Hamburg - While Germany might be reeling in another football bribery scandal, the Canadian author whose book sparked off the scandal has said he was misquoted.
Declan Hill said Monday that he never claimed that Bundesliga matches or World Cup games had been manipulated.
In his book The Fix - Soccer and Organized Crime, launched on Sunday in Germany, Hill said the Bundesliga game between Hanover 96 and Kaiserslautern (5-1) and the second division match between SC Karlsruhe and Siegen (2-0) could have been manipulated. Both games were played in 2005.
Former Karlsruhe player Sean Dundee told German television that he had been approached by someone who offered him between 10,000 euros ($14,700) and 20,000 euros to deliberately miss a penalty.
"I told him I would not do something like that," the South African- born striker said, adding that two other players from his former club had also been approached.
Hill also said that four games of the World Cup 2006 in Germany could have been rigged. "Three of the games had the exact result, the fourth was just out by a single goal."
The World Cup games involved were: Italy v Ghana, England v Ecuador, Ukraine v Italy, as well as Ghana v Brazil.
Hill said in his book about illegal betting in Asia that he had spoken about the match between Kaiserslautern and Hanover with a betting-king.
He said that this person, whom he called Lee Chin, had told him that he had made a phone call in which he was told that the game would be won by Hanover by at least two goals.
"Chin, who said he placed $20,000 on the game, did not, in any way, go into any details how this result would be achieved, whether it was a network of players, and if so, from which team, or whether it was a network of referees," he said.
Hill had earlier accused a former Ghanaian international goalkeeper Abukari Damba, of being a middle man for the betting syndicate in Bangkok that manipulated the game between Brazil and Ghana (3-0) in a second round World Cup game in 2006.
"These accusations are without foundation. I have always been an honourable man. I am just the loser in a dirty game. I have never even been in Bangkok," Damba said, adding that he was going to institute legal action against Hill.
Football's controlling body FIFA on Monday said they did not want to comment press reports, but the organization had earlier instituted an early warning system to be made aware of games with unusually high bets.
