Finally FIFA intervened and explained to the team from Togo that they will play … or else … after the Togolese Football bosses proved to be completely incapable of resolving this embarrassing dispute.

The coach Otto Pfister appears to be sympathetic to the players’ grievances:

“I understand the players, they are being promised things but then nothing happens,” he told reporters at the hotel before the team left for the airport.

Pfister said the federation had yet to pay the players an agreed 50,000 euros ($62,500 dollars) bonus for reaching the finals.

Each team at the World Cup is paid one million Swiss francs (642,000 euros) by FIFA who also pay the travel cost of 45 people per squad.
Togo players end cup boycott fears, CNN, June 18, 2006

That’s probably extra hard to swallow, when all these FTF so-called-officials come to Germany and expect to live large on FIFA expenses.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 18th, 2006 at 8:20 pm and is filed under Palmwine, worldcup2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.