More Match Fixing, This Time It’s Poland

By: chris | January 17th, 2008

Unfortunately, this isn’t really a rare occasion anymore. Calciopoli got the most media attention due to its wide ranging implications - most importantly and least mentioned being the fact that Luciano Moggi and Juventus rigged transfers, irrevocably changing the face of the league for years - but this isn’t isolated to Italy. Or Germany, where Robert Hoyzer and his Croatian mob cronies made large sums by handing out dubious penalties and red cards in order to piggyback massive underdogs to the promised land (Hoyzer being sued for millions by the FA while he’s still trying not to drop the soap in prison). Or UEFA, where 15 games on the continental scene are currently being investigated by none other than the big fellas who don’t mess around up in Interpol. It seems everyone is dipping their hand into the match fixing cookie jar. Poland is now up on the guillotine, where more than just a couple teams have been caught bribing referees, and the blade is finally coming down.

The news today is that Widzew Łódź, one of the latest judgments in the case, has been found guilty of bribing referees in 2004 and 2005, and have been relegated after the end of the current campaign. It’s an older club, though I’d stop short of calling it historic and storied. It has won four titles in its history, most recently in 1997. They’re co-owned by, and get ready for this, a former Juventus icon, Zbigniew Boniek. Really, you just cannot make this stuff up. (You’ve got to wonder what the hell is in the water up there in Torino.)

Widzew could be in more trouble than many of the other relegated clubs, as they’re not only going to drop a division next season, but they’re also in danger of the normal regulation this year. Which means they could go from playing in the premier division in 2007-2007 to playin in Poland’s third division - which I’m guessing isn’t al that glamorous - in 2008-2009. That’s quite the large dropoff.

Of the other teams currently being accused and/or waiting for their fate, the most important is Zagłębie Lubin, who won the league last year, but are going to be in danger of being dropped, as many other clubs have:

The PZPN have already relegated Zaglebie Sosnowiec, Arka Gdynia and Gornik Leczna from the first to the second division, and two other clubs from the second to the third, because of match fixing.

All of this seemingly started when Piotr Dziurowicz, chairman of GKS Katowice, blew the whistle on himself, and everyone else, way back in 2005:

In Poland, the respected news magazine, Wprost, published an article in August 2005 about conditions in the Polish football league after Piotr Dziurowicz, the 29-year old chairman of the board of the football club GKS Katowice, admitted to the police and the tax authorities that he had been involved in large scale match fixing. Piotr Dziurowicz said that for years he had bought matches and bribed football players and referees. But, he claimed, I only did what everybody else did.

It seems Piort wasn’t fibbing to save his own arse. Everybody else was doing it. Now everybody’s paying the price. Bad times for Polish football. Bad times for all football.