Vietnam set back years by scandal, says top official
HANOI - Vietnam's football development has been set back years by the match-fixing scandal which landed two players in jail this week, the sport's chief was quoted as saying Saturday.
"We have lost a young generation which would have contributed to Vietnamese football in the long term, and it is very painful," Nguyen Trong Hy, chairman of the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF), told the Tuoi Tre daily.
On Friday the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court jailed two defendants and handed suspended prison terms to six players of the national under-23 side who accepted bribes to rig a 2005 international match against Myanmar.
Popular striker Pham Van Quyen, 22, and his team-mates spent several months in jail after the South East Asian Games match in Manila.
They have been off the field since, and their sporting future remains unclear, with VFF disciplinary hearings expected soon.
"The trial is over, but it has left many lessons and questions for the sport in Vietnam," the An Ninh Thu Do (Hanoi Security) newspaper commented Saturday.
"It was a lesson about bad management by sports officials who cared only about professional success but not the moral education of the players."
VFF deputy general secretary Nguyen Huu Bang said the scandal had weakened the national team, which lost 0-2 against Thailand in the first leg of their Asean championships semi-final on the eve of the trial.
"If these players had been on the national team for the match against Thailand, the result could have been different," Bang was quoted as telling the Saigon Giai Phong (Liberated Saigon) newspaper.
VFF chairman Hy was quoted as saying: "I watched this trial closely over the past two days. We saw it as a painful lesson for the VFF."
He said the federation's disciplinary section will now consider the cases of the players, who accepted 1,250 dollars each in return for arranging a narrow 1-0 win against underdogs Myanmar on behalf of a betting syndicate.
"Immediately after the trial, the VFF's disciplinary section will consider other strict measures against them, so that Vietnamese football will become cleaner," Hy was quoted as saying by the Tuoi Tre (Youth Daily) newspaper.
In the high-profile trial, which captivated the football-obsessed nation, vice captain Le Quoc Vuong was Friday jailed for six years and fined 25,600 dollars on charges of gambling and organising gambling.
Truong Tan Hai, a former Saigon Port club player, was jailed for three years for acting as the middleman between the team in the Philippines and the betting syndicate's kingpin, Ly Quoc Ky, who remains at large.
Agence France Presse - January 27, 2007.
Vietnam jails footballers for fix
Two former Vietnamese footballers have been given jail sentences for fixing an international match.
Six other players - including a popular striker - were given suspended prison sentences.
The eight were found guilty of taking bribes to ensure they beat underdogs Burma by no more than 1-0 at the South East Asian Games in December 2005.
The scandal is one of several involving gambling and bribery to have hit Vietnamese football in recent times.
The national team's vice-captain, Le Quoc Vuong, was jailed for six years for organising the scam and bribing his fellow players.
A former Saigon Port club player, Truong Tan Hai, was given a three year sentence for acting as a middleman between the team and a local betting syndicate.
The other six players - including one of the country's best known players, striker Pham Van Quyen - were given suspended sentences of up to two-and-a-half years.
'Murky world'
The team were strong favourites to beat Burma in the under-23 match at the games in the Philippines.
"The defendants used their football careers to organise gambling for money," Judge Le Van Ba told the court in Ho Chi Minh City.
Hundreds of reporters, relatives and fans descended on the court for the two-day trial.
The case has shone a light into the murky world of organised betting rings in Vietnam, the BBC's Bill Hayton in Hanoi says.
Gambling is widespread in Vietnam, despite being banned, and millions of dollars often change hands during football matches.
There have been a series of corruption scandals in the domestic league.
More than 30 players and referees are currently being investigated as part of the country's "clean hands campaign", our correspondent says.
Vietnamese football officials have said they hope this case will serve as a warning to others.
"We need to have strong measures to cleanse our soccer, particularly the vices of match-fixing and gambling," Vu Quang Vinh, vice president of the Vietnam Football Federation, said earlier this week.
BBC News - January 27, 2007.
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