Corruption outed in Poland
http://www.eurosport.co.uk/home/pages/v4/l2/s22/e10208/sport_lng2_spo22_evt10208_sto749561.shtmlThe Polish Football Association's (PZPN) ethics chief on Wednesday praised a club director for speaking out about corruption. GKS Katowice head Piotr Dziurowicz told leading daily Gazeta Wyborcza he paid officials and other clubs to determine the outcome of matches, and had in turn received payments.
"It's very good that this happened -- I take my hat off to Piotr," said Jan Tomaszewski, appointed to clean up the league after a first-division referee and an observer were arrested in May for taking a $25,000 bribe from undercover police.
"We can't allow ourselves to become the laughing stock of European football," added Tomaszewski, calling for future cases of corruption to be immediately turned over to police.
Tomaszewski, a long time critic of PZPN, was goalkeeper when Poland famously foiled England's World Cup qualifying hopes at Wembley in 1973.
SUCCESS STARVED
Dziurowicz told Wyborcza he had decided to speak out because he was fed up with the dishonesty that he said pervades the world of soccer in Poland.
"I've had enough. I've had enough of football in which promotion to the top division, or remaining there, is arranged, not won," he said.
Poland, the European Union's sixth-largest country by population, has been starved of success since the national team took third place in the 1974 and 1982 World Cups.
The national team qualified for the World Cup finals in 2002 for the first time since 1986, and is leading its group in the run-up to Germany 2006.
Asked what he would say to Polish boys who want to play football, Dziurowicz sounded far from hopeful.
"Let them play, let them play. But what will I say to them in 10 years, when they're crying in the locker room after their league debut, because the referee wouldn't give them a chance?
The young GKS players were crying this year," he said.
"But after their 50th match, they'll be buying and selling."
