Thaindian News

London, June 4 (IANS) FIFA vice-president Julio Grondona, who is also president of the Argentine football association, is staring at a huge embarrassment after the world governing body’s match-fixing unit opened a probe into his homeland’s friendly defeat in Nigeria.

This comes three days after Grondona launched a scathing attack on England’s Football Association (FA), who wanted the FIFA congress to postpone elections for Sepp Blatter’s fourth term in office as the FIFA president.

Moments after Grondona’s fiery speech in defence of Blatter in Zurich, a second string Argentina side, coached by Sergio Batista, were beaten 1-4 in Lagos on Wednesday.

The match saw two disputed penalty decisions by Niger referee Ibrahim Chaibou, including one in the 98th minute of the game for a ‘ghost’ handball that saw Boselli score a consolation goal.

The Daily Mirror reported that the penalty saw hundreds of thousands of pounds which had been wagered worldwide on trading exchanges on there being less than five goals in the game suddenly lost to syndicates.

“FIFA can confirm that the match between Nigeria and Argentina is one that we have an active interest in, and forms part of a wider ongoing FIFA investigation. In particular, FIFA will be working closely with colleagues at the FIFA Early Warning System,” the daily quoted a FIFA spokesperson as saying.

An infuriated Grondona told Argentine radio station Radio Mitre: “These matches aren’t for making money, they’re friendly matches that Batista asked for. You can’t mess around like that with the prestige of the national side.”

The 79-year-old Grondon, who has been head of AFA since 1979 and who is also a senior vice-president of football’s world governing body FIFA, was surprised at Batista’s decision to field a largely inexperienced bunch against the Super Eagles.

“It will be different in the future. You can’t play against a team like Nigeria, who fielded their best players, with a team that is not up to scratch,” said Grondona.