Theo Fleury—all 5’6” of him--is in my living room. He’s sprawled on the couch, cowboy boots on the coffee table, coffee cup (not beer bottle) in hand, wearing a Hugo Boss outfit from his NHL days telling me, via the pages of his book, another tale from “The Show.” This one from his 1988-89 Calgary Flames Stanley Cup win.

“I had experienced a major win at the World Juniors, so I knew what the process was. ‘Don’t get too excited, just stay calm. You can’t start thinking instead of reacting.’ My play had to stay instinctive. As I skated out on the ice that night I just wanted to shit with excitement. I was thinking, ‘Where the hell are my dad and mom sitting? They must be going bonzo.’ Fleury’s are French—emotional, crazy. I felt an exhilarating anticipation, mixed with anxiety—‘Fuck, can we just win this and get it over with?’”

A typical sprinkle of expletives in the above paragraph, but not a typical story—because of the happy ending (though Fleury was “hammered” before he left the dressing room that night, and continued drinking with the team on their flight home and became “annihilated”). 

Now that its fall and the blind will be leading the blind until mid-June, there is a new assortment of cheerleading hockey books out there. Playing With Fire is the antithesis. Start with the sadness and hunger of a little boy who comes from small town prairie poverty that chills even in August; an embarrassing and disgusting alcoholic father, and a prescription pill-popping, religious zealot mother, it hard to believe Fleury survived his own life. He certainly tried to accidentally take it enough times by driving drunk, stoned, depressed and paranoid while raging with anger.

As he spun in yet another downward spiral in 2001 he figured, “…I couldn’t have a relationship with myself. The funny thing is, the higher I rose in society, the more alone I became. Why? Because I was treated differently and dehumanized. I knew that half the time people were nice to me because I had money or I was a hockey star.”

Neither parent was there for him in childhood; luckily the good people who ran minor hockey in Russell, Manitoba gave him community and love, but he didn’t have a chance as soon as coach and sexual predator Graham James spied him at the Andy Murray hockey camp in Brandon, Manitoba when he was scrawny and thirteen. James could spot a troubled kid a mile away, and though Fleury doesn’t name names, he and Sheldon Kennedy were far from his only victims. This story of abuse will blister and boil for generations as abuse begets abusers, but thanks to these brave men, an environment where “telling” and healing is a little easier has been created. 

As Fleury outlines time and time again, the WHL, NHL and Hockey Canada viewed him only as meat. He gave plenty of “dirty” drug tests, substituting Gatorade or his kid’s urine, but their solution was to help hide his addictions. Even the substance abuse program they put him on, he says, was about getting him back on the ice so seats were filled and money made, not addressing childhood neglect and sexual abuse. It was also about hiding hockey’s dirty little secret: He wasn’t the only NHL gambling alcoholic who hit strip bars looking for sex and cocaine every night.

When, in 2003 he backed out of his contract with the Chicago Blackhawks, Fleury figured, “…the whole league reacted to my leaving the way you would feel after having a big, happy dump. There were a lot of guys like me in the game, but they didn’t want anyone to know that. My presence kept the bad news on the front of the sports pages. Hockey wants to be known as the school’s good-looking, clean-cut jock, and I was really fucking with that image.”

I loved opening the book only to have Fleury wrestle out and talk to me for another couple of crazy energy hours. How smart it was to keep the angry and often funny vernacular of the locker room. If I tell you how he starts to heal, I will give too much away, but it sure helped that instead of prescribing more drugs, as all the other doctors seemed to, Robin Reesal and Joanna Mogab got him talking about sadness. I will, however, repeat the last words because they matter so much.

“So if you are a kid who is in the situation I was in, and somebody older is using you for sex, call for help. You can call the police or you can search for kids’ help lines on the Internet. Seriously, you are not alone. Pick up the phone.”

Title: Playing with Fire
Authors: Theo Fleury, Kirstie McLellan Day
Publisher: Harper-Collins
ISBN: 978-I-55468-239-3
322 pgs 

This book review first appeared in the Globe and Mail and is reprinted at playthegame.org with kind permission of the author.

But in my opinion, silence is not the best tactic.  The problems with manipulations of games are so serious for the reputation of a sport, that it is not healthy and realistic to ‘bury one’s heads in the sand’ and pretend that the problems do not really exist.  On the contrary, it is extremely important to create awareness that handball, like many other sports is facing major risks, that we are vulnerable to attacks, and that it is vital to try to take preventive action!

Frankly, it is not really credible, when people in important positions react with great surprise, when suddenly possible problems are revealed regarding 6-8 matches, as has happened within EHF competition.   People with deep knowledge of our sport are more surprised that there have not been many more matches have been identified over the years.  And it is definitely not a good thing if it becomes known that some of the matches now discussed were brought up years ago without any follow-up, or that it now becomes necessary to search urgently for solid procedures to handle such matters.  But better late than never!

Why corruption occurs

Most of us realize that in politics and business there is a lot of corruption in different forms.  But not all of us seem willing to accept that, whether we like it or not, sports at the higher level is to a large extent politics and business.  So why should we assume that sports in general, and our dear handball, is somehow immune to corruption??

Federation and club officials see it as a matter of enormous prestige that their team does well, qualifying for World Championships, Olympic Games or major continental events such as the Champions League.   And a lot of money is at stake.  Staying eligible for government support or Olympic Committee financing tends to depend on results, and the same goes for the ability to hold on to generous sponsors.  So, of course it is tempting to go beyond what is ethical or legal to improve the chances of good results!  For that matter, it is not farfetched that a sponsor may want to do something ‘extra’ to help improve the ‘return on their investment’ in the form of better results and better PR.

Those who are vulnerable in all this are primarily the referees.  (Of course, we also know of teams paying each other for some ‘collaboration’, when one team desperately needs the points and the other one does not).  The referees are generally not the instigators, as they do not run around looking for opportunities, so we must be very careful to avoid seeing the referees as the main culprits.  I am not saying that there is an excuse if someone is falling for a temptation, but personal problems, poor living standard and other factors do make people vulnerable.  We are all human beings…

To make things worse, while handball is not yet affected in the same way as some other major sports, gambling is adding a very nasty dimension to the whole issue of manipulation of results or ‘match fixing’.  Legal gambling can be bad enough, but as has been experienced especially in football, the inroads of illegal gambling mafias, typically based in Asia, have become a serious problem.  It is not just that they skillfully find ways of manipulating results.  They also make sure that people with gambling addictions get into bigger and bigger problems, so that they (perhaps players, team managers, referees) are de facto forced to play along in illegal operations.   It is not clear to me that we in handball are fully prepared to deal with this kind of threat. 

Necessary action

Of course, the idea that any sport would be capable of simply preventing problems is far too naïve.  And creating awareness goes only some distance in dealing with the issue.  The EHF has recently announced measures such as the introduction of a Code of Conduct, a multi-faceted Integrity Program and a specific ‘hot line’ so that it is clear where any attempts at bribery and other wrongdoing shall be reported.  This seems a good beginning of efforts to make the referees more supported, with less of a feeling that they are all alone out there. 

But the best prevention may involve showing the world that there is a readiness to take strong action when weaknesses have been discovered.  I am not just talking about legal measures against proven bribery.  Some referees have also shown through their actions and performances that they are not up to the task of handling the big matches.  This includes situations where the referees becomes totally overwhelmed by the spectator pressure, where they completely lose their courage to take the necessary tough decisions late in the game, or where they constantly look for ‘easy solutions’ in the form of quick whistles, compromise decisions, compensation etc. 

Again, these referees should not be accused of corruption, but if this is the best they can do, then they do not belong in the top matches.   And while it has happened quietly, perhaps too quietly, the IHF has in recent years weeded out a number of such couples, because the risk is too great that one incident will be followed by more.  Moreover, such refereeing shows a lack of strong personality, and from there the step to being vulnerable to illegal pressures may not be very long.  So setting examples and showing ‘zero tolerance’ for biased or incorrect refereeing is very important for everyone’s sake.

It follows that the recruiting of new young top referees must have the same emphasis!

But it would be totally wrong to focus exclusively on this kind of action.  It is extremely important to have a practical support structure in place (beyond the formalities announced by the EHF).  Especially during events, such as World Championships and continental championships, the resources for supporting the referees need to be strengthened considerably.  This is a ‘personnel management’ function that has traditionally been totally underestimated and understaffed.   Referee Commission members work around the clock but still do not always have time of offer all the personal attention.

The referees need to have a professional environment that enables them to prepare and recover fully, to get feedback and encouragement, and to get physiological and psychological support.  Moreover, they must be totally isolated from teams, media and fans, and they also need to be isolated from political pressures.  This means that everything related to nominations and evaluations must be handled exclusively by the technical staff.  A good example for this whole set of issues is set by FIFA and UEFA.

So I am urging the IHF and its continental federations to deal with this extremely important set of issues immediately, forcefully and openly.  Awareness is the first step, but preparation and preventive measures are also required, as is the readiness to take the strongest action whenever needed.  This obviously includes harsh punishments against clubs/federations and referees in those cases where bribery really has been proven.  And, as discussed, it includes the strict and continuous separation of other referees who do not measure up.  Wishful thinking is not going to be enough!

Households were used to be the major source of sport finance in Europe, and then came local authorities, enterprises and the (state) government. Such was the last state of knowledge about the shape of a European model of sport financing. The only problem is that this knowledge dates back to 1990 when a study (Andreff et al., 1995)¹ had been achieved on a sample of twelve European countries; but it had not been updated so far, except in some countries like France and Germany. Thus, it was urgently needed to update it. The question here is one of financing overall physical and sporting activities – corresponding to what is defined as accounting for national sport expenditure – in sampled countries, and not only professional sports finance whose structure has deeply transformed in the past two decades as exhibited in Andreff & Staudohar (2000).

In 2005, the European model of sport financing has kept the same shape as in 1990 according to a most recent study achieved by those who are co-authoring this article (Amnyos, 2008), in response to a call of the French Ministry for Health, Youth, Sports and Associative Life and the French State Secretary for Sports. Beyond providing updated empirical evidence as regards to sport financing structures, the aforementioned study points at a number of risks and threats hanging over the European model of sports. In the following, we present these threats after a synthetic view of major results derived from an inquiry based on a questionnaire filled by European ministries for sports for the reference year 2005. The country sample encompasses all the 27 European Union member states, including Bulgaria and Romania, even though they acceded to EU only as of 1st January 2007.

Shaping a European model of sports financing

Sports financing is meant to cover all the sources of funds flowing into sport. On the one hand, there are sources of public finance: the (state) government, in particular the ministry in charge of sports, but also other ministries such as the Ministry of Education, the Ministry for Defence, and local authorities at a regional (regions, provinces, districts, Länder) and local (municipalities, counties, agglomerations) levels. On the other hand, privately-owned money is injected into sport by enterprises (sponsorship, television broadcasting rights) and households (purchases of sporting goods and services such as participation fees, ticketing and so on). Once calculated, the average structure of sport financing² over 13 countries³, exhibits that households expenditures account for nearly one half of overall sports finance. Local authorities have a 24% share of overall sports finance, enterprises 14% and governments 12%. These data pertain to direct financing of national sporting expenditures.

An indirect source of sport finance, through alleviated expenditures, consists in tax holidays. Reduced taxation rates are offered to those individuals and enterprises which bring funds into sport. On the other hand, those sport organisations which supply public utility sporting activities usually benefit from alleviated VAT (value added tax) rates or reduced social contributions paid on wages. Overall, 21 EU countries mobilise one or the other partial tax exemption.

Last not least, voluntary work is a non financial resource supply to sport without which the latter could not function properly. If volunteers did not exist, those tasks and functions they accomplish should be fulfilled by waged workers. In an indirect way, voluntary work avoids sport decision makers to attract even more monetary finance. However, it is not easy to measure in monetary terms how much is brought into sport by volunteers’ non remunerated work. In the above mentioned study, we have proceeded with estimating two monetary values of voluntary work, one taking into consideration domestic average wage and the other one half average wages. In those 14 EU countries where available data enable calculation, monetary value of voluntary work is bigger than all sport public financing.

A significant share in GDP

Calculated per inhabitant, sport financing is very much scattered across European countries, from 8 euros per capita in Bulgaria up to 500 euros in the Netherlands. Compared to 1990 (Andreff et al., 1995), average amount of sport finance per inhabitant has sharply increased in constant euro: in the six countries which are common to the 1990 and 2005 samples⁴, average increase in sport financing is 37%, with a maximum increase in France and the United Kingdom (respectively +63% and +61%). The ratio between overall sport financing and GDP has risen on average from 1990 to 2005, though to a smaller extent (+24%). Albeit the two country samples are different, the share of sport financing in GDP was in the range of 0.26% in Denmark to 1.61% in Portugal in 1990 and from 0.21% of GDP in Bulgaria up to 1.76% in France in 2005. Increased variance is primarily due to the accession of Central and Eastern European countries to the EU.

The share of sport financing in GDP is correlated to the level of GDP per inhabitant: the richer a country, the more significant is the share of its GDP devoted to sport finance. It is so in particular with regards to private financing. The following graph shows where the 13 countries which provided data are standing in this respect.

From the graph a threshold shows up in the relationship between GDP per inhabitant and sport financing to GDP ratio at about €18,000 GDP per capita. We have estimated, on the basis of this relationship, overall amounts of sport financing in those 14 countries that have not been able to provide all requested data, under the two following assumptions:

• Regarding countries with a GDP below €18,000 per inhabitant, the ratio is assumed to be exactly proportional to the level of GDP per capita, just like in the relationship that is observed on the left-hand side of the graph (low assumption).

• As to countries with a GDP per inhabitant higher than €18,000, the ratio is assumed to be practically constant, as in the right-hand side of the graph (high assumption).

These two assumptions have enabled us to complete those amounts of sport financing missing in our data set and estimate overall amount of sport finance in all 27 EU countries altogether to about €160-170 billion, i.e. nearly 1.5% of EU GDP.

Regarding the structure of sport finance, two major features are to be stressed:

• The share of public financing reaches from 8% (United Kingdom) up to 78% (Bulgaria) of overall sports finance. Public share diminishes when the level of GDP per capita increases.

• Sport financing by local and territorial authorities is practically non-existing in some countries (Malta, Bulgaria); a maximum is witnessed in Germany where financing by local authorities makes up for 96% of all public sports finance.

Ambiguous government financing of sports

All ministries in charge of sports in the 27 EU countries show €2.9 billion as the cumulative value of their budgets, that is 6 euros per inhabitant on average. One witnesses a sort of ambiguity in the sport financing strategy of most EU member states. There is a marked discrepancy, not to say a contradiction, between actual orientation of sport financing and advertised promotion of sport values. One side of the coin is that governments do push forward health and social objectives of sport, the latter being displayed as a well being and social integration factor, which is at odds with financing priorities. Indeed, the other side of the coin exhibits a government tendency to gear significant financing from the sports ministry toward elite sport (via sport federations targeting high level sport or via prioritising specific disciplines) and organising mega sport events.

Such ambiguity could be resolved by assuming a snow ball effect as follows: the government finances high level sport with the background idea that best sportsmen and women victories and their media exposure will act as an incentive to all population, namely the youth, to get involved into sport practice. However, there are two important prerequisites for such an assumed effect to be valid:
. In such a vision of sport, all sport participating bodies must be associated together in decision making, first of all major non governmental financiers supporting sport clubs and infrastructures (that is local authorities and enterprises), in order to ensure welcoming and training new sport participants.
. A peculiar attention must be drawn at access to sport participation; otherwise most poor people would have no way to accede.
Both prerequisites are far from being fulfilled in a number of EU countries and, consequently, government financing targeted to high level sport cannot, by itself, initiate or maintain a virtuous circle of sport participation.

Threats over the European sports model

Let us briefly remind in what does consist the European sports model. Its first specific characteristic is a pyramidal structure with mass sport participation at its foundations and high level sport practice at its summit. A second specificity is that sport contests are ruled through a promotion-relegation system between higher and lower leagues (divisions) organised by national sport federations. A third feature is that all sport is structured around national federations and local clubs. The fourth one is voluntary work which is a pillar of a well functioning sport system.




Sport financing is primarily allocated to following functions: subsidies to sport federations and clubs, sport infrastructures, sport events, and waged jobs in the sport sector. Distinguishing three categories of sport participation, i.e. amateur sport contests, leisure and health sport practice, and high level sport, an analysis of sport finance allocation in Europe (Amnyos, 2008) shows that each source of finance tends to be geared towards one category of sport participation rather than the other two. Household expenditures are oriented in priority toward leisure and health sport practice and then to high level sport, through attending sport events. Enterprises are used to privilege high level sport with high media exposure in a limited number of sport disciplines. Local and territorial authorities first allocate their sport budgets to amateur sport contests. Government concentrates its financial allocation on to high level sport.





All three categories of sport participation are unevenly under threat today as regards to their financing. One witnesses that a tendency for private finance to flow into media-exposed sports is reinforced by a majority of European governments giving priority to high level sport which, together, threat the pyramidal structure to be destroyed. The pyramid foundations are jeopardised by financing shortages and a slower momentum in voluntary work development while the summit tends to break up from the foundations. Deepening disparities between sport disciplines even affect high level sports. Moreover, when looking at high level sport, convergence across EU member states is merely confined to competing in international sport contests and hosting and organising mega sport events.

Finally, there is a risk that current systems of betting and gambling revenue paybacks to public extra-budgetary funds for sport will be challenged and this is a major concern for all EU governments. Both risk and concern have their roots in a rapid growth of sport betting and gambling on line the amount of which is uneasy to detect and, therefore, to tax.

Toward common financing guidelines

In the face of aforementioned threats and risks, the shape of the European model of sport financing as well as its different national variants⁵ are at stake. Securing further sport financing probably requires an update of the European model along some common guidelines.

In the European vision of sport organisation⁶, the cornerstone must remain solidarity between different sports: a majority of EU member states are running various solidarity mechanisms within the sport sector. The most widespread solution is vertical solidarity: in a same sport discipline, there is some redistribution scheme from those sport practices that attract private financing (namely TV rights revenues) to mass sport participants. Horizontal solidarity between different sport disciplines is also found in some countries (for example within general sports clubs like Steaua Bucharest in Romania). Solidarity can even be both vertical – from high media revenue professional football to amateur football – and horizontal when professional football revenues are redistributed to all different sports, like the Buffet tax on professional football in France. However, in most EU countries, solidarity mechanisms redistribute too few monies to sustain mass sport practice.

The financial godsend resulting from betting and gambling revenue paybacks to sport is increasingly challenged by EU competition policy and, by the same token, public monopolies in charge of managing betting and gambling activities are under threat of being dismantled. It is the most destabilising factor of sport financing that is identified by ministers for sports. In fact, revenues redistributed from betting and gambling can make up to three quarters of a sports minister’s budget (like in Greece) and one quarter of overall public sport financing. It is basic that such source of finance will still contribute to sport development in Europe.


The issue of sport governance in Europe derives from the need for stabilising and securing sport finance. Thus, local authorities must find their due place in sport public policy making including with a real participation to the definition of sport social and economic objectives and priorities, as well as resource mobilisation, together with (state) central government

Another common guideline to update the European sport model could consist in favouring private financing by individuals and enterprises in view of developing mass sport. Here again, sport governance matters and it should be analysed further and designed in such a way as to avoid a takeover of sport by purely financial interests. The task is to be undertaken at both levels of sport federations and clubs – in order to supply sport services that fit with demand – and government in view of creating investment attractiveness into mass sport. With a more secured finance the sport sector could afford stabilised and professionalized jobs in the long run.

As to voluntary work, it is acknowledged by all sport participants as a pillar of European sport, but it is urgently needed to support it so that it could reproduce itself at the required speed in appropriate magnitude. Stimulating tools could consist in more recognition and more social positive evaluation of volunteers’ functions as well as incentives provided to some targeted parts of the population (migrant workers, women, and youth) to get them more involved in voluntary work.

In order to dispose of a statistical follow up regarding how various sources of sport finance are evolving and drawing from this all implications for European sport organisation, a more regular measurement tool (than one study every fifteenth year) is to be implemented. Besides a satellite accounting of sport that is elaborated on at the EU level, but which is complex to build up, a recurrent update of a study similar to the present one could provide very much useful current data.

End notes:

1. W. Andreff, J.-F. Bourg, B. Halba, J.-F. Nys, Les enjeux économiques du sport en Europe: financement et impact économique, Dalloz, Paris 1995 (this reference is the published version of a study achieved for the Council of Europe).
2. It is calculated as a non weighted (by country) mean, thus it is in fact a mean of financing structures observed in responding countries.
3. Only 13 out of 27 countries have been able to provide data about all the four public and private sources of sport finance.
4. Finland, France, Germany, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
5. Which are not dealt with in this article, see Amnyos (2008).
6. The European sport organisation is distinct from the North American one, from the former Soviet state-run sport system and from a sport less endowed with resources in developing countries (Andreff, 2001).

References:

• Amnyos, Etude du financement public et privé du sport, Etude réalisée dans le cadre de la présidence française de l’Union européenne, Ministère de la Santé, de la Jeunesse, des Sports et de la Vie Associative et du Secrétariat d’Etat aux Sports, Paris, octobre 2008.

• Andreff W., The Correlation between Economic Underdevelopment and Sport, European Sport Management Quarterly, 1 (4), 2001, 251-79.

• Andreff W., J.-F. Bourg, B. Halba & J.-F. Nys, Les enjeux économiques du sport en Europe: financement et impact économique, Dalloz, Paris 1995 (version publiée d’une étude réalisée pour le Conseil de l’Europe).

• Andreff W. & P. Staudohar, The Evolving European Model of Professional Sports Finance, Journal of Sports Economics, 1 (3), 2000, 257-76.

Den Forsvunne Diamanten by Lars Backe Madsen and Jens M. Johansso

Greedy agents, bungling with contracts, allegations of kidnapping and threats of life: all ingredients in a drama from real life, in the middle of which stands the now 21 year old Nigerian football player John Obi Mikel. He is the main character in one of the most intricate cases of transfer of players in International football history, and his travel from Nigeria to Chelsea is described in a new book, Den Forsvunne Diamanten (“The lost Diamond”) by Norwegian Journalists Lars Backe Madsen and Jens M. Johansson.

“You are in Africa hunting for the fabled diamond ‘The African Star’ which you will have to bring to Cairo or Tangier. On the way you might find other precious diamonds which you can take up for money for your trip through Africa. The more money you obtain the easier will it be for you to move and find short cuts with flights or boats. At any time thieves, Bedouins and pirates can attack, and should one of the other players find the ‘African Star’ before you, you will have to search for a visa and reach Cairo or Tangier before him in order to win the game.”

With these words the book completes its travel through the dark sides of the trafficking with young football players. The quotation stems from the board game “The African Star” and in many ways it describes very precisely the existence of European agents and scouts hunting for young and talented African football players. They are hunting all over the Continent although the hunt is concentrated around the “Slave Coast” in Western Africa wherefrom young boys are shipped to the North Coast of Africa and on to Europe, legally or illegally.

African players are highly valued in international football where the competition is increasingly about ‘cool cash’. But there is a technical problem for European clubs that wants to secure one of the “African diamonds”. In order to prevent trafficking in minors, the International Football Association, FIFA, has by the article 19 - protection of minors - made it illegal to buy and transfer players under 18 years of age from outside the EU.

In the case of Mikel, Chelsea, Manchester United and the Norwegian Club Lyn are some of the European Football Clubs that have proved ready to break the law. John Obi Mikel was too much of a precious diamond to lose.

In Den Forsvunne Diamanten the two Norwegian Journalists reveals how the famous English football club Chelsea in an illegal way secured the rights to John Obi Mikel when the Nigerian was just 16-years-old. Completely against the FIFA article 19.

Lars Backe Madsen and Jens M. Johansson present the Mikel case – and similar cases - in a very clear and objective manner. Documents crucial to the Mikel case are revealed in the book which is certainly worth reading for anyone with interest in International Football.

According to documents it was Mikel’s father, Michael Obi, who on 15 December 2003, through the agency SEM (Sports Entertainment and Media Group Limited), signed a deal on behalf of his son, thereby linking John Obi to Chelsea. In order to “keep Mikel warm” until he turned 18 and could legally be sold to Chelsea, John Obi Mikel was placed in the Oslo based Club Lyn. Apparently Chelsea should have paid around 2 million Norwegian Kroner for Mikel and another three minor Nigerian football talents.

Norway has become a popular stepping stone for young players from Africa who see it as an opportunity to work in a country that has relatively lenient immigration laws. However, under Norwegian law all minors must receive an 'education' to qualify for a visa. It's also an opportunity for clubs from the major European leagues to park players from Africa while they qualify for work permits.

Everything was apparently under control in the Norwegian Clun Lyn until the Director, Morgan Andersen, became greedy when he realised how talented and much sought after the young football player John Obi Mikel was. He saw a good deal by selling the Nigerian to Manchester United. The club had for years chased the young football prodigy.

But Morgan Andersen just forgot about his deal with Chelsea. On Mikel’s 18th birthday in April 2005 he simply changed the front page of the contract with Mikel and thereby presented a new legal contract, without a new signature from Mikel himself. A few days later the world could see John Obi Mikel pose in Manchester United’s red jerseys – he was going to play for the famous English club. Later it was revealed that this transfer was against Mikel’s own will. He wanted to play for Chelsea and in May 2005 he signed a contract with the club.

A 12 pages long secret “deed of settlement” between Chelsea FC, Manchester United, FC Lyn Oslo and John Obi Mikel was signed on 2 June 2006. The deal requires Chelsea to pay Manchester United GBP 12 million and Lyn GBP 4 million and to “forget” the case and keep quiet about what has been going on. But Manchester United had in fact already reported Chelsea to the police, to the Football Association (FA), UEFA, FIFA and the Norwegian Football Association (NFF).

All allegations and claims on behalf of Lyn and Manchester United were to be withdrawn after signing the document and thereby preventing further investigation from FIFA and the Police. In the deed’s article 11.2 the parties signed and promised that “Each of the Parties undertakes and warrants to the others that they shall not take any step to encourage any Football Authority or other statutory or judicial authority to investigate Mikel or his playing registration”. Case closed! Until two Norwegian Journalist’s opened it again!

The story raises many questions, one of these why FIFA, the same body that rules and imposes laws over the transfer system in international football, has apparently turned a blind eye to some of this decade’s most dark and intricate transfers.

By the way …

Mikel is still playing for Chelsea with three years left on his current deal. A new arrangement worth GBP 60,000-a-week is apparently to be signed within a shot time limit in order to keep the popular midfielder in the club.

”Den Forsvunne Diamanten” by Lars Backe Madsen and Jens M. Johansson, Tiden Norsk Forlag, Norway, October 2008. ISBN: 9788210050442
 
Links:
www.tiden.no/index.php

In 2004 North Americans a bizarre story began to unfold when police arrested NHL player Mike Danton after a play-off game on conspiracy to murder charges.

What we heard became nearly theatre of the absurd in a tale that involved Danton’s former coach of many years, David Frost, who became his agent when he was successfully drafted into the NHL.

It is important to note that even though Frost had been convicted of assault against a boy, when he punched his own player in the face when the boy came off the ice during a game, and had been banned from the Toronto area because he had forged a signature on a league document, he was granted a NHL agent license. At that time the executive director of the NHL Player’s Association was Bob Goodenow, whose son played on the Brampton, Ontario team Frost coached. Goodenow and Frost were frequently seen together and acted as a “team” in terms of games and practices for the boys who were eleven and twelve.

After Frost was banned from coaching in the Toronto area, he took his five best players, who were by this time between fourteen and twenty, to Deseronto, a small Eastern Ontario town whose Junior A team, the Quinte Hawks, was not very successful. In the 1996-97 season Frost somehow rose from assistant coach to head coach, and though no one at his recent trial could remember how he officially became head coach, all agree the team started to win. He shared a suite at the Bay View Inn in Deseronto with some of the Brampton players who came with him while others billeted with area families. But where players actually lived did not matter: many activities, many parties and a great deal of group sex took place in Room #22 at the Bay View Inn.

The reason the legal system and the media have had a microscope on Frost and the activities in Room #22 since 2004 has to do with the fact that, according to Mike Danton’s parents—Susan and Mike Jefferson (their son changed his last name to Danton and disowned his parents on his coach’s advice), David Frost turned his five-boy group into a cult, with himself as the unquestioned, unchallenged leader. The arrest of Danton, who pled guilty though to this day continues to deny he tried to have Frost killed, was the beginning of two years of police investigations into Frost. In 2006, he was charged with many counts of sexual exploitation and one count of assault.

These charges involved his sexual relationship, not only with his players, but the girls they players coerced into coming to the hotel room where, the girls say, sex with their “boyfriend” meant sex with Frost. The players, who testified, not for the Prosecution (called the Crown in Canada), but for the Defense during the trial, say there was lots of group sex—in fact that’s the way hockey players like sex—but none of it involved Frost. One other player, Ian LaRoque, who was a teammate and good friend of the two players with whom Frost is accused of touching sexually, confirmed under oath in court that Frost regularly had group sex with these two players and girls, and that he spoke openly about it on the team bus and in the locker room.

Certainly testimony and evidence from this recent trial, where he was up on only four counts of sexual exploitation, after the Crown dropped all charges that had to do with the sexual assault of the girls, saying there wasn’t enough evidence, showed not a “cult-like” culture, but a true cult. With contradictions flying left and right from those under oath and outside of the courtroom, it becomes a difficult story to follow.

Those close to this story believe that Frost victimized certain players for years, both sexually and physically. There is no argument about the mental and emotional abuse he spewed out as his wrath against players who did not perform to his expectations was legendary. The players, and the girls who imagined themselves as girlfriends, even though a great deal of evidence at the trial showed that their “boyfriends” spoke in very sexually derogatory language about them regularly on the team bus and the change room, appeared to be under his complete control. His physical and psychological punishments, and his humiliation of people for the slightest infraction, according to the testimony from the two girls who are now women and two players who did not participate in the group sex, but did see his manipulative behaviour on the team-all witnesses in the case--kept everyone silent and obedient.

While there are many questions unanswered and many questions Canadians need to ask themselves in terms of their blind religious faith in hockey, the decision of the Crown to drop the charges pertaining to Frost’s assault of the girls is most at issue in my mind. The following opinion editorial published in the Winnipeg Free Press, the Ottawa Citizen and the Victoria Times Colonist in Canada, questions Canada’s legal system and whether it properly protects girls and women. At times it seems that the same blindness that affects so many Canadians when it comes to our national sport affects legal decision-makers too.

In an exclusive extract for Play the Game, provided by courtesy of publishers McLelland & Stewart, Hill introduces readers to the realities of match-fixing in professional sport.

On October 2, 2004, Yang Zuwu, the manager of the Chinese team Beijing Hyundai, did something odd. In the eighty- fourth minute of a game in front of thousands of fans at the Wulihe Stadium in Shenyang, he ordered his team to walk off the field. The referee had just called a penalty against his team. However, several even odder things followed Yang’s command. Not only did his entire team obey him, but as the players sat in their dressing room, Yang stood outside and announced that his team was refusing to take part in the rest of the match or in any more matches in the Chinese Super League.

Yang was no ordinary head of an ordinary team that could be dismissed for mere petulance. Beijing Hyundai was one of the richest teams in the league, sponsored by the Korean car company. Yang Zuwu, a veteran of more than forty years of Chinese soccer, declared that the league was too full of “faked matches, black whistles, illegal betting on games, and other ugly phenomena.” All these factors had become so blatant that it was, in his view, impossible to play honestly in the league. Yang received support from other top clubs. One official, Xu Ming, the owner of the Dalian Shide football club and the most powerful private investor in the sport, came out publicly with his support, saying that another group of teams was also considering pulling out of the Chinese league because the corruption was so bad.

At first, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) refused to listen. It was all too embarrassing. They had only established the new league six months before Yang’s pull out. The idea had been to establish an elite, professionally run league that could help catapult Chinese soccer to the top of the world game. Each team that wanted to participate in the league had to have a capitalization of tens of millions of dollars. A prominent Asian soccer official who had visited one of the Chinese clubs described it in awestruck tones:

"I visited one club that had twelve practice pitches: an Olympic standard stadium, fitness centre, community centre. There were dormitories, housing complexes. It was incredible, like something out of the days of Mao."

Now, with Mr. Yang’s very public protest, only six months after its inception, the Chinese Super League, with all its hundreds of millions of dollars, had effectively collapsed.

It really should not have come as a surprise to anyone connected with Chinese soccer. For years before the founding of the Super League, the Chinese Football Association had heard about the stories of corruption that swirled around their sport. The Chinese national team had taken part in the 2002 World Cup; they had not scored a goal and it was alleged in Chinese newspapers that they had thrown their games in return for gambling payoffs. The players and officials all denied it, claiming that they would never betray their country; however, many newspapers remained skeptical. But the big scandal that might have led to a cleansing of the game was the Black Whistles Affair.

It broke in 2001, when Song Weiping, a construction magnate turned soccer club owner, went public with his complaints about corruption. He made hundreds of millions as a property developer and sponsored his city’s second division soccer team. Then Song publicly threatened to give up soccer for the kinder, gentler world of the construction business because the sport was so corrupt and he was tired of paying bribes to referees. Song even provided documents and a list of referees who took bribes – “most of them,” he alleged.

A sports newspaper, Qiu Bao, took up the investigation and discovered that the corruption might have spread further, right into the Chinese Football Association. One team alleged that they had paid 800,000 RMB (Chinese renminbi, roughly us$100,000) to an official of that organization – alternately described by commentators as “non- descript” to “radioactive – everything they touchseems to shrivel and die” – to appoint referees favourable to their team.

The Chinese Football Association responded to this situation by declaring an amnesty and no public exposure for any corrupt referee who came forward. Gong Jianping, the chief referee of the association and a FIFA- ranked international referee, promptly took them up on their offer.

Just as promptly, the Chinese authorities broke their word and arrested him. His trial featured accounts of sex bribes for referees and card games with high- ranking Chinese Football Association officials. An ambitious referee, it was alleged, was supposed to play cards for high stakes with the CFA officials, then lose the game, so that the officials would receive his money. In return, the referee would receive the plum international games to referee. The only way the average referee could afford to play in the card games was to accept bribes. For his apparent honesty, Gong Jianping received the “lenient sentence” of ten years in a hard labour camp. He died soon afterwards. Since then, no other referee has taken up the Chinese Football Association’s offer of an amnesty.

- Copyright Declan Hill and McLelland & Stewart. Read more at www.howtofixasoccergame.com

Early on, the author states that the book is based on the acceptance that there is no one formula for correct moral conduct during occupation. Separating sport from politics remains difficult today but at a time when Denmark and its citizens were subjugated by Nazi Germany the division was harder than ever but also the stuff of small victories against unwanted occupation.

The main title suggests that the book is limited solely to football. However, in addition to a detailed exploration of this sport’s sporting links during Denmark’s occupation, the author goes into great detail on the same theme for range of other sports, including professional ones such as cycling and boxing, to handball, wrestling, fencing and amateur sports.

Excellently researched, the book looks at policies and individual matches, the new order of European sport that was to emerge and the issue of Jewish persecution.

The book faithfully details historical events and the difficult choices that sports clubs, teams and individual players and athletes had to make, and highlights small, subtle acts of defiance, such as boys wearing a hat decorated in the style of the British Royal Air Force logo.

The author avoids over emphasis on individuals, citing the amount already written on this in his native Denmark. This is understandable for a book written for a Danish audience but the edition of Football With The Foe published in 2008 is an English-language edition and surely aimed at a wider audience outside of Denmark. Individuals and their roles in matches or events are clearly identified but perhaps a little more background would be of help to a non-Danish layman reader.

The overall subject is particularly interesting for British readers as, apart from the Channel Islands, the British Isles escaped occupation during World War Two. The British never had to entertain whether or not to engage in sport with an occupying force and make the moral choices made by the bodies and individuals in this book.

A scholarly tome, the Danish version of Football With The Foe won the 2007 Danish history book of the year award and must surely be eligible for more international recognition on publication of this English language edition. This fascinating book is about choices that many people in developed countries could hardly imagine making today and should surely interest readers in a broader audience outside of academia and history. 

'Football with the Foe - Danish sport under the swastika’ by Hans Bonde is published by the University Press of Southern Denmark 2008. 

Steve Menary is the author of Outcasts! The Lands That FIFA Forgot (Know The Score Books 2007 http://outcasts-book.blogspot.com/) & is writing a history of the Great Britain Olympic football team

The crux of the issue was in what circumstances professional sporting clubs could be liable for the acts of their players committed in 'off the ball' situations. The Master of the Rolls, Sir Anthony Clarke was prepared to hold the Club liable on the basis of Mr Carroll's contract of employment with the Club.

More particularly that the act in question was so closely connected his employment as to render the Club liable.

This decision opens up the broader question as to how far in time the Courts will be prepared to hold semi-professional and professional football players liable i.e. could an incident after the match whistle has blown render a club liable? Probably yes. No doubt clubs up and down the country will be reviewing their insurance policies to make sure that they are properly covered.

Read details of the case in full here.

Worse still, they achieved stunning results on the sports field, which, especially in athletics, could be measured and compared directly.

Perhaps understandably a cry soon rose about unfair competition and downright cheating, followed by demands to bring an end to this intolerable situation in international sport.

So, something had to be done, and in accordance with medical experts, gender verification was introduced in athletics by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in 1966, at the European Championships in Budapest, where all female athletes were required to parade naked in front of a panel of physicians.

I was present in Budapest, and being at that time president of my club, I had a rather nervous and embarrassed female high jumper attending this (something similar was repeated at the 1967 Pan American Games in Winnipeg and on other occasions).

Another female athlete in Budapest was a Polish sprinter E.K. who passed the examination. However, later after the introduction of a new test, sex chromatin testing, she was found to have one chromosome too many to be declared a woman for the purpose of athletic competition.

A six man medical commission who subsequently investigated her case, discovered that she had a genetic condition known as mosaiicism, whereby some of her cells had an XXY sex chromosome make up, the remainder having a normal XX sex chromosome composition. She was aware of the condition and had not only undergone surgical treatment to remove intra-abdominal testes, but was also being treated with female sex hormones.

Nevertheless she suffered public disgrace by being disqualified from further competition in women´s events and her name was later (in 1970) removed from the record books and she was forced to return her olympic and other medals, and retired from competition surrounded by controversy.

At the 1966 Commonwealth Games in Kingston, a manual examination of the external genitalia was carried out by a gynaecologist on all female athletes, and in 1967, at the E-cup final in Kiev, close-up visual inspection of genitalia was used to establish eligibility.

Mary Peters, gold medallist in Munich 1972 in pentathlon, is quoted as having described her experience with the gender verification test as “the most crude and degrading experience I have ever known. The doctors proceeded to undertake an examination which, in modern parlance, amounted to a grope”.

This new practice quickly, in fact already from 1966, brought about that a number of prominent athletes did not show up at the big events, and vanished from the international scene of athletics, which in turn was interpreted widely as a great victory for the introduction of gender verification, and certainly, in some events, competition became less fierce.

In 1968 at the Olympic Games in Mexico, the IOC introduced the sec chromatin test (buccal smear screening test) which could indicate inactivation of one of the two female X chromosomes. It was the intention of the IOC that, should the screening test prove negative, or inconclusive, a full chromosome analysis would then be conducted and blood hormone levels measured. If inconclusive results were again obtained, a gynaecological examination would follow.

Nevertheless, the IOC´s intentions have rarely been carried out in practice. Shocked athletes, having failed the sex chromatin screening test shortly before a major competition, have tended to withdraw rather than undergo further investigations which might have proved them eligible. Indeed, these athletes were often advised by their own officials and team physicians to feign illness or injury and retire immediately to avoid public humiliation.

From that time, every international female had to have a gender verification certificate with photo etc., stating that she had passed the sex test used by the IOC.

At the 1985 World Student Games a female Spanish hurdler M.P. was publicly disclosed after failing her sex test, at the cost of public disgrace and loss of her athletic scholarship. It took two years and the active intercession of a number of medical authorities for her, to be reinstated – it turned out that she had Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. By that time though, her sporting career was over.

Similar examples are to be found within other sports.

Having used the sex chromatin testing in sport for well over 20 years (1968-1991), the medical experts stopped using it, because of its inadequacy, and because it has been realised that some women, who have genetic abnormalities that offer no conceivable strength advantage, are disqualified unfairly, some men with genetic disorder would pass the sex chromatin test, and it is an established fact that a number of genetic disorders in women and men can make the test results point in whatever direction, for example: Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, Gonadal Dysgenesis, Turners Syndrome, Klinefelter´s Syndrome etc., etc.

To my knowledge, following an IAAF workshop in 1990, the IAAF Council in 1991 adopted recommendations from the workshop that laboratory based gender verification testing be abandoned, alternatively introducing general medical examination, including simple inspection of the genitalia, to be performed by physicians accredited to each national federation. However, due to lack of unanimity regarding the exact content of the examination a second working group discussion took place in 1992. The result was to eliminate gender screening in any form at IAAF competitions.

However, provision remain to this day in the IAAF Rules that -

“The medical Delegate shall also have the authority to arrange for determination of the gender of an athlete should he judge that to be desirable”

- except, that now everything related to how such an investigation is to be performed is hidden completely from the athletes and officials, as opposed to the preceding some 20 years of free and open information. Alas, this lead to criticism and embarrassing exposure of the mistakes and shortcomings of the scientific methods used, and subsequently to changes. That cannot easily happen now when everything is kept behind a white coat.

All along the IOC kept on conducting laboratory testing for gender verification purposes. In 1992 in Albertville the new polumerase chain reaction (PCR) technique was introduced, only to be criticised for not eliminating all the issues surrounding the accuracy of the test by having the same shortcomings as sex chromatin testing, and being merely a test for presence of a DNA sequence and not a test for sex or gender.

At the 1996 olympics in Atlanta, the IOC reverted to the buccal smear test, and a comprehensive process for screening, confirmation of testing, and counselling of individuals “detected”, was carried out. Out of 3387 female athletes 8 had positive test results. Eventually however, all of these were ruled “false positive” as it was established that 7 had androgen insensitivity, 4 incomplete, and 3 complete. The last one had previously undergone gonadectomy (removal of internal testes) and is presumed to have 5-alpha-steroid reductase deficiency (deficiency of an enzyme necessary to activate testosterone in responsive tissues). All individuals were permitted to compete.

For the 2000 olympics in Sydney  it was again intended  to conduct the more and more controversial gender verification. However, shortly before the games,  the IOC was forced to back down over its plans, mainly because the IOC Athlete´s Commission demanded the test being scrapped. However, the IOC described the suspension of compulsory gender verification as merely an “experiment” with no guarantees that it would become a permanent arrangement.

And, sure enough, the IOC still has a clause in its rules which -

“gives the IOC Medical Commission the authority to conduct any necessary investigation in order to verify the gender of an Olympic participant, should that be judged desirable”.

- exactly along the same lines as IAAF, and with exactly the same problems and shortcomings.

In the late 1990´ties a number of relevant professional societies in USA called for elimination of gender verification, such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, The American College of Physicians, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The Endocrine Society, and the American Society of Human Genetics, stating that the method used was uncertain and ineffective.

So, what is the true story behind all this ?

Some of the best kept secrets within the human race, from ancient times and up to today,
can be described by two words: Intersex condition.

Every embryo has the possibility to develop either towards male or female, and therefore the possibility exist that it develops to something in between, within a vast number of variations. Such “cases” have always been hushed up, by the medical experts and, often on their advice, by the families, and in most cases the doctors have advised the parents that surgery be performed immediately to make the child look like a girl.

Why a girl?

Because, until very recently, that was the easiest, in fact the only thing, they could do. To make such a baby look like a boy was much too difficult, and still is more difficult. So, the doctors decided on, which sex a baby should live with for the rest of its life, and the shocked and wretched parents, placed in this tragic situation, could do little but follow the doctors advice.

The pain and agony, when later in life some people find themselves caught in a body, to which they cannot relate, is beyond comprehension.

But surely this concerns only a few isolated cases ?

With all the hush up that has always surrounded these problems, the extent on a national or global basis has not been known publicly, and statistics is hard to come by, whereas the medical world surely should have had some grasp of it.

Only within recent years, some people, some parents and some persons with intersex conditions themselves have started to talk about it more freely and publicly, but as of today, no one can say how many people this has affected, only that it is an almost unbelievable high number.

Recently it has been estimated that in Great Britain alone there are living more than 100.000 with some kind of intersex condition. For example 1 in every 4.000 is born with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS), and 1 in every 10.000  with Adrenogenital Syndrome (AGS), which is yet another of the numerous variations in gender. There is no reason why these figures should not relate to most other countries too.

Other estimates are that in general at least one in a few thousand people are born with a body which deviates so much from the two accepted genders, as to place them at serious risk of parental rejection, stigmatisation, emotional pain of secrecy, shame and isolation and often harmful medical intervention, based not on scientific research, but for sociological and ideological reasons.

All through the 20th century they have been hidden away as a dark secret, and their existence hushed up for a number of reasons, including the standards set by society, by relatives, and yes, by sport – the last big taboo of mankind.

In fact, besides the male and the female gender, I think it should be considered to talk about a third gender, the Double Gender encompassing all those who are neither female nor male, but both and. As a matter of fact there is information that at least one person in Australia has been officially registered as being double gendered. It is long overdue for society, to accept these facts of life, which, in relation to sport are of minor consequence compared to the ever flourishing problem of doping.

As a very small part of this huge, global issue, the double gender has, as specified above, caused confusion in the world of sport, where the medical experts have decided how to divide those with the double gender  between the two officially accepted genders. They have, in their ignorance, performed this with various procedures and various medical techniques, which, one by one has proven to be inadequate, insufficient or just plain impossible. Procedures and techniques which the officials in sport have had to accept, as obviously they were not experts in this field.
 
It is obvious that there are reasons why, after some 30 years of nude parades, groping, scraping, screening, testing and certifying, all of a sudden the compulsory gender verification is completely abandoned, and all the comprehensive activity and attention that has surrounded this has suddenly vanished, so that all that is left is a “sleeping” rule saying that it can be performed when “judged desirable”, with no further information added. (Within doping control, which is also a medical matter, this would equal that the only rule and information needed would be: “Doping control may be performed when judged desirable”. Period.)

These some 30 years of consternation, suffering, humiliation, shattered  sports careers and broken lives, and this enormous BIG BROTHER set up, causing all this, has been, and apparently still is, based completely on inadequate and inconclusive grounds.

With the knowledge we have today, no one, but absolutely no one, with any sense of what is just and fair, can say that what was done, was done with methods and procedures which were, or has later been, proved to be beyond any reasonable doubt.

What all this leaves us with is the fact that those who were excluded for not passing the gender verification, or femininity test which it was unpleasantly also called, were excluded wrongly on inadequate and inconclusive grounds, and therefore they should be exonerated. Those who were “just” scared away it is, unfortunately, not possible to make it up to.

But then, what now ?

Obviously international sport will have to relate to double gender, to intersexuality, to transsexuality and to all other related issues.

"Outcasts! The Lands That FIFA Forgot" examines the much tarnished reputation of FIFA, the governing body of world football, and just how they justify the exclusion of some 'nations' from their organisation while welcoming others. For two years, I traced the incredible journeys of the teams that FIFA refuse to recognise - either for reasons of political expediency, or because FIFA just believed they could not compete with the likes of Montserrat on the world stage.

23 February 2006, Monaco Consulate, London

A crowd of around two dozen Turkish Cypriots gather in freezing weather outside Monaco’s consulate at Cromwell Place in south Kensington. A slightly bemused male member of the Monegasque consulate emerges and politely takes a football covered in graffiti and letters of protest from the leader of the protestors, Ipek Ozerim. The Turkish Cypriots carry banners with ‘Monaco: play fair’ and ‘Keep politics out of sport’ and brandish red cards with ‘Non’ printed on them. A song strikes up, twisting a well-known terrace chant into “North Cyprus, we’re by far the greatest team the world has never seen” to the bemusement of passers-by.

Click here to download this excerpt in pdf format

The latest stunt is to protest about the Monaco government caving in to international pressure and forcing its amateur national team to cancel a match against a team representing the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, one of the world’s true pariah states that has been in virtual limbo since declaring independence from the rest of Greek-dominated Cyprus in 1983 – a move still only recognised by Turkey.

 
Prior to independence, there had been unrest between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and in 1955, according to the Turkish side, their most famous football club Çetinkaya was barred from playing a match against a Greek-Cypriot side, Pezoporikos, in the capital Nicosia. Çetinkaya Sporting Club had won the all-island league in 1952/53, but when the Turkish Cypriot clubs were expelled from the Greek Cypriot FA in 1955, their clubs formed their own association, the KTFF.

The tensions between the Greek Cypriot majority and the Turkish Cypriot minority continued after independence and in December 1963 there was a violent battle in the capital of Nicosia. United Nations peacekeepers were deployed but the violence continued and Turkish Cypriots retreated to enclaves throughout the island. In 1974, an attempt sponsored by the government of Greece to seize control of the island prompted a Turkish invasion. After a 25 day battle that left around 6,000 people dead, the Turkish troops had seized a third of the island including a large section of Nicosia – or Lefkosa, as the Turks call the island’s capital. Thousands of Greek Cypriots retreated to the south behind a hastily drawn line between the two communities, losing their homes in the process.

A year later, the KTFF claimed former FIFA general secretary Dr Helmut Kaser agreed that the Turkish Cypriots could play friendlies against FIFA members, but not official competitions. Ad-hoc ‘internationals’ were played by Northern Cyprus against Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Malaysia but this ended in 1983. That year, attempts at resolving the conflict were sent spiralling into retreat, when the Turkish-zone declared itself as the TurkishRepublic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) led by nationalist president Rauf Denktas.

When Cyprus was granted independence, the Turkish Cypriots insist this enshrined the right for separate sporting institutions, but only the Republic of Cyprus, the Greek partition, is recognized by UEFA and FIFA. In 1996, the KTFF applied to join FIFA, but were rejected. Players from Northern Cyprus are not helped by rules in the Turkish football league. As the TRNC is a separate state according to the Turkish government, players from Northern Cyprus are treated as overseas players. For ambitious players from TRNC that want to play a higher standard of football, the obvious place to go – Turkey – is one of the hardest to break into. Mete Adanir played in the Turkish top flight a decade ago only to die in a car accident. Kenan Özer is at Besiktas but only plays sporadically. The most famous Northern Cypriot players today are actually two that played in the Greek Cypriot league.

Sabri Selden left the TRNC in 2002 to play football for Nea Salamina and found himself branded a “weak character” by North Cyprus president Rauf Denktas, as departure was seen as a public relations coup for the Greek Cypriots. His brother Raif later followed Sabri across the border to play football.

The departure of the brothers was a cause célèbre, but as relations eased slightly between the two sides, a move by another Turkish Cypriot player to the Greek Cypriot league proved less controversial. In April 2005, Denktas was ousted in elections and replaced by the more moderate and younger Mehmet Ali Talat. Relations eased between the two sides and crossings through a border hidden away in Greek Nicosia became a daily occurrence. Around 4,000 Turkish Cypriots cross daily to work in Greek Cyprus, where per capita income is estimated at ten times higher than in the North.

Like Selden, Coskun Ulusoy just wanted to play a higher standard of football. He studied in Istanbul between 1994 and 1999, but could not find a professional club because of the rules treating him as an overseas player.

“Everyone asks me what is your nationality and I say ‘Turkish part of Cyprus’ and everyone has the same answer: ‘that is a problem’,” explains Ulusoy. In Northern Cyprus, he played for Girne – or Kyrenia as the Greeks know the pretty harbour town – but in 2004 was offered a £9,000-a-year contract with Nea Salamina, which has a left-wing fan-base. Every day, he traveled back and forth across the border to training. Though he received some abuse, Ulusoy only has good memories of his two years with Nea Salamina. He returned to the TRNC after his mother-in-law was not well and took a job at the interior ministry. Ulusoy adds: “When I cancel the contract, they [Nea Salamina] are very sorry. I never forget they said to me they lose a friend and I said that I lose many more friends.”

Ulusoy’s move to the south came during a time of big change in the isolated territory’s status in political and football terms. Talat took over as President, but a two-year series of talks between the leaders of the two communities brokered by the United Nations failed to reach an agreement to reunite the divided island. The Turkish Cypriots had supported the EU plan, but it was rejected by the Greek Cypriots in an April 2004 referendum. The following month the entire island of Cyprus joined the European Union. This entry only applies to the areas under direct government control and not parts of the TRNC, but Turkish Cypriots are eligible for Republic of Cyprus citizenship and can enjoy the same rights as other EU citizens. What the Northern Cypriots want is a system modeled on the UK in political and sporting terms. Not too much to ask?

Since the EU admission, border crossings have become routine. Not only were Turkish Cypriots such as Ulusoy crossing regularly, but so were Greek Cypriots back to the north, where the only industry is tourism, subsistence farming and a construction boom providing hotels and holiday homes. Those holiday homes are increasingly being bought by British holiday makers – the only problem is that some of these homes have been built on land seized from Greek Cypriots, who remain their legal owners in the eyes of the EU.

Some Greek Cypriot restrictions remain in place, but appear more to do with mainland Turkey than their fellow Cypriots at the top end of their island.

In July 2005, Reporters Without Borders, a lobby group that defends press freedom, slammed the Republic of Cyprus for refusing to allow Turkish journalists based in the TRNC to enter the country to cover a competitive football match between Greek Cypriot side Anorthosis Famagusta and Turkish side Trabzonspor. According to Reporters Without Borders, Turkish nationals wanting to travel to Greek Cyprus for professional reasons need to seek permission two days in advance. Reporters from the TRNC are not subject to the same restrictions and were allowed to cross the border by the Greek Cypriot police. But any Turkish journalists that tried to get into the game on 25 July were refused entry. This time, the Northern Cypriots were not the ones being isolated but their sponsors.

The game was to be a great night for Cypriot football and the closest a team from Cyprus had got to the Champions League. Having eliminated Dinamo Minsk of Belarus in the first qualifying round, Anorthosis Famagusta routed Trabzonspor 3-1 and went through 3-2 on aggregate to the third and final qualifying round, where they lost to Glasgow Rangers.

The problem for many visitors to Northern Cyprus is that the place appears rather like an outpost of Turkey itself. Even the flag is merely the Turkish standard with the colours reversed, as is the Northern Cyprus football strip. There is not even a TRNC currency. Visitors can spend Turkish lira, Cypriot pounds, Euros, even English pounds, but there is no Northern Cypriot denomination. There is investment, but due to the lack of recognition this is mainly from Turkey, although also occasionally by the Israelis. The post boxes are still the blue ones put in decades ago by the British colonial authorities, but all post has to go via mainland Turkey.

To the Greek Cypriots, Northern Cyprus remains a part of their country that has merely been sectioned off and their people driven out after the war. Despite the EU negotiations, the TRNC is at the heart of the stalled EU application by Turkey, which insists on recognition for Northern Cyprus and the establishing of direct trade and economic links to support reunification. The Republic of Cyprus are not having any of this and are blocking any attempts that would lead to the TRNC being recognized as a country in its own right in any way.

These frustrations lead to the TRNC to try and secure a different form of national recognition – on the football field.  The KTFF and the TRNC government decided that rather than wait, an international side would be launched at the 250,000-odd residents of Northern Cyprus, who were more used to watching the likes of Galatasaray on television in the Champions League than their own home-grown players.

In the summer of 2004, the KTFF assembled a side that was taken to Norway to play the Sápmi team representing ethnic Laplanders. That was followed up by a tournament hosted in Northern Cyprus to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the KTFF. The Sápmi were invited for a re-match. Kosovo, a UN protectorate and still part of Serbia to the Serbs and Russia, also took up an invite. Monaco were also invited, but could not afford to travel.

Played in the 28,000 capacity stadium that Ahmet Esenyl’s father helped build in Lefkosa, the matches were beamed live back to Lapland and Kosovo, but only a few hundred locals scattered the stadium. Mehmet Ali Talat was presented to the teams before games and the national anthems were played. In the case of the Sápmi they had their own, but Northern Cyprus had to make do with the Turkish anthem.

Northern Cyprus won both matches and the tournament, dubbed the Peace Cup, was a new beginning for the KTFF. A couple of months after the Northern Cyprus team had visited Lapland, the Embargoed campaign was set up by Ipek Ozerim, who had been a PR adviser to President Denktas. The plight of the Northern Cypriot footballers was a good stepping point for Embargoed. After the Monaco protests, a Balls to Embargoes poster was launched with half-a-dozen mostly London-based Turkish Cypriot players asked to strip for a poster, including former CrystalPalace player Kerem Bashkal. Put out before the 2006 World Cup, the idea was to shame FIFA into embracing the Turkish Cypriots.

Yasin Kansu of Çetinkaya, top scorer in the Northern Cyprus league in recent seasons, also took everything bar his socks off for the poster. He explained: “We voted for the solution in Cyprus and still we can’t play football with the rest of the world. In a few years, I will be retiring and if this situation continues, I will never get the chance to play against first class international opposition and know just how good I am.”

Embargoed were handed an even better PR opportunity in February 2007, when Arsenal decided to ban flags from the club’s new Emirates stadium after some fans complained about a TRNC flag being waved at the ground by a Gunners’ fan, northern Cypriot, Mete Ahmed.

Embargoed and the KTFF are trying to find a solution to a conflict that few of the generation they aim to help can remember. Since the invasion in 1974, football has changed out of all proportion in terms of popularity and commercialism and using the world’s most popular sport as a tool to reinforce the idea of a nation must seem an easy option. The KTFF must also notice with some degree of envy the improvement in the football in the south. Unlike clubs from most small nations, the professional Greek Cypriot teams always manage to get through at least a couple of rounds in European football, although no club has qualified for the Champions League proper yet. The national team is also improving and in 2007 managed to thrash the Republic of Ireland 5-2 and draw 1-1 with the previous year’s World Cup semi-finalists, Germany.

Relations are softening. The KTFF have met with the Cyprus FA in the south, but the meeting had to take place in a Hilton hotel not in the Greek Cypriot association’s offices or else it could have been deemed a formal affair and given some credence. There were some constructive talks over youth football, but the KTFF did not like the suggestion that they become part of the Cyprus FA. What they want is a new FA set up, following the British model. The KTFF invited the Cyprus FA to the north, but they have yet to take up an invite to cross the eerie border, where empty buildings full of bullet holes remain just as they were when so suddenly abandoned three decades before.

So far, the idea of a Northern Cyprus national team has yet to stir much interest among the locals. The Turkish league on television remains more popular and crowds for national team matches are very low. But for Cengiz Uzun, the KTFF’s main organiser, the future lies most definitely in a Northern Cyprus team. He explains: “It will take a little time for the people to love their national team, but we are not terrorists. We have peaceful feelings towards our neighbours, so why should FIFA put bans on our players? These are questions to be answered by the Greeks.”