DPA/Berlin/Valletta


German football federation (DFB) interim president Reinhard Rauball doesn’t expect a quick end of the crisis around the 2006 World Cup while Bayern Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge has voiced support for beleaguered Franz Beckenbauer.
Rauball told yesterday’s Bild paper that “the DFB is in a very problematic situation” and that “considerably more time than expected will be needed” to overcome the situation.
Rauball is acting DFB co-president with Rainer Koch after president Wolfgang Niersbach resigned on Monday as he he took responsibility in the affair surrounding a payment made by Germany’s 2006 World Cup organizing committee of 6.7 million euros (7.4 million dollars) to FIFA.
Prosecuting authorities have launched a tax evasion investigation into Niersbach, former DFB president Theo Zwanziger and former DFB secretary general Horst R Schmidt around the payment made in 2005.
It has since emerged that Beckenbauer that the German 2006 World Cup bid and organizing committee chief Beckenbauer signed an agreement drawn up with disgraced former FIFA executive committee member Jack Warner four days before the World Cup vote in 2000 by the FIFA executive committee.
Warner signed the deal on behalf of the North America, Central America and the Caribbean (CONCACAF) confederation which was to earn “various services,” Koch and Rauball said on Tuesday, but that there were “no direct cash services.”
Warner, former CONCACAF president and a former FIFA vice president, was recently been banned for life by football’s world governing body.
Meanwhile news reports in Malta said that police searched the offices of the nation’s football body after British newspaper The Mail on Sunday reported that Beckenbauer had done a TV deal with then Maltese federation chief and FIFA executive Joe Mifsud.
“The Malta Football Association (MFA) is fully collaborating with the authorities looking into this scandal, in line with our mission to eradicate corruption from football,” FA general secretary Bjorn Vassallo told the Times of Malta.
German football icon Beckenbauer, 70, is yet to comment on the latest accusations although he has been urged by DFB top officials to break his silence.
Rummenigge, meanwhile, dismissed suggestions that Munich agreed to play friendlies in Malta, Thailand and Tunisia in unfavourable financial conditions, insisting that the usual standard fees were paid for the games in the countries of World Cup voting FIFA executives.
Rummenigge also came to the support the fomer Munich player, coach and president Beckenbauer.
“You must support a friend in difficult times. I understand that the DFB has a big interest to clear up this issue. But I would wish for a more sensitive treatment of the person Franz Beckenbauer because I believe that the DFB owes this person quite a lot,” Rummenigge said.
He referred to “several World Cups which were won or hosted because of Franz Beckenbauer.”


Figueredo ready for extradition to Uruguay

Former FIFA vice-president Eugenio Figueredo has agreed to be extradited from Switzerland to his home country of Uruguay, where he faces corruption charges, the Swiss justice ministry said yesterday. But the extradition could be challenged by the United States, which indicted Figueredo in May as part of its massive probe into decades of graft at the top of world football.  
The Swiss justice ministry (FOJ) has approved Figueredo’s extradition to both the United States and Uruguay.  
“It will be for the US authorities to state whether or not they agree to Uruguay being given priority. If the US authorities do not agree, the issue will be decided by the FOJ,” a statement from FOJ spokesman Folco Galli said.  
Figueredo, 83 and a former vice-president of the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL), has been charged by the US justice department with using his influence to solicit millions of dollars worth of bribes from sports marketing firms.  
He was among the seven FIFA officials arrested in May at a luxury hotel in Zurich by Swiss authorities acting on the US indictment, arrests that kicked off an unprecedented storm with world football’s governing body.   
While Figueredo was detained in Switzerland, Uruguayan authorities launched a separate investigation and have since charged him with abusing his office.
Figueredo continues to fight against extradition to the United States.