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Bamberg, Germany. In this small stadium in Bavaria, most seats are not just empty — they are covered in slippery grass and moss. There are no television cameras. Among the sponsors advertised on the boarding is Delphi, a local Greek restaurant.

At stake for the visiting football club from Ulm: Moving to sixth place, from ninth, in one of Germany’s three fourth-division leagues.

Or, as even its manager, Markus Losch, acknowledged, “Nothing at all.”

Two weeks ago, Ulm, a charming town on the Danube, was best known for having the tallest church spire in the world and for being the birthplace of Albert Einstein. Now Ulm, and a handful of other German towns, have become associated with the biggest betting scandal in European football history, a case that has laid bare the little-known, often-bankrupt underbelly of the world’s most popular sport.

For a few hours on Saturday, none of that mattered. SSV Ulm beat FC Eintracht Bamberg, 3-1.

Who cared that only 39 fans in Ulm’s black-and-white colors made the trip to Bamberg, a journey of about 250 kilometers, or that the Neu-Ulmer Zeitung newspaper had not bothered to send a reporter?

For those few hours, everyone could forget that three of Ulm’s best players had recently been fired after they were accused of fixing matches.

“Ulm players aren’t bribable,” the 39 fans chanted in spirited self-deprecation.

“Too bad you didn’t cheat today,” retorted a Bamberg fan across the two metal fences separating them.

Of the 200 European football games under investigation by prosecutors, 32 took place in Germany, and 18 of those were in the fourth division.

In the lower leagues, a poisonous combination of high expectations, meager success and astonishingly low pay makes the players in Germany’s 33 standard regional division clubs targets for bribery.

Regional players earn as little as 150 euros ($225) — the legal minimum for a basic monthly salary, excluding match bonuses, in German Football Association guidelines. Five-figure salaries are very rare. Some clubs are so poor that they are forced to lure players with promises of jobs with corporate sponsors or mileage payment for attending training.

“The regional leagues want to play professionally, but they don’t have the money the professional leagues have,” said Theo Zwanziger, the president of the German Football Association.

In his office underneath the grandstand of the local stadium, the Ulm coach, Ralf Becker, put it more bluntly, saying, “They are all potential offenders.”

“When guys earn 500 euros to play football, you can’t allow bets worth thousands of euros and expect that it won’t have an impact,” added Becker, who said all betting on fourth-division matches should be banned. Gambling on these matches happens largely in private betting companies.

“They have all the pressures of professional football: the fear of injuries, the weekly competition to be selected to play, the 90 minutes on the playing field on the weekend, the knowledge that your career is over at 35,” said Becker, a former professional who retired at 34 because of an ankle injury.

“But Bundesliga players earn at least 10 or 20 times more,” Becker added, referring to the top level of German football.

The three fired players — Davor Kraljevic, 31; Dinko Radojevic, 31; and Marijo Marinovic, 26 — are a case in point. They are under investigation and suspected of rigging four matches last season and two matches this season for several thousand euros each.

Earning $4,500 to $6,000 a month, they were among the best and highest-paid players on the team. But their choice was between $525 in taxable bonus payments if the team had won, and about $7,500 in cash per rigged match.

The 163-year-old SSV Ulm club is in many ways a microcosm of the bittersweet world of German football.

In 1997, Ulm started on the long climb that resulted in the near impossible: It rose from third to second division and then — for one short exuberant season — into the Bundesliga.

But the fall was as spectacular as the rise. By 2001, Ulm was back in the third division and insolvent, virtually bankrupted by the decision to retain its well-paid players. A former senior official of the club is under investigation for failing to pay payroll charges on players’ salaries in the years after.

Since then, the club has lived on $2.25 million a year and has been a typical fourth-division melting pot of would-be and former stars and a large group in the middle who are neither.

Twenty-year-old players like Burak Tastan, with boyish ambitions to join the German national team, play side by side with former stars like Heiko Gerber, who spent 10 years with Bundesliga clubs and at 37 is winding down his career. And there are players like Betz, who spent virtually his entire career here.

Now, no Ulm player earns more than about $5,500 a month before taxes. Players receive $225 per match, and progressively more in the case of victory.


The New York Times