Eight players including seven from the under-23 national side will be tried for a huge match-fixing scandal.
HANOI: The future of Vietnam's football will be at stake in November, when eight players including seven from the under-23 national side will be tried for a huge match-fixing scandal.
The case prompted the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) to call on Vietnam to get its house in order and led to the resignation earlier this year of the vice president of the Vietnam Football Federation, Le The Tho.
The trial is now seen as the first major step in the process required to cleanse Vietnamese football of its corruption ills.
"We hope this trial will be a good example and a strong warning to Vietnamese football players, in order to prevent more of these corruption cases that have tarnished their image in the country and outside," said Hoang Chuyen Can, head of the security department of VFF.
The trial will be held in Nghe An province, 300 kilometers south of Hanoi. The precise date is to be announced in the days to come.
The eight defendants include former star striker Pham Van Quyen and squad captain Le Quoc Vuong. They are accused of taking bribes from a betting syndicate to fix the scores of a game against Myanmar during the 23rd Southeast Asian Games in the Philippines, in 2005.
Vietnam beat Myanmar 1-0 after some Vietnamese players appeared to slow down their play. Police also investigated allegations of an attempt to fix a match with Malaysia that Vietnam won 2-1, but could not find enough evidence.
Nguyen Trong Giap, assistant of the national squad Austrian coach, Alfred Riedl, said the national sport would need a long time to recover.
"We lost a generation of talented players and the confidence of fans," he said calling the trial a "huge pain".
Two players are in detention and the other six are under house arrest. They face charges of participating or organizing illegal betting, crimes respectively punishable by seven and 10-year maximum sentences.
State media earlier this year said some could also be banned from playing football for life.
Vietnamese football has been under intense scrutiny for more than a year, with police also investigating fraud allegations implicating dozens of players, referees and coaches for alleged involvement in separate match fixing cases during national competitions.
"Police are working very hard on match-fixing... I'm afraid we are not 100 percent clean so far, but it is much better," coach Alfred Riedl told reporters.
"We have to be happy that the case was finally discovered," he said. "A lot of good could come out of the trial."
Riedl, however, expressed some sympathy for the young players. "They have already destroyed their lives. They are not criminals in my eyes," he said hoping the jail terms would not be too long.
Some leading figures could be missing in the court room.
Earlier this month, police issued a search warrant for Ly Quoc Ky, a mafia gang leader in Ho Chi Minh City presented as one of the masterminds of the scandal.
Ky, 36, is accused of paying a player 500 million dong (31,000 dollars) to persuade his teammates to participate in the scam. He is currently on the run. Experts and police have estimated that over a billion dollars were injected annually on illegal football betting in the country, with 200 million transferred to foreign countries, mainly Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore.
Officials are currently studying ways of legalising football betting, which promises to bring in millions of dollars in annual revenue.
The project is currently awaiting the approval of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, for a possible start in 2007.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}