A dirty ref belongs behind bars.

last updated 8 January 2015

Germany

Wolfgang Roth

“Germany’s justice system has prevailed,” said Wolfgang Roth in Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung. Referee Robert Hoyzer thought he’d get a suspended sentence when he cooperated fully with prosecutors and confessed to fixing five games in the Bundesliga, our country’s professional soccer league. Hoyzer even gave up the names of the men he was working for, Croatian mafiosi who ran a Berlin betting ring. But the judge tossed out the prosecutors’ plea bargain and sentenced Hoyzer to two and a half years of hard time. It’s a pretty tough sentence for someone whose fraud netted him less than $80,000. Yet it is “eminently fair.” The damage Hoyzer did to German soccer is incalculable. “In this country, referees had a reputation of pitiless honesty.” That’s no longer true, and for years to come, a questionable penalty call will set tongues wagging and put the ref under tacit suspicion. But the real reason Hoyzer had to go to jail is that he’s brought disgrace to a national treasure. In Germany, “there’s nothing in life more important than soccer.”