Former Sweden and England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson has revealed a shocker. He claims he was once asked to rig the 2010 FIFA World Cup draw before the event in South Africa.
According to the Swed, he was invited to a trip in Asia in 2004 while he was the Sporting Director at Notts County.
Upon arrival in North Korea, Eriksson says it was there where North Korean officials asked him to fix the FIFA World Cup draw.
“They knew I was a member of the FIFA Football Committee,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Sport’s Strangest Crimes podcast.
“They said: ‘Can you please help us?’
“‘Of course, I can help you, if I can,’ I said. I thought they wanted balls or shoes or something like that.
“They said: ‘We want to have a simple draw.’ They wanted to have help with the draw.
“Of course, I said: ‘Do you really mean what I (think)? I can’t do that. Nobody can do that. That’s absolutely impossible and it’s criminal, even to try.’
“But they never believed me. The amazing thing is that it looked like they don’t believe that I can’t do it – they believed that I just didn’t want to do it.
“Very strange. That was, I guess, the main reason why I was invited and why it was so important that I went there.”
In the end, North Korea were placed in the same group as Brazil, Portugal as well as Ivory Coast and went on to crash out in the first round after failing to win any game.
