Fifa crisis: Sepp Blatter's old claims reappear to taint the ‘Soccer Dream’

The 2006 World Cup put WWII and all the negative associations firmly behind Germany on the global stage once and for all

Sepp Blatter with Franz Beckenbauer right, July 2000 handing over a copy of the World Cup trophy (Euler Michel)

In German post-war sporting history, there is probably nothing more sacrosanct than the 2006 World Cup. The summer “Soccer Dream” of 2006 put World War II and all the negative associations firmly behind Germany on the global stage once and for all.

That does much to explain why the country chose to ignore allegations that bribery played a role in the country’s hosting of the event for so long.

The charge appears to have come first from the now discredited Fifa boss Sepp Blatter. Three years ago he hinted in an interview with the Swiss paper Blick that the voting in 2000 for the 2006 event was altered by bribery. “Someone left the room at the last moment,” resulting in Germany pulling ahead of its closest rival, South Africa, he told the paper.

Denying the allegation outright, German football officials reacted with fury to the claim. Franz Beckenbauer, the éminence grise of German football and the man now at the centre of the slush fund allegations, said he was “unable to comprehend” Blatter’s “insinuations”.

But in December 2010, former Fifa functionary Guido Tognoni said openly in an interview with German television that the vote to host 2006 in Germany had been “organised”.

Two months later Tognoni said the German government had lifted a weapons embargo against Saudi Arabia to win the vote of a Saudi delegate. And just before the Fifa vote, the German government’s security council approved the delivery of 1,200 anti-tank grenade launchers to the Saudis in what is alleged to have been an attempt to buy the vote of the Saudi Fifa executive member Abdullah Khalid al-Dabal.

Otto Schily, the German Interior Minister at the time, said he categorically “ruled out” any suggestion of corruption, as have all the individuals facing allegations against them.