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Free Extra Episode - Journalist Haris Mrkonja Uncovers Huge Scandal In Bosnian National Team
247 Plays4 years ago
In this special episode of The Italian Football Podcast, Nima & Carlo speak to Bosnian journalist Haris Mrkonja from TV N1 who this week broke a huge scandal proving that an agent has made payments to people in the Bosnian FA for his player to be called up and play for the Bosnian National Team.
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Transcript
Introduction and Major Scandal Teaser
00:00:03
Speaker
Cool. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Italian football podcast. I'm Carlo Garganese. I'm joined, as always, by Nima Tawali.
00:00:15
Speaker
And on today's special show, we are not going to be talking so much about Italian football, but it's a huge, huge story which hasn't come out in the English speaking media so far, as far as I can
Revelation of Bosnian Football Scandal
00:00:30
Speaker
see. So we want to reveal it to the world because it's a really important story.
00:00:35
Speaker
And basically, we have a Bosnian journalist on the show who has uncovered one of the biggest football scandals in the history of Bosnian and Balkan football. And it's only going to get bigger in the coming weeks and months. And in a nutshell, a big story came out this last week, which alleges that an agent, a football agent, paid the Bosnian FA for
00:01:04
Speaker
for Bosnia and Herzegovina to pick his player for the national team. And that actually happened earlier this year.
Interview with Haris Mikhonya
00:01:13
Speaker
So, Haris Mikhonya, he's a Bosnian journalist for TVN1 Sarajevo, which is the biggest and most watched Balkan TV news station in the region. He broke this story and he is here to tell us all about it. So, Haris, thank you so much for joining us. How are you doing?
00:01:32
Speaker
Thank you for having me, guys. I'm doing great. It's the end of the week. I'm a little bit tired, but I'll get through. Thank you for having me. Well, thanks again for coming on, Aris. And I can imagine we've been speaking, you and I, about what's been going on. And let's start there. I mean, what exactly is it that you've uncovered? I understand that due to legal reasons, you can't mention certain names. So I won't ask you specifically. So I'll just leave the floor to you to lay out exactly what has happened and what you guys have uncovered.
00:02:02
Speaker
So backstory, Bosnia and Herzegovina as a national team hasn't won a match in 14 matches up until this last Saturday when they beat Kuwait 1-0.
00:02:20
Speaker
That match was actually a match against the Kuwait who's ranked 142nd national team in the world by the FIFA rankings. And they came to Bosnia with the Olympic team, the under 23 team. Bosnia decided to play players that don't usually have the chance to show what they can do in the national team.
00:02:49
Speaker
or the players that have been playing less because it was a friendly. The national team manager, Ivay Lopetev, wanted to see all of the players in action to be able to decide what to do in the match, in the upcoming match with Kazakhstan.
00:03:05
Speaker
So I'm coming to the stadium and usually when Bosnia and Herzegovina played their matches an hour and a half before the match, the stadium is full. There's no seats available. Now for COVID, they have released 6,000 tickets for people to buy with certain limitations. You have to have proof that you've gotten your shots and your vaccines.
00:03:33
Speaker
Uh, and so on and so forth, but I'm coming into the stadium and, uh, 40 minutes before the match, there's literally 50 people in the stadium. And so I take a picture of this and I posted it on, on Twitter because I'm very active on Twitter. And, um, a colleague of mine, Sasha Ibrul, uh, follows up on that and says, uh, makes his own tweet.
00:03:58
Speaker
and says it's sad that Bosnian football has come to this, where we haven't won a match in 14 games. And that it was basically all the fault of the leading people of the Bosnian Federation. So the match starts and it wasn't anything particular, but near halftime,
Public and Social Media Reaction
00:04:22
Speaker
Uh, I was scrolling Twitter and I see this, uh, tweet from asked me to begovich retweeting quote, retweeting, um, Sasha Hebrew saying yes, that, uh, and saying that, uh, all the heads of the, of the Bosnian Federation are basically criminals in hands of football agents. So of course, uh, my, my journalistic like, um, uh, sixth sense,
00:04:49
Speaker
goes off. And of course, I relay the tweet to my colleagues at the at the TV station to make a story out of it. And I disregard the game almost completely and start working on on on this thing. So in no time I get this, I get these, these
00:05:12
Speaker
documents, these transcripts, these screenshots, all of these things where there are proof that some people are doing something murky inside of the Federation. So, of course, I'm not going to publish it immediately because I don't know the sources, I don't know if they're invalid, I don't know if they're true,
00:05:39
Speaker
And I spent the whole next day, which was Sunday, working on this. I disregard the things that I cannot prove. I disregard things that I cannot use. And I'm left with some documents that I actually proved that this football agent has made a down payment to someone inside the Federation.
00:06:06
Speaker
for his player to be called up in the national team. Now for years, we have been hearing about this. There are players that have been called up numerous times, even though they're not playing for their clubs. There are players that haven't been playing in a year and being called up in the national team. And every time that we ask in press conferences,
00:06:36
Speaker
why that is. The various national team coaches say, well, Mohammed Beshic was called because even though he had a nasty injury and we're trying to help him out because of the things that he did for the national team in the past, we want to give him a chance to revive his career and so on and so forth.
00:07:00
Speaker
As time was passing, we saw the journalistic community here, and everybody knows this, that more and more players not playing in their clubs are being called up into the national team. So all the while, we as journalists who follow football and follow Bosnian footballers were conversing amongst ourselves that there were players that actually deserved to be called up
00:07:30
Speaker
because they're playing in good form, they're playing for good clubs, they're playing their asses off. So for years it was a mystery, this thing that some of the national team managers were calling players like this in this manner. So I get these documents, sorry for digressing by the way,
00:07:57
Speaker
So I get these documents and in record time, I try to confirm everything that's written in those things that I think that I can use. And essentially when I did that, I came out with a story on Monday around noon, I think, or closely afternoon.
00:08:20
Speaker
where I laid out the entire thing where I said that an agent was indeed paying the Federation, someone from the Federation to have his player called up in the national team. And all hell breaks loose. That day, I think that there is no Bosnian media that hasn't had that story from N1. And that's basically how
00:08:50
Speaker
Things went right about from the inception of this story up until Monday. So yeah, it's
Backlash and Fake News
00:09:01
Speaker
been a crazy five days since then. I've been verbally abused multiple times online. No physical attacks, thank God. I hope there will be none.
00:09:17
Speaker
Who have you been, sorry to come in, I mean, this is incredible, but who have you been verbally abused by, just by fans or by actual individuals or? I mean, there are fans that, there are friends with the first and last name on their social media that want to tell me in not particularly well-spoken manner that I'm wrong.
00:09:46
Speaker
But there are a lot of like social media accounts that have fake names or or or stuff like that. That's just been created. Just been created to just to just to abuse me. There are there are also there have also been fake screenshots of Asmir Begovich's father, like
00:10:13
Speaker
like a conversation of his father with someone trying to discredit me, trying to discredit N1, trying to discredit the corporation that N1 is part of, and essentially make a case that it is all made up by Asmir Begović and his father. I mean, I've never met Asmir Begović's father.
00:10:42
Speaker
This man, I have him as a friend on Facebook, but I've spoken to him twice once in March of this year. The other time was when this fake conversations came out to see, just to try to confirm if he said anything or if his conversations were hacked in some way. Amazing. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, carry on.
00:11:08
Speaker
Yeah, of course, he said he said no. But these conversations that have originally been posted on Facebook have been taken by actual Bosnian media and and put on as news for crying out loud. So Jesus. So you can imagine the the pressure. You can imagine the the stress that I've been going through and I've been in meetings like every day.
00:11:38
Speaker
to try to explain what was going on, essentially, here in my in my in my media house. I wanted to just I mean, just sorry, just to follow up one last question. What's what's been the reaction from the actual Bosnian Federation from the president? I mean, I think I saw something that they obviously they've denied it. I mean, what have they said to this? Yeah, they haven't actually denied it. The first day when the when the news broke,
Official Statements and Player Reactions
00:12:06
Speaker
The president of the Bosnian Federation, Vytro Zelkovich, has released a statement, and the statement can be found on the official webpage of the Bosnian Federation, where he says, the thing that makes everything suspicious to me is that there are no names. We haven't posted names, by the way, I'm sorry for not having explained this, we haven't posted any names,
00:12:35
Speaker
just because we wanted to protect the source that gave me all of this that gave me all of this material and also for legal reasons but primarily for the source and he says like it's very suspicious to me that they're not naming any names and we're ready to look into this but never in a single word or sentence or anything they said that this story was false so after that
00:13:04
Speaker
four days of nothing from the from the Federation until yesterday when the tech where the technical director and ex player for Bosnian Herzegovina Zvezdan Misimovic came out on Bosnian media and gave an interview. And he said when he was asked point blank if the story was false
00:13:31
Speaker
He just covered himself. He said, I don't know anything about it. So I have a question. Speaking of names, because.
00:13:40
Speaker
Begović mentions names, he names names. He says, correct, and I quote now from his tweet, correct, led by criminals, Viko Misker Petev, a band of agents. Instead of being a football team uniting a country, we've become an eBay page to fill the pockets of criminals. And then he says in Bosnian, Etovan. Well, first of all, who are Viko Misker Petev? Viko is actually Vitor. Vitor is Elko, which is the president of the Bosnian Football Federation.
00:14:09
Speaker
Miska is the director that gave the interview yesterday that I just mentioned. And Ivailo Petev is the national team manager of Bosnia and Herzegovina at this moment. Well, that's, that's, that is very, he's not mincing words here. No, you have to understand that, that Asmir Begović is the, is the, is the, is the, is a player with the
00:14:35
Speaker
six most appearances for the Bosnian national team. And in 2020, something happened between him and people in the Federation where he just decided to go home from national team duty and he never came back.
00:15:01
Speaker
We as journalists never actually understood what went on. There's been many speculations from the stories that he went to England because he wasn't going to be the first choice of then national team coach Dushan Bajic and he didn't want to bother with traveling if he wasn't going to play.
00:15:28
Speaker
Uh, to the stories that the national buzz, the Boston national team had a couple of guys that were actually COVID sick and they weren't doing enough.
00:15:41
Speaker
to protect other players. So he packed his bags, uh, uh, shocked by this unprofessional behavior. He packed his bags and, and, and went home. So nobody really knows what's, what's the truth here. These are just stories. Unconfirmed stories. But yeah, the, the, the matter of fact is that asked me to beg, which never ever came out, uh, for national team duty. And he was never called up. He was never called up.
00:16:08
Speaker
Just just one thing of his tweet Eto van. What does that mean in Bosnian? Just so there you go. There you go. OK. I mean, there there are there is there are other players. I mean, there are Bosnian has world class players. I mean, Edin Jeko is the captain, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, has he been asked about this? Has he in any way commented on this?
00:16:29
Speaker
Well, not that I know of. There are no interviews of Edin Jeko about this topic, even though they've just been here on national team duty. Him and Miralem Pianic, who are two biggest stars in the national team, they didn't want to talk about it. But I want to refer you to an interview that I did with Miralem Pianic in 2020.
00:17:00
Speaker
about 25 minutes long, where I asked him, like, what is going on with the national team? And Miralim had not so pleasant things to say about the leadership of the of the of the Bosnian Federation. From he didn't make direct accusations, but he made everyone know that he wasn't going to stick around forever if things didn't change. And the latest developments, I think,
00:17:30
Speaker
demonstrate that things haven't changed. I've got two follow-up questions. First of all, what do you think will happen from here on in? Will anything happen of this? I don't know what the culture is in your nation to when there is scandals like this. In some countries, there would be a government inquiry into the allegation. There would be some kind of inquiry into what's going on, investigation, the police or whoever.
00:17:59
Speaker
But in other countries, it will obviously be nothing will happen. I mean, what do you expect to happen from here?
Consequences and Risks of Forgetting the Scandal
00:18:05
Speaker
Well, if this was 2003, I think that a lot a lot would happen. In 2003, I mentioned there was a prior scandal where some money was being stolen, let's say. And there have been some people that have also ended up in jail for that.
00:18:28
Speaker
And as time has passed, we've grown as a footballing nation. We've gone to the World Cup in Brazil in 2014, which is to this day the only big stage competition that we've actually made.
00:18:47
Speaker
And then after 2014, things started going bad again. If you look our ranking, Bosnia's ranking from that point until 2021, we've been sinking. And I think that's not a coincidence. To come back to your question,
00:19:08
Speaker
I don't think much is going to happen. That's my worst fear. My worst fear actually is that this story is going to be forgotten in five days and nothing will happen. Nobody will talk about this anymore. We, for the first time since 2003, have physical proof that something bad is going on in the Football Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
00:19:30
Speaker
I've had reactions from ex-players from the national team of Bosnia and Herzegovina that have been calling up for FIFA in UEFA to step up with an inquiry or some kind of, I don't know, investigation or something like that. But that's what I was going to ask about. So you're calling on Cheferin or actually UEFA to look into this? Is that what you're calling? Is that what you'd want to happen?
00:19:55
Speaker
I would want to see this through, yes, because I know that the information is good. The only thing I don't know is who took the money and how much money is it? Because these are two questions that are crucial in this case, I think.
00:20:15
Speaker
But you can prove that there has been an exchange of money between individuals directed to a player and an agent of the national
Motives Behind Agent Payments
00:20:24
Speaker
team. Just to be clear, I have I have screenshots of an agent bragging about making a down payment for his player. Yeah. OK.
00:20:35
Speaker
and what is that my final question is what what is the motivation i mean obviously every case could be different but what do you think is the motivation in this case for the agent paying for their player to get cool up is it to increase their value so they can get a transfer um i mean what do you think or i mean what generally
00:20:54
Speaker
you said because there is a suspicion this has happened happened maybe more than just on one occasion yeah yeah yeah and what is the motivation what is the possible motivations do you think yeah exactly what you said to make player transfers more expensive and get out more from player contracts once they make a transfer that that has to be the only the only motivation
00:21:19
Speaker
And looking in the recent past, we have had situations where relatively young players were called up to the national team. And they have been called up once or twice or three times. They make a transfer to another club or another league, a bigger league. And after that, the national team manager stops calling them, even though
00:21:47
Speaker
even though they play better in those leagues and they still play at a higher level, but they're not called up anymore. And I don't understand the logic behind it. If not, if not, that something is, is, is fishy and is wrong here. Oh, it's, it's a pattern that is definitely strange. Um, that, that warrants investigation. And I mean, again, to, to build on what Carlos said, I mean, you said in 2003, there was an investigation in FIFA.
Call for UEFA and FIFA Investigation
00:22:14
Speaker
Was it FIFA or UEFA suspended Bosnia? Um,
00:22:18
Speaker
I mean, have you heard anything from UEFA or FIFA since this story broke? Do you know that they're even aware of this story? Actually, I was waiting for some kind of statement from the Bosnian Federation before I contact someone from FIFA or UEFA. I have had situations where I contacted FIFA about stuff that was going on in the Bosnian Football Federation.
00:22:48
Speaker
and not getting an answer from UEFA but getting answers to my questions from the Bosnian Federation which means that they have been communicating between themselves and I don't really trust anyone at the moment. I'm getting really paranoid at this point. We can understand that and let me just before we finish, I just want to take this moment to say you know it's really
00:23:15
Speaker
brave what you've done to have because we complain on this podcast all the time. In fact, soon we're going to do a podcast soon about corporate media versus independent media and how in the corporate media, often this kind of investigative journalism, if you want to call that, where you're holding people in power to account.
00:23:37
Speaker
often doesn't happen. It doesn't happen because for legal reasons, you don't want to get sued. It doesn't happen because journalists want access to whatever they're doing in the state of football. They want access with clubs. They want access with the national team. They don't want their careers ruined. It's good to see a real journalist and a real story of journalism.
00:24:00
Speaker
Yeah, well, this is journalism. This is journalism. This is what journalism is, uncovering, you know, reporting, source reporting, factual reporting, reporting what you can stand by and protecting your sources and gradually moving forward. This is this is what journalism is. And I can't imagine the pressure you've been under. And thank you so much for taking the time out to come on our part and explain this.
00:24:24
Speaker
No problem. No problem. I apologize if I was if I was a little bit long with my Explaining everything that was going on
00:24:33
Speaker
But I thought that it was important to tell every single aspect of this story because everything is connected and everything is pretty complicated to explain to someone that doesn't know actually the situation here in Basel. I think that's important, like you said, to contextualize it. But one final question.
00:24:55
Speaker
Clearly, this is a crime. I mean, what you've uncovered sounds very much like a crime. Have you reported this to the police? Have the police been in contact with you?
Lack of Police Inquiry and Commitment to Truth
00:25:05
Speaker
No, no one contacted me, which is a strange thing. Very strange. I've been in contact with colleagues that have uncovered the scandal in 2003.
00:25:17
Speaker
And they had in interviews that we did after the scandal a few days ago, they said that the people from the Bosnian Football Federation are very well connected in some of these areas of police and stuff. So immediately there, I thought that nothing much is going to happen.
00:25:46
Speaker
this is going to eventually blow over when I tire, when I don't have the stamina to follow this anymore because it is really stressful and I'm not someone that can do this for six months or a year or two years. So let's just see what happens. I thought that
00:26:09
Speaker
I would love if something big happened because the only thing I really want is a clean national team where only the best players are called up. And because apart from being a journalist, I'm also a fan of the Bosnia national team. So it is a personal insult as well that I root for these people and they are buying
00:26:39
Speaker
bottom spots on the national team. So I feel betrayed in some way, you know. Absolutely. Absolutely. We hope that something is done. UEFA does something. We hope Sheffield does something rather than spending his time... Rubbing shoulders with the knifey. Oh yeah, OK. Spending all his interviews complaining about Anieli because he hurt his friendship. So let's see him actually do something good for once. So hopefully he will get involved.
00:27:09
Speaker
Thank you so much for coming on, Aris, and I hope that your Milan wins for you this weekend. Yeah, I was just about to say I would be I would be even better as a journalist than as a person if I was in Perista, right? Exactly. Then you'd be an honest person.
00:27:35
Speaker
Well, what we need is we need the same inter-Easty from 2006 to hack the phones. That's what we need. We need to hack the phones of the Bosnian Federation. That way we'll get all the stuff out. Yeah, well then you've got Modji to use his Swiss SIM cards and then everything falls apart, don't we? Yeah, right. We need Modji. We need Modji. Absolutely, absolutely.
00:27:58
Speaker
Thank you so much, Harry. Just a shout out of where we can follow, Harry. Yes, yes. Yeah, you can follow me. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm on Facebook also, but I use it more for private stuff. That's Harry Smirconia and one all together like on Twitter, and that's where I'm most active. I don't have an Instagram account. I don't have much of the social media platforms that
00:28:24
Speaker
that a lot of these people and young people have. So Twitter will be fine. We'll be tagging you in the post when we put this out. Thank you so much for coming on, Aris. This means a lot. And we'd love to have you on once you have an update and keep up the great work. This is important. This is journalism. This is important. This is why we do journalism. It's not about taglines and slogans on social media. This is journalism. So keep doing what you're doing. You guys have done an amazing job here.
00:28:52
Speaker
Thank you, guys. Thank you very much. Thank you. And everyone else will be back next week for a review episode. Until then, take care. Ciao ciao.