Report: Eight Premier League Managers Have Taken Transfer Bribes

EXCLUSIVE INVESTIGATION: English manager was sacked by his club after being caught with "fingers in the till" https://t.co/NQALVrPFRk
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) September 27, 2016

After exposing the avarice of Sam Allardyce on Monday (which resulted in Allardyce losing his job as England manager less than 24 hours later), the Telegraph's investigation into corruption in the Premier League has continued today with a story based on undercover reporting and interviews with agents working in and around English soccer. Speaking to Italian agent Pino Pagliara and his business partner Dax Price, as well as former Manchester United player turned agent Scott McGarvey, the paper built the case that managers across the league were taking bribes, which for some quaintly British reason are called "bungs." Honestly, the word "bung" appears a whole lot in the thing.

The Telegraph used the same sting operation on the agents as they did Allardyce: a group of reporters posed as "Far East" businesspeople to meet with the agents at restaurants and get them chatting about everything they knew. Obviously, these agents have an interest in talking themselves up to prospective business partners, and much of what they have to say is not unlike Charlie Sly boasting about all the athletes to whom he provided PEDs, and just as unverifiable.

Pagliara—who is unlicensed and served a five-year suspension for match-fixing in 2005—provided the lion's share of the Telegraph's information about the "greed of general managers" in the player transfer market:

Asked if he meant he paid people in England, he replied, "Here it's even worse… I thought the Italians were corrupt." Giving examples, he said of one manager: "We know him very, very well. We do a transfer to [named club], [X] has winked at us and said yeah, I want the player. Is there a little coffee for me, Pino? Yeah, that's what he will say. "Yeah, course there is. I'll negotiate that coffee as well."

He added that the manager "will probably tell me, 'OK I've got this guy who I work with a lot, he can put an invoice for consultancy, right, and he will do that. Nobody is stupid these days, they understand the importance of covering their tracks."

"We will not make any payments directly to him. There'll be a consultancy agreement with somebody who he trusts enough to let them do that and then he gets it back, that's how it works."

He said he could ruin the reputation of one former manager with what he knew about him, "because he's very bent… I've got bank accounts of his, I've paid money to him, yeah course I did."

Pagliara similarly boasted about the number of Swiss bank accounts he's opened in order to facilitate these deals.

The Telegraph said it will be providing transcripts of all discussions with Pagliara, Price, and McGarvey to the Football Association, as well as the police, presumably with the teams and managers names not redacted.

[Telegraph]