Croatia’s soccer superstar, the former boss ... and a sport dogged by scandal

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Corruption allegations swirling round the country’s football scene mirror a wider malaise

From his hideaway in Bosnia-Herzegovina, to where he dramatically fled on the eve of his conviction for fraud three years ago, Zdravko Mamić, once the most powerful figure in Croatian football, turned to his Facebook account last Thursday to rub salt in some wounds.

“Netflix: let Narcos go, come here,” he wrote in reference to the hit TV show about the wholesale corruption of Mexico and Colombia by narcotic gangs. “For the last weeks and months I have been quietly working on judicial reform, and today you can see another one in a series of results of what we started together.”

Continue reading...

from Football | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/28/croatias-soccer-superstar-the-former-boss-and-a-sport-dogged-by-scandal

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