La Liga

[Ronnie Whelan]

GUILLEM ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS

MONEY TALKS

Hola Guillem, The other day I came across reports which said that Real Madrid would be paying Zaragoza and Getafe, if they get results against Barcelona. I also read the Barcelona president hitting out at Real for doing this and saying that Barcelona would never do such things. Now I wanted to know if such things are legal? Are teams allowed to do that? Is it good for the game? I also wanted to ask you one more thing. Do you think any player from the La Liga would end up playing for Manchester United next season?

Nishanth Ayyagari, Manchester

 

GUILLEM SAYS: This is legal. It's illegal according to the Spanish federation but not according to the civil court and therefore it is not illegal to pay a team to win a match. This is very famous in Spain. Although this may not be ethical what it does do is balance out the end of season matches where some teams are playing for nothing - we've seen in the Premiership where top teams end up playing kids in matches at the end of the season. I wonder if Premiership teams would do that if players were getting, say £15,000 each - which is the apparent sum that the Zaragoza players will receive if they beat Real Madrid? It's a delicate issue but is one that always causes lots of discussion between Mark, Gerry and myself. Barcelona are saying now that they would never do this but they did actually do that in the early 1990s when they paid Tenerife to beat Real Madrid which they duly did and Barca won the league on the last day of the season which happened in two consecutive years. In fact, this has been the most exciting and intense end to La Liga since Deportivo missed a penalty in the last minute of their final match and Barcelona snatched the title from them

 

This is all comeing from this page.

 

I didnt realise this actually happened in Spain and is psuedo legal as far as I can see.

Edited June 8, 2007 by Ronnie Whelan

[surf]

Ajax paid Excelsior to get a result against AZ on the last day of the season. Excelsior went on to beat AZ 3-2. Ajax then refused to pay cause they lost the league on goal difference due to PSV's 5-1 victory against Vitesse.

[M4TTA]

madness

[Guest]

nothing new here in my first year over here nearly two decades ago sevilla paid three or four teams to beat betis

[tomasjj]

This is bloody ridiculous stuff!

[surf]

nothing new here in my first year over here nearly two decades ago sevilla paid three or four teams to beat betis

 

three or four!

33 against 11 just doesn't seem fair.

[JohnnyH]

Wow. We should pay Liverpool players to win all their games and then we'd win the league.

[Cheesecake]

wouldnt work cos Man U and Chelsea would have paid the refs more... allegedly

[Guest RedLegend]

I thought this was common knowledge?

 

Been going on for years.

[£440,000]

Looked like Mallorca were being paid not to score last night.

[Ronnie Whelan]

I thought this was common knowledge?

 

Been going on for years.

 

 

Was the first I had heard about it mate. Very weird stuff. I would imagine some money will be changing hands next weekend.

[Bo Benn]

Kind of a sad indication of today's football. Would a relegation struggling side afford to pay a top team's players if they have nothing to play for? Think not. Even though Neil Warnock is a bit of a c*** I can certainly understand him for being pissed off at top teams suddenly stop playing for real and let kinds/reserves in while the games still matters for someone else. Not much to do about it with clubs rightfully taking every opportunity they can to rest players. But it seems big clubs can buy them selves out of it. Just an unpleasant situation overall me thinks.

[R A Softlad]

Sid Lowe menstioned this on the Guardian podcast a couple of weeks back too. Odd.

 

I think he said they justify it as it's not throwing a game it's a bonus for winning.

Edited June 12, 2007 by R A Softlad