Cup hero Black is accused in latest football sting claims
FORMER Aberdeen player Eric Black has become the latest football figure to be caught up in a sting targeting the game’s managers by undercover reporters.
The 52-year-old assistant manager at Premiership side Southampton has allegedly been filmed by the Daily Telegraph newspaper making comments about how others in the game would be open to payments that are illegal under Football Association rules.
Black, who scored in Aberdeen’s European Cup-Winners’ Cup final win in 1983 against Real Madrid, is alleged by the newspaper to have stated an individual at a Championship club might be persuaded to pass information about young up and coming players to a company.
The FA has banned such payments and requires managers or officials to report them to officials.
Black was filmed at a meeting with fellow Scot, the football agent Scott McGarvey, and an undercover reporter posing as a businessman from the Far East.
However, Black denies any wrongdoing.
His spokesman said: “[Mr Black] does not recall Mr McGarvey making suggestions that football officials should be paid during transfer negotiations – this was not the purpose of the meeting so far as our client understood it.
“Any suggestion he was complicit in such discussions is false.”
A Southampton spokesman said they had yet to read the full article, but had in the meantime contacted the FA and Premier League over the matter.
Meanwhile, Barnsley yesterday sacked their Scots assistant coach Tommy Wright over allegations by the Telegraph’s undercover reporters that he accepted a £5,000 bung. Police have launch an investigation into alleged football corruption.
Action was taken after chief executive Linton Brown met Mr Wright to discuss his appearance in a video that shows the 50-year-old Dunfermline-born coach apparently accepting money allegedly to help place players at Barnsley.
Sam Allardyce departed as England manager earlier this week after he was secretly filmed negotiating a lucrative personal deal and advising how to circumvent third party player ownership rules.