Football, cars and beer are three traditionally common positive associations that come to your mind when you think about Germany. But not this autumn. It seems that the end of 2015 turned out to be extremely unfortunate for the German automotive industry, as well as football.
There was the information about Volkswagen, which was shameful for the German automotive concern. After that, Spiegel accused key figures in German football, citing its own sources and the country’s as a whole. According to the magazine, Germany paid large bribes for the right to host the 2006 World Cup.
The Committee of the German Football Association (DFB) set up special ‘black cash’ for this purpose, to which the former boss of Adidas, Robert Louis-Dreyfus, directed 13,000,000 Swiss francs in 2000 when the matter and the venue of the tournament were being discussed.
It is said that the money was spent in order to bribe four Asian representatives for their votes on the tender committee of FIFA. Spiegel wrote that DFB President Wolfgang Nirsbah, the head of the bid committee Franz Beckenbauer, as well as many other high-ranking German football functionaries, together with FIFA, were involved in this corrupt deal.
The DFB hasn’t given an official response yet.
Vesti FM commentator Gia Saralidze noted in an interview with a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza that ‘‘a lot of accusations against Germany and against other countries that are to host the upcoming world championships can be heard now.’’ "By the way, the German publication accuses France, which hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1998, as well as South Korea and South Africa. According to them, no single country deserved the right to host the World Cup," he said.
‘‘I don’t say that officials of the FIFA organization are absolutely honest. Certainly, a lot of money was involved in this process, so there were abuses, like in many large and wealthy companies. What is happening now is the collapse of the football movement and FIFA by means of a series of such scandals,’’ Gia Saralidze concluded.