I was offered Sh200,000 to fix a match
Inside an eatery in Nairobi, Emery Mvuyekere is scrolling through his phone then he suddenly stops, and in his calm demeanor remarks, ‘’I don’t think there is a bigger virtue in sports than integrity,’’
Burundian-born Rwandese international who is capped in all the age categories for his country right from the junior level to the senior, is reflecting on his life in Kenya having signed for Kenyan Premier League side Tusker FC, 14 months ago.
The towering custodian mirrors how he could have asked for better team-mates to help him integrate when he was signed as a replacement for Harambee Stars custodian Patrick Matasi who has since moved to Ethiopian giants St. Georges.
“Without integrity, football will lose relevance, if we cannot trust and believe in the game, then I don’t think we should be playing it to start with,” observes the second born in a family of five children.
Work hard to excel
But while Mvuyekure concedes that not everyone is perfect, he underscores the need of hard work to excel in his career.
“Things are bound to go at some point but to me, it is foolhardy to give up if you want to scale the upper echelons of the game. I would also wish to point out that it is unethical to have your phone on when you are training,’’he offers.
Mvuyekure remembers an incident five years ago in relation to a phone which was on but failed to go into full details terming it as a bygone. He never operates his phone for at least four hours before a match.
Momentarily, Emery resumes scrolling his phone, and then stops to show me a recent short message squabble with unknown football ‘analyst’ who had contacted him to try and determine the outcome of a match.
His biggest worry is how many players in the league are contacted, and how many are brave enough to turn down such ‘lucrative’ offers.
“Its one of those weird numbers, I can’t tell from where, but the instructions were very explicit and especially if there were certain bench marks by your team on how many goals they were targeting to score in a particular match,’’ he expounds.
Text message
The message goes on,”Here is your small part, let in a goal in the last minute of the match and we shall pay you handsomely,” the person who only identified himself as a fixer had said in the text message. That was a league match between Tusker and Chemelil Sugar.
Once the keeper objected to the advances, the fixer affronted him, calling him foolish for wasting a ‘lifetime’s chance’ of becoming rich during these tough economic times. He is worried that most footballers and officials in KPL might have been similarly approached.
“What next? Yes I have taken the easy money, and then what happens to professionalism? Personally, I cannot live with that guilt,” says Emery who blames the rampant cases of match fixing to greed and lack of contentment from players and officials.
His sentiments come after Fifa recently banned four players for alleged match fixing in the KPL.
“I know it can be tough with most clubs increasingly finding it hard to pay players due to acute financial crisis. Because there is no league sponsor on board. But we all have the obligation to safeguard the integrity of the game,” remarks Emery who was born to a Burundian father Philippe Mvuyekure and Rwandese mother Uwimana Adele.
The goalie said after being approached by the book makers and turning them down, he shared the issue with club officials who vowed to investigate further.
Early this month, world governing body purnished two Kakamega Homeboyz players for match fixing.
