In August 2004, Hamburg travelled to Paderborn in the first round of the German Cup.
After 30 minutes, as expected, the Bundesliga side
were two goals up against their Regionalliga opponents and heading for the next round.
They wouldn’t get there. Paderborn would score four goals without reply
and win a game that would remain notorious, while also forming the basis
for one of the biggest scandals German football has ever known.
On 35 minutes, Paderborn were thrown a lifeline. An attacking free-kick was played into the box
and, under no real challenge, a Paderborn player collapsed to the floor. There were no
appeals for a penalty, but referee Robert Hoyzer immediately pointed to the spot.
It was converted and on the walk back to the halfway line, baffled Hamburg players
could be seen protesting with Hoyzer. Then, before the game could restart,
he flashed a red card at Belgian forward Emile Mpenza.
So far so strange. Paderborn immediately capitalised on their one-man advantage, equalising
with a fine header before half-time, before taking the lead after a catastrophe in the visiting
defence after the break. With eight minutes remaining, the game was settled. Alexander Lobe
fell after a 50-50 with Bastian Reinhardt and, again, Hoyzer didn’t hesitate in giving a penalty.
If anything, the second decision was softer than the first.
The result was the same though: Guido Spork scored to seal a 4-2 win.
But who was this referee? Who was Robert Hoyzer?
At the time that he refereed the Paderborn-HSV game,
he was just 24 and an up and coming official who had risen to take charge of 2.Bundesliga and Pokal
games. He was from Berlin and, unbeknownst to those within the game, in his free time,
had been drawn to the bright lights of a local sports bar, the Café King.
And Hoyzer would later reflect on what it was about the bar and its patrons that seduced him.
“There are always very expensive cars parked outside the café,"
he said. "I must admit that really impressed me.
This way of life became something I really wanted: having a lot by doing very little.
Back in 2004, referees at Hoyzer’s level of the game were earning – roughly - €3,000 per match and
the more time he spent at the café, the closer he became to its owners, a trio of Croatian brothers
who were part of a sports betting syndicate. And the extent of Hoyser’s involvement
would become clear in the months following the Paderborn-HSV game.
While the outside world assumed it to be just another case of bad refereeing,
Hoyzer’s decisions that day had two unseen consequences. The first, was that several
referees who had seen his performance voiced their concerns to the German Football Association,
the DFB. The second was that after an online betting company reported
irregular betting patterns in the game, a criminal investigation began.
Hoyzer would be arrested in February of 2005 and would immediately co-operate with both prosecutors
and the DFB, and that’s when the extent of the scandal quickly began to reveal itself.
His evidence would lead to the questioning of more than 20 other people, 14 players and cover
a range of 13 different games in 2004 alone, 11 of which were refereed by Hoyzer himself.
In two others games, he implicated another
referee – Dominik Marks – testifying that he received money to affect their outcome.
Marks pled not guilty to the charges, but would eventually be handed a suspended prison sentence.
Hoyzer would also reveal that he attempted to recruit two more referees.
One would be banned for failing to report the approach, another for accepting a €300 bribe.
But Hoyzer’s revelations would focus on his own descent into match-fixing and how, at the
Café King in Berlin, he had fallen in with the gambling syndicate, led by Croatian Ante Sapina
and his two brothers, Milan and Filip. At trial, the prosecution presented Ante Sapina
as a compulsive gambler, who bet heavily on football, and who, according to his indictment,
had won over €500,000 as a result of Paderborn’s victory over HSV alone.
Hoyzer admitted to receiving €20,000 for fixing that game
and, in total, across eight months’ of games in 2004,
received in the region of €67,000 in total, in addition to a new flat-screen television.
There was a further complication. At the time the scandal was unravelling,
Germany was preparing to host the 2006 World Cup. There had long been the naïve,
even pious assumption that the country’s officials were above the kind of offences
that Hoyzer was now admitting to. Fans and certain sections of the media were aghast.
The World Cup, according to an editorial published by Berliner Zeitung:
“…should act as a friendly host to the world and put across the message to the
entire globe that the Football Republic of Germany is courageous and good."
It demanded a swift response. Fortunately, Hoyzer’s willingness to talk expedited the
process. The DFB ordered the replaying of a match between Ahlen and Wacker Burghuasen,
in which he admitted giving a penalty after being paid to influence the result.
And, while the Paderborn-Hamburg wasn’t replayed, HSV were awarded significant
compensation by the DFB and granted a Germany international at their Volksparkstadion.
The legal reaction was more decisive. Prosecutors announced in February 2005
that nearly €2.5m had been seized from the Sapina brothers’ bank accounts and property
and all three brothers would be charged, facing trial at the end of the year – coincidentally,
just before the group stage draw for the World Cup was about to take place.
Ante Sapina was sentence to 35 months in prison. His brother Milan was given
a 16-month suspended sentence. And Filip, the other brother, 12 months suspended.
Robert Hoyzer, who admitted to fixing four games and was charged with 11 separate offences,
was found guilty on six counts of being an accessory to fraud and sentenced to 2 years
and five months in prison, while also receiving a lifetime ban from football.