Beatings, Bribery, and Match Fixing in Greek Soccer

In the wee hours of Friday morning, on a street just north of the Akropolis in Athens's Colonus neighborhood, two men on a motorcycle armed with clubs attacked a 45-year-old named Christoforos Zografos. Once a top referee, Zografos officiated FIFA matches for several years in the mid-2000s. Today, he works as the assistant director for Greece's Central Referee Committee. Reports of the extent of Zografos's injuries are sketchy, but the beating was bad enough to send him to the hospital.

The Zografos assault was also enough to scare the shit out of the people in charge at the Hellenic Football Federation (EPO), the governing body of Greek soccer. On November 14, in an emergency meeting, the EPO took extraordinary action, voting to indefinitely suspend professional soccer at all levels, "to ensure immediate action to protect those involved, in any capacity, in Greek football."

In September, after a 46-year-old fan was assaulted at a 3rd division match and later died, the government suspended soccer for a week, but an indefinite suspension marks a new low-point in Greek soccer, which has long been plagued by fan violence and corruption.

In June 2011, following a UEFA-led investigation, ten people were arrested and 68 were named as suspects in the fixing of as many as 40 matches in Greece. Later that summer, Greek daily Kathimerini reported the list of suspects had grown to 83 but could include more than 800 and involved staggering amounts of money: "Around 13 million euros was made from betting on a single match currently being investigated by authorities…"

More evidence of the scale of corruption in Greek soccer emerged last May, when FIFPro, FIFA's players union, published an anti-match fixing report titled "Don't Fix It." The report contains the findings of a broad study into the extent of match fixing in European soccer. As a snapshot of continental corruption, "Don't Fix It" is fascinating. In Greece's case, it's also damning: 12.8 percent of the players surveyed indicated they had been approached in the previous 12 months by someone "who asked you to fix a match."

In the aftermath of the 2011 scandal, two clubs were relegated from the Greek Super League and several officials were banned, but investigations into other suspects remain ongoing. In July, Greek courts gave investigators permission to use some secretly-recorded telephone conversations in their ongoing investigations. The evidence demonstrates how "the president of a Super League club and close associates approached and tried to to use policemen, judges, politicians and other powerful figures for their own ends as part of the planning and organization of their team," said prosecutor Aristidis Koreas, as quoted by Kathimerini. The Kathimerini story continues: "According to the prosecutor there is evidence that those accused have been involved in bribery and influencing the results of soccer matches."

The club president in question is thought to be Evangelos Marinakis, president and owner of Olympiacos, Greece's winningest soccer team.

This is where things get weird: Koreas indicated that Christos Savvas—the injured Christoforos Zografos' predecessor at the Central Referee Committee—had raised specific concerns about the process by which referees were nominated for Greek league games. In early October, Koreas and another investigator were suddenly removed from the case.

In the wake of Zografos' assault, accusations are flying. Olympiacos owner Marinakis has suggested Dimitris Melissanidis, owner of Olympiakos rival AEK Athens, asked the EPO and Zografos to appoint a specific referee to a recent match, and when that didn't happen, ordered the assault. Melissanidis, of course, denies any such thing. He accuses Marinakis of straight up fixing matches. The new government investigator later summoned both owners to a meeting.

The events indicate just how difficult it is to fight corruption and entrenched interests, a lesson that reaches far beyond the game of soccer. Sadly, Zografos appears to have been assaulted for doing his job and trying to maintain the integrity of the referee selection process. His boss, Hugh Dallas, a Scot, was brought in over the summer to head Greece's refs after Greek clubs begged for foreign leadership in the hopes of putting an end to the practice of cherry picking referees. Over the weekend, after revealing he had been threatened as well, Dallas stepped down from his position overseeing referee selection in Greece. In other words, the message sent by Zografos' assailants, whoever they were, was received.