The 17 ‘suspicious’ transfers that Fifa and the FA failed to investigate
It has to be said that the second day of The Daily Telegraph’s investigation into football corruption lacked some of the colourful idiosyncrasies of the first. There was no football manager bragging and mocking in a posh restaurant with what looked suspiciously like a pint of wine on the table in front of him and a napkin over his head.
But its findings were inestimably more serious because they contained something notably absent from Tuesday’s Sam Allardyce scoop: allegations of corruption. The claim is that eight unnamed current or recent Premier League football managers are known for taking ‘bungs’, or ‘coffee’ as ex-agent Pino Pagliara puts. (Manager: “Is there a little coffee for me [in that deal], Pino?” Pino: “Yes, course there is. I’ll negotiate that coffee as well.”)
Hopefully Pagliara’s evidence will be substantially more than anecdotal, because he is not the kind of witness you would mortgage the house on, even when boasting to undercover reporters whom he thinks are businessmen. Pagliara, who opened up over Dover sole at the San Carlo in Manchester, was banned from football for five years in 2005 for match fixing. He is not registered as an FA or Fifa agent and currently not permitted to conduct transfer business. His principal involvement in British football in the last few years has been time spent with his good friend Massimo Cellino, the controversial Leeds United owner.
Considering that the FA considered the Allardyce revelations serious enough to part company with him, the governing body is surely, in the name of even-handedness, ethically bound to investigate the revelations about these unnamed managers too. It was being suggested on Wednesday that no less than an inquiry on the same lines as the one conducted by the former Met Commissioner Lord John Stevens was required.
But hang on a minute… wasn’t there some unfinished business where the Stevens Report was concerned? Some of those with longer memories for these matters may recall that Stevens was engaged by the Football Association to investigate corruption in football in 2006, after a BBC Panorama programme, ‘Undercover: Football’s Dirty Secrets’, alleged that Allardyce and his son Craig, an agent, accepted ‘bungs’ from agents for signing players.
Stevens left no stone unturned. He engaged a team of forensic accountants to examine 362 transfers which took place between January 1, 2004 and January 31, 2006. His report, published in June 2007, ended with a conclusion that there were 17 ‘suspicious’ transfers that he had been unable to sign off as legitimate in his final report, because there were outstanding questions against them.
Four of the 17 deals were Bolton signings at the time Allardyce managed the club: Ali Al-Habsi, Tal Ben Haim, Blessing Kaku and Julio Correa. Three were Chelsea buys (Didier Drogba’s move from Marseille, Petr Cech's from Rennes and Michael Essien’s move from Lyon the following year). A further three arrived at Harry Redknapp’s Portsmouth (Collins Mbesuma, Benjani Mwaruwari and Aliou Cisse). Four were Newcastle signings (Emre Belozoglu, Jean-Alain Boumsong, Amdy Faye and Albert Luque), and two went to Middlesbrough (Aiyegbeni Yakubu and Fabio Rochemback) while one transfer has not been disclosed.
Stevens’ thorough work was brave work. He was challenging the football establishment. One agent who was named in the report, Barry Silkman responded to say: “Whoever he is, Lord Stevens, he is a liar. They will rue the day they were ever born.”
So what happened next? What did football’s governing bodies do to make the work and the veiled threats Stevens was put through worthwhile?
Nothing. The sum total of nothing. The FA examined the Stevens