2024-04-28 01:33:33
He belongs to the biggest coaching legends of European football, he spent over forty years on the bench of Auxerre and even led it to the French title. Now the famous coach Guy Roux spoke in an interview with Le Figaro about the matches that have been eating him up for almost twenty years. Suspicious UEFA Cup quarter-final against CSKA Moscow in the 2004/2005 season.
“We were robbed by Russian CSKA Moscow in the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup. The referee was bought,” the now 85-year-old Roux stated bluntly for a French daily.
Auxerre lost the first duel in April 2005 in the Russian capital 0:4. But interesting things happened in the second encounter as well. “I’ll tell you a revenge story that could land us in jail,” Roux said.
“After the first match, I was suspicious, so I asked a guy from our club to go and search the referees’ bags during the second leg,” recounted the legendary coach.
“He comes back to me, all pale, and says, ‘There’s a beautiful watch with rubies,'” Roux revealed.
The match was decided by four German referees headed by the well-known Wolfgang Stark.
“I had ten minutes to make the right decision. Six months before this match I decided to quit Auxerre, nobody knew it yet. If I call the police and report it to the authorities, they will be investigated and I will have the four German referees fired. But I will forever be the culprit of this scandal and not a man who completed 894 league games in the French league and pushed Auxerre into Europe,” Roux explained what was going through his mind.
He kept the information about the watch to himself. “I didn’t choose the right solution. I didn’t say anything,” he regrets to this day.
In the provincial Auxerre, which he took over in 1961 in the fourth division and took it to a historic triumph in the French league in 1996, he really finished after the 2004/2005 season.
Although the club won the rematch with CSKA 2:0, it was eliminated from the competition. The Russians, on the other hand, went all the way to the trophy, which they won after a 3:1 final victory over Sporting Lisbon.
Referee Stark, despite a number of controversial performances, whistled at the 2010 World Championship and at the Euros two years later.
In 2013, he refereed a league match between Sparta and Plzeň (1:0), thus becoming the first foreign referee to officiate a match in the highest Czech competition.