Wolfgang Niersbach will remain on FIFA’s executive committee despite resigning as head of the German football federation (DFB) over a 2006 World Cup scandal, soccer’s governing body said yesterday.
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Now, almost a decade after it all so well for the chair of the 2006 World Cup organizing committee, Beckenbauer finds himself under scrutiny related to a $7.2 million “slush fund” allegedly used to buy votes.
Pressure is growing on Franz Beckenbauer to speak on the latest corruption allegations surrounding the 2006 World Cup in Germany. It does mean another member of the UEFA executive and the Federation Internationale de Football Association executive has had to resign.
Announcing his resignation after an emergency meeting of the DFB’s standing committee in Frankfurt, Niersbach denied any involvement in an alleged transfer of 6.7 million euros to the Federation Internationale de Football Association from a secret account of the DFB in early 2005. Germany won the bid by one vote over South Africa in 2000.
What is certain is that the organising executives – Beckenbauer, his communications chief Niersbach and the then newly-appointed DFB president Theo Zwanziger – have all come up with different stories… all judged equally implausible and untrustworthy by the DFB board, the media and increasingly impatient German public opinion.
It wrote: “The decisive question is: where did the money go which the Germans say was to finance a World Cup opening gala which never took place?”
In the statement, Koch confirmed that it was Beckenbauer who signed a document that appears to be a draft contract promising “various services” to Jack Warner, the former president of CONCACAF, soccer’s governing body for North and Central America.
Koch said Beckenbauer signed the agreement on July 2, 2000, which is reported to have made a variety of assurances, including promises on World Cup tickets and friendly matches.
“In this contract, various services, not direct monetary payments are promised by the German side”, Koch continued, before adding that there was no indication whether the agreement had been acted upon.
DFB interim president Rainer Koch has called on Beckenbauer to respond: “Our request is that he gets more intensively involved in clearing up the affair”. “That is why it is even harder for me to decide to take political responsibility for all of this”.
“It’s not a subject for me, I am helping to prepare the Germany team for the 2016 European Championship and have an academy project, which I am enthusiastic about”, said Bierhoff on Tuesday in Munich. The 65-year-old spent virtually three decades with the DFB, & was its general secretary from 2007 until he became president 5 years of time of time later.
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“There is respect for him taking political responsibility, but also dismay, as it’s no secret that Wolfgang Niersbach had a particularly close relationship with the squad”.
