Point Shaving & Fixes ·
Schalke’s Paid Defeat and the Sworn Denials That Followed
Retrospective accounts say Bielefeld paid for its 1–0 win on 17 April 1971. The case brought suspensions and, years later, admissions of perjury.
Gerd Roggensack scored in the 83rd minute at Schalke’s Glückauf-Kampfbahn on 17 April 1971, giving Arminia Bielefeld a 1–0 Bundesliga victory. The official match record lists 15,000 spectators and a goalless first half. What it cannot show is the payment behind the result: Schalke’s own retrospective says its players received money from Bielefeld for the defeat. The case would bring suspensions, sworn denials and, years later, admissions of perjury.
Bielefeld was fighting relegation. According to Schalke’s account, Waldemar Slomiany, a former Schalke player then with Arminia, carried the money. The club puts Bielefeld’s total outlay at 40,000 Deutsche marks and says Schalke players received 2,300 marks each after the match. A SPORT1 retrospective also reports a 40,000-mark offer before kickoff and individual payments afterward.
The performance invited suspicion, but suspicion was not proof. SPORT1 says a contemporary Kicker report attributed the defeat to ineptitude, resignation, bad luck and a lack of effort—not a fix. The same retrospective says Schalke coach Slobodan Cendic demanded a 1,000-mark fine for each player.
The goalkeeper’s part was different, according to SPORT1. Dieter Burdenski, brought in for the injured Norbert Nigbur, did not know of the arrangement, the retrospective says. He kept Bielefeld out until Roggensack’s goal and did not deliberately let the shot through. Afterward, he accepted 2,300 marks without knowing what the payment was for. His later testimony became important as the other players’ denials came under scrutiny.
The wider scandal became public on 6 June 1971, when Offenbach president Horst-Gregorio Canellas played recordings of telephone conversations about the sale of Bundesliga matches at his 50th-birthday party. Schalke was not initially implicated, according to the club’s history. That changed after Bielefeld admitted bribery and the April match came under investigation.
In court, the accounts collided. SPORT1 reports that on 31 January 1972, former Bielefeld board member Franz Greif testified under oath that he had given Slomiany 40,000 marks before the match to buy the victory. Slomiany denied receiving money from Greif or passing it on. Schalke players also denied under oath that they had taken money, and eight sued Bielefeld’s Jürgen Neumann for defamation.
On 18 May 1972, SPORT1 says, Burdenski acknowledged before the German football federation’s sports tribunal that he had received money. Suspensions followed for Schalke players, including Klaus Fischer, Stan Libuda, Klaus Fichtel and Rolf Rüssmann. On 22 December 1975, according to SPORT1, eight players admitted that they had taken Bielefeld’s money and committed perjury. Schalke’s retrospective says the court imposed fines.