For years, people have been baffled by
the date of birth for Ferenc Puskas.
But now the truth has been
uncovered by Hungarian journalist
Gyorgy Szollosi. For years Puskas
referred to his birthday as having been
April 2, 1927. In fact it was April 1. Also,
his name was not Puskas but Purczeld.
In the mid-1930s many of the
German Swabian minority in Hungary
changed their names to Magyar style.
Ferenc Purczeld senior was one of
those. His wife Margit also decided to
save her son from the embarrassment
of having been born on April Fool’s
Day by insisting the birthday of FerencSon of a gun
Al Khelaifi and PSG in the clear – again
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existent opening gala.
Other complexities arose. These
included Beckenbauer’s pay package
and unexplained links with a betting
company. These issues set the German
taxman in hot pursuit of not only
Beckenbauer but Zwanziger, Schmidt
and Niersbach for what they knew or
did not know about bid revenues.
On March 9, the Swiss Federal
Court opened the fraud trial of
Zwanziger, Schmidt, Niersbach and
Linsi relating to the mysterious loan.
Beckenbauer was not charged
because of his frail health.
However the coronavirus outbreak
left judge Sylvia Frei no option but to
adjourn the trial indefinitely.
Meanwhile, Zwanziger, Niersbach
and Schmidt must still contest tax
evasion charges in Germany over their
questionable bid committee
accounting, while Beckenbauer sits
reclusively at home in Austria with
his reputation in tatters.
Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester
City are continually being linked: mega-
rich, big-spending, trophy-grabbing
toys of soft-power-pursuing Gulf
dynasties. But right now, PSG appear
to be negotiating their way through a
testing PR minefield somewhat more
successfully than City.
Firstly, before coronavirus cut in,
PSG were heading serenely towards
a successful defence of their Ligue 1
title; City, by contrast, were 25 points
adrift of Liverpool in the Premier
League. Secondly, PSG had escaped
the clutches of UEFA’s financial fairplay
police, while City copped for a two-
season ban from Europe. And how
City’s appeal to the Court of Arbitration
for Sport will play out in these insecure
times, is anyone’s guess of course.
One happy positive for PSG was the
decision of the Swiss courts to quash
a bribery charge levelled against
their president, Nasser Al Khelaifi, for
bribery over World Cup TV rights in
his role as head of Qatar’s BeIN Media.
The decision removed nagging
questions about Al Khelaifi’s right to
sit on the UEFA executive committee
as one of two delegates from the
European Club Association, along with
chair Andrea Agnelli.
The case concerned FIFA’s award to
BeIN Media of TV rights to the 2026
and 2030 World Cups for the Middle
East and North Africa region – whichis a region that has seen BeIN
programming undermined by
the Saudi-based BeoutQ pirates.
A key plank in the prosecution case
was that Al Khelaifi had bribed Jerome
Valcke, then FIFA secretary-general,
with the rent-free provision of a luxury
villa in Sardinia. However, a preliminary
court hearing decided no connection
existed between the rights award and
the property deal.
FIFA had withdrawn its own
complaint in January after reaching^
“an amicable agreement” in which Al
Khelaifi agreed to pay FIFA’s legal costs.
Valcke, who continues to challenge
his 12-year FIFA ban in the courts,
remains accused of corruption
over a €1.25million payment from
an unidentified businessman. But
Al Khelaifi, as far as football is
concerned, is now free as a bird.Purczeld-turned-Puskas was April 2.
Fans in Spain would later nickname
him Canoncito (“little cannon”), which
was ironic as the new name his father
had adopted back in the 1930s means
“gunman” or “rifleman”.Impressive...
World Cup opening
ceremony in 2006Skipper...Puskas
(left) leads out
Hungary against
EnglandFree...Nasser
Al Khelaifi