Facebook and Instagram to get the latest updates on LSU Football and Recruiting. One image had been taken in the previous half hour. I really dont consider myself as a hacker, he told me. They were real documents.. Utopian, visionary, wishful thinker, fantasist, fantasizer, romantic, romanticist, dreamer. It was enough. The fact that I got such a confirmation coming from so close to Porto make me decide to act., During the summer, Pinto acquired thousands of internal e-mails and contracts from Doyen. When I asked Marques whether he considered returning the e-mails, he laughed. Today, they are Ed Woodward and Troopz, Phil Jones and Shkodran Mustafi, a six-foot fluffy devil competing with a six-foot fluffy dinosaur to see who can look the more ridiculous. At the beginning of 2018, Pinto had given Buschmann more hard drives, which brought the number of documents in the Intella database to more than seventy million. Pinto was uneasy. But Snowden did the same, Bourdon told me. This January, the highest fee spent by a non-Premier League club from a major league has been the signing of Cesar Montes by La Liga outfit Espanyol, who paid 8m to bring him in from Mexican side Monterrey - 1m less than the fee Chelsea paid Atletico to loan Joao Felix for five months. Its true, there is a risk. At tense moments, his face broke into a disarming smile. The idea of a soccer Super League has been around since the late nineteen-eighties. The business side of the sport, however, is more like a painting by Bruegel the Elder. A confidential side letter identified Ms P as Kathryn Mayorga, a former model who was then working at an elementary school, and Mr D as Cristiano Ronaldo. During the intervening decade, Porto had found it impossible to match the spending of the biggest clubs, in Germany, Spain, and England, or of trophy assets, like Paris Saint-Germain, which had been acquired by the Emir of Qatar. Here was irrefutable proof that Italian football was corrupt, but for years, Southern Italian clubs had warned of "cold winds blowing in from the North," and in the 60s, respected English football writer Brian Glanville had written of the "golden fix"; an unwritten rule that match officials looked favourably on the Milan clubs in . The first blog was shut down by LiveJournal. Crystal Palace 0-0 Manchester United LIVE: Wout Weghorst STARTS as Erik ten Hag's side look to win their Manchester United will NOT rush Jadon Sancho back too quickly after he returned to group training for the Cristiano Ronaldo is struggling to hire a 4,500-a-month chef for his 17m home on the Portuguese Riviera MIKE KEEGAN: Temporary concussion substitutes will NOT be trialled in the Premier League, as Sportsmail Nottingham Forest 'are considering a move for PSG goalkeeper Keylor Navas' after Dean Henderson's injury Mic'd up referees will announce their reasons behind VAR decisions to fans in stadiums and on TV at next West Ham's loan enquiry for Harry Maguire is rejected by Manchester United - with Erik ten Hag adamant his English kit manufacturer Rhino threaten LEGAL ACTION against organisers of the Rugby World Cup as the Lewis Hamilton is not currently part ofSir Jim Ratcliffe's bid to buy Manchester United despite their close 'I don't know, Jeff! He thought that a disaffected lawyer might be responsible. The following month, Banco Portugus de Negcios, a private bank, was nationalized amid allegations of fraud and money laundering, marking the start of the countrys financial crisis. I got shocked, Pinto told me. The second place is occupied by SSC Napoli (Italy). I felt like they were stealing my football club, Pinto told me. England coach Steve McClaren's agent has turned up the heat in football's bung controversy by claiming the majority of middlemen are corrupt. Only a few pink Post-it notes remained on the glass wall next to Nabers desk: Write; Confront; Write; Confront.. Yet the team itself can be just as embarrassing. He excluded personal gossip and salacious material, and focussed on evidence of Benficas attempts to control the Portuguese game. Now you can watch the entire NBA season or your favorite teams on streaming. Imagine supporting a club that bribed its way to a title. The first stories went live at nine on a Friday night. Ronaldo has protested his innocence throughout. But it is not clear whom he means by this, or whether such a group exists. English football 'most corrupt in all Europe'. I immediately explained, this is a young Portuguese kid, Pinto recalled. Each day, I arrived at around 1 P.M., when Pinto had just got out of the shower. There was that 2006 relegation for match fixing, which saw the club stripped of two Serie A titles. In March, 2016, a Web site called Football Leaks: Revealed briefly appeared, naming Rui Pinto as the source and publishing his photograph. The club state that the e-mail containing the Daily Mail's list was not of good enough quality to be broadcast. The doors closed before the man got on. They want to be famous to say my name. On April 14, 2017, Der Spiegel revealed the rape allegation against Ronaldo without naming Mayorga. The name of the character was Rui Pinto, the Hacker. Everything would be like a plastic thing. Pinto has studied the cases of celebrated leakers (his lawyer, William Bourdon, represented Snowden), and I often got the impression that he is trying to expand the definition of what a whistle-blower can be. We can do what we want. (Manchester City denies all allegations that have originated from the Football Leaks data, saying, The attempt to damage the clubs reputation is organized and clear.), Der Spiegel also pursued a story about a long-rumored plan for Europes biggest clubs to leave their national leagues and form a closed, N.F.L.-style competition covering the Continent. I've spoken to people in those industries and greasing palms to make sure you get a contract is part of life. He started skipping classes. Benfica have found themselves in a mess that will surely see them wind up in court. Fifa, football's world governing body, has been engulfed by claims of widespread corruption since Swiss police raided a luxury hotel in Zurich and arrested seven of its top executives. He read about attempts by the German tax authorities to trace money that had been moved offshore. But seriously, banishment from Europe (and, lets dream for a moment, a wholesale retroactive stripping of titles?) YOU. Date:18th January 2023 at 2:56pm . Football after Rui Pinto is better., While Pinto awaits his trial, he is being held at a prison next to police headquarters, in central Lisbon. On Friday, October 11th, Pinto received a second windfall from Caledonian Bankthis time from an account belonging to NetJets, the private-jet-rental companyof 227,332.80. describe it as a form of lending, but many fans believe that it gives investors too much control over a clubs roster and the shape of players careers, by influencing when and where a player might be traded. On an overcast morning in March, I sat in the Gerteraum with Buschmann, his editor, Michael Wulzinger, and Nicola Naber, a researcher, who have been the principal custodians of Pintos data since the spring of 2016. Having fielded some of the all-time greats with the likes of Paulo Maldini and Franco Baresi, the Rossoneri are the tenth most successful European football club having won a total of 34 major . Lucas and Doyen ultimately came to suspect a different reason that Lobuzov had broken off contact. But football and money are inextricably linked going back more than 100 years. Lucas reported the e-mail to the Portuguese police, who had already received a complaint about Football Leaks from Sporting Lisbon. Wulzinger showed me the paperwork for the transfer of Paul Pogba, the midfielder for the World Cup-winning French national team, who moved from Juventus to Manchester United for a hundred and five million euros in the summer of 2016. "We're not just talking about the 50,000 bungs Panorama were alleging. We're talking about millions, but it's gone now. Money scores goals, as the German saying goes. Maybe this word applies to me. Monumental Champions League collapses against Barcelona (2017) and Manchester United (2019) mean you dont even fear or envy the mega-rich club. The warrant made no mention of the Benfica e-mails and the subsequent embarrassment for Portugals biggest soccer club, which Pinto was convinced were the real reasons for his arrest. A senior Benfica official compared the leaks to being under a terrorist attack. Francisco Teixeira da Mota, Pintos Portuguese lawyer, told me that he expected prosecutors to try to add the theft of Benficas e-mails to the case. Get your Serie A news faster with our free app, donwnload it here: JUVE SECOND, MILAN SIXTH - Not only have Porto, Benficas historic rival, made the list, but there are also several Italian clubs appearing as well. But he never followed through. In fact, the club television channel Benfica TV, decided to showcase images of the most corrupt clubs in Europe, an adaption of a story from the English daily newspaper Daily Mail. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Lucas played along. It is one thing to copy themit is another thing to have access to them, a member of his legal team told me. But he would continue to look for secrets. Pinto followed the Portuguese team, captained by Ronaldo, obsessively. He visited her in the hospital every day after school. JUVE SECOND, MILAN SIXTH - Not only have Porto, Benficas historic rival, made the list, but there are also several Italian clubs appearing as well. Plays. If you love European football as much as us then don't forget to subscribe!Follow the Football Daily Twitter: http://bit.ly/YaRzluLike the Football Daily Facebook: http://on.fb.me/10pugRrFollow The Football Daily on Google+: http://bit.ly/10pRPdT Pinto sees most soccer journalists as deferential to the sports powerful broadcasters and sponsors. But its part of the job. At one point, his mind drifted to the various funds and middlemen implicated in the match. Between 2012 and 2016, Man City bought stars like Jack Rodwell (12million), Alvaro Negredo (20million), Eliaquim Mangala (42million), Wilfried Bony (25million) and Patrick Roberts (12million). The site was taken down, but Pinto was shaken. They play in Lisbon (great), they have a massive stadium and theyve had players like Eusebio. While he waited to be extradited to Portugal, where he faces up to ten years in prison, I spent two days talking to him in his apartment in Budapest. There were thousands of PDFs and e-mails, which Pinto had no easy way of searching. In 2011, Portugal accepted a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. There are many different ways to attack a rival club. There was something in him, Buschmann told me. When I visited, the Intella home screen showed some sixteen million e-mails, eighty-five thousand presentations, six hundred and eighty thousand spreadsheets, and a hundred and five thousand contacts in the Football Leaks database. The presentater on Benfica's channel said the list was made by the Daily Mail but they said this list was never published. When the judge ordered that Pinto and his data be handed over to the Portuguese authorities, Bourdon slapped his rollerboard suitcase in frustration. There are hundreds of professional and amateur football teams in Poland; which are organized into the national 1st . Portos victory in the Champions League in 2004, Mourinho had left to manage Chelsea, a London club that the previous year had been bought by the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. with football, Pinto said. .. The programme couldn't prove anything and I'm pretty sure Lord Stevens' inquiry will struggle big time to come up with any proof. The video-assistant referee is a new addition to World Cup rules. Gordon, who was instrumental in securing McClaren's release from Middlesbrough, knows he is risking his reputation with his assertions but feels something has to be done and that it is down to the FA to clean up the game. (The name belongs to a Russian freestyle swimmer who competed in the 2012 Olympics.) This year Ukraine scored 26 of 100 and took 142nd place of 175 in the CPI by Transparency International. Since 2013, under a set of regulations known as Financial Fair Play, European clubs have had to balance their expenditures against their income from soccer-related sources in order to take part in UEFA competitions. Now we have four, Marques said. Our I.T. "A few years ago we even had a David Mellor task force. When I asked Pinto if he had anything to do with the Benfica scandal, he denied it, in Pintoesque fashion: Ive never seen a statement from the police or the Portuguese authorities linking me to this. He worried that his gargantuan data set, of which Der Spiegel possesses only around fourteen per cent, might be lost or destroyed if it were handed over to the Portuguese police. Without further ado, let's quickly take a look at the top 10 worst club owners in the history of the beautiful game. He was then investigated over payments made to then UEFA president Michel Platini, banned for 90 days while the investigation was carried out, and later banned for eight years from all football activities, reduced to six on appeal. If he wanted it, he would probably be the best pupil from the class, but he was not.. Between clubs, its not only that we dont trust each other, a director of a top European club told me. I have often had the feeling in the last months and years that I cant watch the game like before, he told me. They came to see the sport in another way. After the hearing, Pinto sat on a bench in the corridor in handcuffs and gave an impromptu news conference to some Portuguese journalists. consultant. They are suspected of money laundering and tax evasion. But most of the time he was not there. That lifetime ban was eventually overturned on appeal by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but bin Hammam was subsequently issued a second one in 2012 as a result of 'conflicts of interest' that emerged relating to his role as AFC president. A few revelations leaped out. Varela, a precise, watchful man in his early fifties, clicked on a link, which took him to a blog entry that had been created at 5:17 A.M. that day. In mid-December, a spokesperson for Football Leaks, calling himself John, agreed to answer questions e-mailed by the Times. Numerous arrests were made and the Swiss later resigned as the scandal rumbled on, despite winning re-election as president. Pinto watched the game in a pub in Budapest. He had wondered whether they were connected to Football Leaks in some way. More private investigators were hired to find out where the information was coming from. It is maybe something paranoid, he told me. 10/03/2021. It has also revealed likely rule-breaking by Manchester City, the all-conquering champions of the English game, and a plan by Europes leading teams to leave their national leagues and form their own competition. In the following three years, Pinto supplied Der Spiegel with four terabytes of confidential information, more than eighty-eight million documentsa leak almost twice the size of the Panama Papers and sixty times that of Edward Snowdens. Now it is public, Marques said. By futten16. They decided to publish a list of the most corrupt clubs in Europe on the television show called "Pointed. One evening in 2017, Buschmann was in a restaurant, watching Madrids two major clubs compete for a place in the Champions League final. Two days later, he paid a cell-phone bill of fifteen euros. After she died, he resolved to tell no one. You have to be careful, he conceded. It's an interesting and laughable decision, as the Portuguese club is likely pointing the finger at rivals Porto, who are listed as the third most corrupt club. Serie A's Most Expensive Teams. Has your address, insurance, or family relationship changed since you started filling out these forms?, Look, Im bored, youre boredwhy dont you let me go down there and shake things up a bit?, Actually, Chuckles is more of an observational clown, because sometimes the funniest things in life are all around us! They dont want the people to see the truth, he told me. Pinto is five feet six inches tall. Since 1955, the best teams from each country have played against one another, and that has given rise to a dense intermingling of tactics, feuds, and money. She didnt want to give it to me, instead she jerked me off. Welcome to Football Leaks, it read, in Portuguese. RasenBallsport gives you wings, but corporate ownership gives you a soulless football club like RB Leipzig. The hack raised the possibility that Lobuzov was able to read Doyens communications with the police in real time. European teams using Premier League spending as benchmark. When I have a source wheremaybe five or ten or fifty per centhe could be a hacker, it is totally impossible for us to ask him about documents, Buschmann said. These are, without question, the most embarrassing teams to support from Europe's top divisions. Below are the 13 most corrupt countries in the European Union, according to Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. Ronaldo, a five-time winner of the Ballon dOr, for the worlds best player, is a near-mythical figure in Portugal, and Pintos favorite player. He stayed up late, online. Twenty years ago, these two were the most feared teams in the country. 20) West Brom. Conscious that the police were listening in, Lucas floated the idea of Lobuzov coming to work for Doyen as an I.T. I was nearly to death, Buschmann told me. Clubs and companies implicated in the first wave of Spiegel stories had mostly reacted with silence, or with fury that the information had come to light. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. The Football Leaks data showed that, in the summer of 2012, P.S.G. Then he'll be in the shadows again. By NEIL ASHTON. Agnelli, who could face trial over allegations of false accounting at Juventus, was famously one of the architects of the failed attempt to set up the breakaway European Super League in 2021. Middlemen thrive. Raheem Sterling. EBay at that time was an extremely awesome opportunity, Pinto recalled. Its like an extra weight over my shoulders, he told me. Suddenly, he's on radio as the moral guardian of English football. The rivalry between Benfica and F.C. Rangers Football Club. NEW YORK Two former Fox executives went on trial Tuesday, accused of bribing South American soccer officials for TV rights to one of the continent's biggest . 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