A-League arrests: Robbie Slater recalls conversations he had with one of European football’s most notorious match fixers

Back in his playing days, ROBBIE SLATER found himself living in the same hotel as a notorious European football match-fixer. Their conversations left a lasting impression.

Robbie Slater, playing for Wolverhampton Wanderers in late 1990s. Picture: Barrington Coombs/EMPICS via Getty Images

I was saddened by allegations made by NSW police that corruption had infiltrated the A Leagues.

It’s a regrettable reality in football the world over.

I will never forget the conversations I had back in 1998 with Jean-Jacques Eydelie, the French player at the centre of one of the biggest match fixing scandals to ever hit our sport.`

I was playing for Wolves at the time and living in the same hotel as Eydelie, who was on loan to

Walsall, a team from the north of Birmingham battling it out in Football League Second Division at the time. That was his life after the scandal of 1993: a European champion now consigned to pariah status that no self-respecting club wanted to be associated with.

I spoke with Eydelie on quite a few occasions.

And the theme of those chats was always the same.

Regret.

Jean-Jacques Eydelie during his playing career which included a stint at Marseilles. Picture: Paul Marriott/EMPICS via Getty Images

Eydelie told me his role in the Marseilles match fixing scandal kept him awake at night and would do so forever. But more powerful than his words were his eyes.

As he sat across from me, you could see how part of him died the day he approached three players from rival team Valciennes and offered them payment to “go easy” on his team in a league game just six days before Marseilles’ biggest game of the year – the Champions League final against AC Milan in Munich.

Eydelie offered the bribes on behalf of officials at Marseilles and one of the Valciennes players he approached, Jacques Glassman, reported them all to the authorities. There was jail time, fines and heavy sanctions (Marseilles were banned from defending their Champions League title the following year).

But more than the public shaming, financial losses and the implosion of his career, Eydelie’s greatest regret from the match fixing saga was his betrayal of football.

This is a sport we grow up loving and dreaming of playing at the top level. To climb that mountain, then to wound the game’s integrity, was a pain Eydelie said would last forever, and certainly long after the public’s memory of the scandal faded.

This wasn’t the only time in my career I encountered stories of corruption in football, but it is the

one that has always stuck with me. And it is the one I immediately thought of when I heard reports on Friday morning that NSW police had arrested three A-League Men’s players “to organise for

yellow cards to occur during certain games in exchange for profit.”

I can’t comment on the specifics of the allegations, and certainly they are allegations only and those involved are entitled to a presumption of innocence. But but I can speak to the damage the controversy surrounding them is causing the A-League.

After a truly brutal season for the league, we were approaching a wonderful fortnight with two cracking semi-finals this weekend, followed by All Stars games against Arsenal (women) and

Newcastle United (men), the triumphant return of Ange Postecoglou with Tottenham and then the grand final.

Now, the dominant narrative is one of scandal.

What a shame for our beautiful, battered game.

Originally published as A-League arrests: Robbie Slater recalls conversations he had with one of European football’s most notorious match fixers