On February 22, 1984, searches at the Standard revealed the Pot-aux-roses. Accounts seized, slush fund discovered, confessions of the President and the Coach, the earthquake shook the Liège region and all Belgian football.
“I remember, I took my car to go eat with the group between two training sessions. I put on the radio and heard”Scandal at Standard de Liège, a case of corruption…”. We were all amazed, even the 8 who knew, because they had not imagined for a single moment that the Management would have left the slightest trace of this scheme. In the days that followed, we were to be interviewed by the investigators. We were wondering what might happen to us? The pressure from the media and public opinion was enormous. Discovering your photo on the front page of the tabloid press is very heavy. And we were writing history, because people were discovering the black money of football“.
“The management of the Standard exerted strong pressure on us to confess. She was convinced that things would settle down easily if we all gave the same version: we had paid our victory bonuses so that there were no injuries at the end of the meeting. There had even been talk of saying that the idea only came following the match, as a thank you for the absence of injury“.
-“During the interrogations and then the weeks that followed, there was a lot of solidarity between us, we pulled together to hold on. I think regarding it sometimes“.
-“With the convictions and suspensions, we lost money, contracts, and selections with our national teams”. For example, with the Red Devils, Gerets, Vandersmissen, Plessers, Daerden, Meeuws and Preud’homme were deprived of Euro 84 in France“.
-“Standard immediately paid dearly for its fault. He played (and lost) the Belgian Cup final once morest Ghent with a decimated team. And in the following years, those like me who hadn’t been able to leave the club found themselves in a decapitated team, and in a club stigmatized, humiliated, and whose future was in jeopardy. Those 2-3 years were very hard for us“.
-“I am one of those who had to leave. And I regretted it, because I was very attached to Standard, I liked it a lot: the fantastic public, the level of play, the proximity to my home, the reputation of the club… I lost all that , while I still saw myself there 4 or 5 years“.
