David Beckham's Purported Prostitute and the Top 30 Scandals in World Football

Football is more than just a game. Many people say that.

In the history of football, we will not just remember great teams and great players. We will also remember a lot of big scandals that occurred in the football world. 

Scandal can be made by a great football player who cheated his wife or a big club who payed referees in order to gain the result they wanted.

I am bringing you a big list of those scandals.

This is a big list of top 30 scandals.

I hope you will enjoy!

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The blue-booted Libyan international, former vice-chairman of the Libyan FA and son of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was banned for three months in January after testing positive for nandrolone in October.

He claimed a doctor had given it to him to combat back pain.

After serving his ban, he made his Serie A debut for Perugia as a substitute in a vital end-of-season game last May against Juventus

It’s always difficult for the little clubs in Holland. Hence NAC Breda’s Hungarian star Tamas Peto tested positive after a 1-0 win at Eindhoven in February.

He denied everything, citing “hormone changes caused by various surgeries”.

He was banned for 20 games, 10 suspended, although it didn’t really count, as he was injured.

They always were liberal about drugs, the Dutch.

Cocaine is not for the easily led, nor does it lead to increased performance at the bookies.

Alas, poor Paul Merson, addicted to cocaine and gambling, not to mention drink.

He confessed all in a tearful press conference in November 1994. “For me, cocaine was a serious addiction and not something I did occasionally.”

He got help from his club, spent six weeks in compulsory drug rehabilitation, and avoided a ban.

The then-Portsmouth manager was eventually outed as the Premier League manager who had been caught visiting an out-of-town Thai brothel, near Southampton, by a tabloid investigation.

A ban on naming the manager involved was lifted after a fun game of Guess Who.

Talk about an England strike partnership that’s paid to score.

Wazza can pair up with Peter Crouch, whose own dalliance with a hooker was outed by the News of the World last month.

The 6 ft., 7 in. striker was alleged to have paid £800 for a night with prostitute Monica Mint during a mate’s stag weekend in Madrid.

Israel were on the verge of qualifying for Euro 2000, but a humiliating 8-0 aggregate playoff defeat to Denmark sparked an investigation.

The inquiry found several players invited prostitutes to their room the night before the 5-0 thrashing in Tel Aviv.

Condoms were found by hotel staff and four unnamed players later received bans.

Oh, deja vu.

Wazza was also caught out paying £140 for sex with hooker Charlotte Glover in December 2002.

To avoid a lengthy court battle with Charlotte over the truth of the claims, Rooney kindly left her a signed note which read: “To Charlotte, I shagged u on 28 Dec. Loads of Love. Wayne Rooney.”

After Brazilian Liedson had given Sporting Lisbon a 1-0 win over Malmo in the first round of last season’s UEFA Cup, the Swedish drug squad found used syringes in many of the Portuguese team’s hotel rooms.

Swedish FA chief Lars-Ake Lagrell dismissed as “laughable” Lisbon claims that one player had been injected with “multi-vitamins”, but the investigation had to be dropped in the end, as nothing was found that contravened Swedish laws.

The speedy winger was at the peak of his powers when he travelled to Argentina for the 1978 World Cup as part of the Scotland team.

He was also a hay fever sufferer, and after a farcical 3-1 defeat against Peru, he was tested and found to have taken Fencamfamin (a sympathomimetic amine with structural and biochemical similarities to amphetamine and cocaine, of course).

He protested his innocence, citing hay fever potions and a mysterious “flu-tonic”, and Scotland’s World Cup campaign crumbled.

Johnston was sent home, banned from international football and briefly emigrated to the United States, with only a huge cheque from a tabloid newspaper to comfort him in his disgrace

In July 2005, Italian Serie B champion Genoa was arbitrarily placed last in the division, and therefore condemned to relegation in Serie C1, after it was revealed that they bribed their opponents in the final match of the season, Venezia, to throw the match.

Genoa won the match 3-2 and had apparently secured promotion to Serie A.

In June 2004 in South Africa, 33 people (including 19 referees, club officials, a match commissioner, and an official of the South African Football Association) were arrested on match-fixing charges.

Wazza was embroiled in prostitute scandals before he had even made his big move to Manchester United.

He has admitted visiting the Auld Slapper, a 48-year-old prostitute who charged him £45-per-hour, as a 16-year-old.

The Czech Republic prostitute scandal initially claimed the international careers of coach Petr Rada and players Tomas Ujfalusi, Milan Baros, Radoslav Kovac, Martin Fenin, Marek Matejovsky, and Vaclav Sverkos.

There was public outcry when the players were photographed with hookers shortly after a 2-1 defeat to Slovakia.

The indefinite bans placed on the players were later lifted for those who wanted to return to the international fold.

In February 1999, a Malaysian-based betting syndicate was caught attempting to install a remote-control device to sabotage the floodlights at English Premier League team Charlton Athletic's ground with the aid of a corrupt security officer.

If the match had been abandoned after half-time, then the result and bets would have stood.

Subsequent investigations showed that the gang had been responsible for previously unsuspected "floodlight failures" at West Ham's ground in November 1997, and again a month later at Crystal Palace's ground during a home match of Palace's groundsharing tenant Wimbledon

His name is Rio, and he’s so forgetful that he probably needs reminding of it every morning.

On September 23, 2003, drug testers arrived at Manchester United’s Carrington training complex for routine, but mandatory testing.

Rio was on the list, but went shopping instead.

He was banned for eight months rather than two years, which would have been the case had the FA not accepted that he was forgetful rather than evasive. “I am,” said our absent-minded hero, “ devastated”

Juventus’s chief executive and team doctor were accused of supplying performance-enhancing substances to players between 1994 and 1998, when the Turin giants were enjoying an especially golden period.

The pair claimed the substances were used to improve the health of their players.

Prosecutor Sara Panelli told the court that Juventus pursued a “synergic strategy in the use of drugs for four seasons." A verdict is expected by the end of the year

Being married to a beautiful pop star wasn't enough for the Chelsea defender.

After a string of affairs, his wife gave him the boot earlier this year after the love rat was caught sending naked pictures of himself to a glamour model.

What were you thinking, Ashley Cole?

One of the all-time classic football scandals revolved around the attempts of former Manchester United winger Mickey Thomas to set up a counterfeiting operation as a lucrative sideline to his sparkling football career.

Police investigating counterfeiting operations in Manchester were astonished to discover that the former Manchester United player had set up a retirement fund for himself in the form of a printing press which produced 10 pound notes.

It turned out that Mickey Thomas was in the business of distributing the products of his press to the young players at his club Wrexham.

Thomas was rewarded for his entrepreneurial ambitions with an 18 month stint in jail, followed by a successful stint as a public speaker.

An unpopular figure at the best of times, Kahn prompted the outrage of all Germany for walking out on his heavily pregnant wife to take off with 21-year-old party girl Verena Kerth.

Tabloids called her "the pierced party chicken" while the couple were branded the German answer to Posh and Becks, given their habit of wearing matching outfits.

Bayern Munich's Uli Hoeness said he wanted to throw up after hearing about the scandal.

The 2009 European football betting scandal was an attempt to influence the outcome of professional association football matches in Europe, and to defraud the gambling industry by betting on the results.

The investigation centres on around two-hundred fixtures, include domestic league games in nine European countries: Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia, Turkey, Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Austria.

It also involved 12 qualifiying matches in the UEFA Europa League, and three in the UEFA Champions League.

Peter Limacher, a spokesman for European football's governing body UEFA, described it as "the biggest match-fixing scandal ever to hit Europe."

In September 2005, a Brazilian magazine revealed that two football referees, Edílson Pereira de Carvalho (a member of FIFA's referee staff) and Paulo José Danelon, had accepted bribes to fix matches.

Soon afterwards, sport authorities ordered the replaying of 11 matches in the country's top competition, the Campeonato Brasileiro, that had been worked by Edílson.

Both referees have been banned for life from football and face possible criminal charges.

Brazilian supporters have taken to shout "Edílson" at a referee who they consider to have made a bad call against their team, in a reference to the scandal.

Chelsea became suspicious when the Prince Of The Carpathians behaved oddly.

“Sometimes he was happy, sometimes not so,” said manager Jose Mourinho.

“He arrived late a few times and other times didn’t come in at all.”

More the behaviour of a workshy fop than a cocaine addict, some might say, but Chelsea’s suspicions were proved correct, despite his claim that he was taking “something” to improve sexual performance.

Now he’s lost his £60,000-a-week contract.

He played against Aston Villa in September, apparently with cocaine in his system. Impartial observers might suggest he was, in fact, sold Valium

Edgar Davids (banned for four months in 2001 for using nandrolone), Jaap Stam (five months, nandrolone), Frank De Boer (two months, nandrolone) suggest a remarkable coincidence, or a chain of nandrolone cafes in Amsterdam.

“I can’t believe what’s happened and feel sick at the suggestion I would take drugs,” said Stam.

Voices of reason prevailed. “What can you say?” asked teammate Clarence Seedorf, helpfully.

Beckham and Loos worked closely together both professionally and socially, and Loos claimed that she became an "alternative wife."

Victoria Beckham was initially not happy in Madrid and wanted to develop her UK music career, so she spent much of her time in England.

Loos claimed this resulted in Beckham becoming bored, leading them to spend almost all their time together socially, and a four-month affair was the alleged result.

Victoria Beckham was recently quoted in W magazine saying the alleged affair only made their marriage stronger.

In April 2004, British tabloid newspaper The News of the World published a story claiming that Loos and Beckham had an affair.

Chelsea star John Terry had a big affair with Wayne Bridge's girl.

The married England captain, who has 3-year-old twins with wife Toni, had a secret affair with Wayne Bridge's then-partner Vanessa Perroncel.

What a friendship, eh?

In January 2005, the German Football Association (DFB) and German prosecutors launched separate probes into charges that referee Robert Hoyzer bet on and fixed several matches that he worked, including a German Cup tie.

Hoyzer later admitted to the allegations; it has been reported that he was involved with Croat gambling syndicates. He also implicated other referees and players in the match fixing scheme.

The first arrests in the Hoyzer investigation were made on January 28 in Berlin, and Hoyzer himself was arrested on February 12 after new evidence apparently emerged to suggest that he had been involved in fixing more matches than he had admitted to.

Hoyzer has been banned for life from football by the DFB. On March 10, a second referee, Dominik Marks, was arrested after being implicated in the scheme by Hoyzer. 

The French tend to get off (so to speak) lightly when it comes to sex scandals.

And given that it all seems to have gone pretty quiet on this front, we assume the latest example is another case in point.

Cast your mind back to May and French stars, including Franck Ribery, Karim Benzema, Hatem Ben Arfa, and Sidney Govou, were caught up in a police investigation into underage prostitutes.

Ronaldo got nabbed for bringing three transvestite prostitutes back to his hotel room after dropping his girlfriend home first.

One of the greatest football players got a shock when he discovered the hookers were all, in fact, men, and an argument kicked off when his male company demanded money to keep quiet.

In the 1994 World Cup finals, Diego Maradona’s goal against Greece was unmemorable.

More unforgettable, however, were his subsequent celebrations as he leered into a pitchside camera, eyes blazing, froth almost pouring from his mouth.

Days later, the tubby 33-year-old idolised by the young Adrian Mutu played against Nigeria and ran like a lithe man 10 years his junior.

Unluckily, he was forced to take a dope test.

The stimulant ephedrine was discovered, and Maradona was out.

The years since have seen him hopelessly addicted and hospitalised for cocaine-induced seizures, although if his shape is a guide, Maradona’s cocaine appears to be coated with lard.

The 2006 Italian football scandal involved Italy's top professional football leagues, Serie A and Serie B.

The scandal was uncovered in May 2006 by Italian police, implicating league champions Juventus, and other major teams including Internazionale Milan (though no allegations were proven to be true), Milan, Fiorentina, Lazio, and Reggina when a number of telephone interceptions showed a thick network of relations between team managers and referee organisations.

Juventus were the champions of Serie A at the time.

The teams have been accused of rigging games by selecting favourable referees.