s been misrepresented, it’s not a good look, and the real identity of “Lee Chin” is never disclosed. Hill says he will be killed if he spills the beans.

Football is a sport full of dodgy operators. Games are frequently thrown and it’s happened at the World Cup before (think Argentina 1978). I hear stories all the time from people in high places in football about very important matches being fixed. I wrote about the controversial Iraq-Qatar WCQ here and when I first heard the Qataris had thumped Uzbekistan 3-0 last week I thought a fix was in again.

But I have no evidence. Nothing but suspicion.

In my opinion that’s not enough information to go on with to write a book making such a claim, but Hill clearly feels otherwise.

I don’t know what the German libel laws are but they would have to be a lot more lax than they are here for him and his publisher to emerge from this without being taken to the cleaners.

Jesse Fink's columns now appear every Wednesday and Friday on The Roar.

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