By Julio Godoy
PARIS, Jan 12 2001 (IPS)

The supporters, the trainer staff and the managers of the professional French football club, AS Saint Etienne, were over the past one and a half years proud of their striker Axel Dias.

Axel, as the 28 year old football star is commonly known, scored goal after goal for Saint Etienne and was a central figure in the club’s excellent season last year, in which the legendary team ended sixth in the French first division.

Unfortunately, Axel officially scored his goals as a Portuguese citizen, although he was born in Brazil. And his passport, which asserts that he is Portuguese, is a fake.

Last Tuesday, Axel was supposed to be in Paris to be questioned by French prosecutors investigating the affair. But the South American striker, alerted by the inquiry, left France since mid- December for his home town in Brazil and is allegedly not coming back.

The prosecutors set next Monday as new date for the questioning. If Axel misses the interview, he won’t be playing his sport for a while – neither as Portuguese nor as Brazilian. French justice would demand and surely obtain an international suspension against him.

Axel’s case is not the only one of false passports in professional French football. Another two of Axel’s team mates, the Brazilian Aloisio and the Ukrainian Maxim Levytsky, also played with forged personal documents.

Aloisio was registered before the professional French league as Portuguese and Levytsky used what prosecutors now call “a rough falsification” to go by as Greek.

Aloisio is currently injured and follows a rehabilitation program in Brazil. Levytsky left Saint Etienne and France last December and has been engaged by the Russian club Spartak Moscow.

He came to Paris this week, to answer the questions of French prosecutors. Levytsky recognised that his Greek passport was sold to him by a non identified person working at the country’s consulate in Russia.

“In the East European countries, this is a common practice,” Levytsky said. “Greek citizens offer passports to performing athletes who want to make a professional career in Western Europe”.

With the forgeries, Saint Etienne could line up the players as citizens of the European Union (EU). This way, the club passed by a rule, that limits the number of non-EU foreigners on the playfield.

Andre Buffard, law counsellor to Axel, said that under these circumstances, “for young, excellent football players from South America and Eastern Europe, an European passport is an added value worth the risk.”

As Saint Etienne is not alone in the affair. At least two other professional French teams are being openly accused of negligence in the enrolment of their players.

The Argentinean Diego Garay played 22 games for the team of Strasbourg during the season 1999-2000 as an EU-citizen. During a short holiday trip to Germany the border authorities found his Italian passport to be a fake.

The French current football champion AS Monaco is also involved in the scandal. Monaco’s Chilean defender Pablo Contreras played, until last week, with an Italian passport too. Two other South Americans playing for AS Monaco, the Argentineans Diego Quinteros and Nicolas Godoy, benefit of Spanish documents.

On Thursday, Monegasque police seized all three passports to check their validity. Monaco’s management stated that the South American players were being suspended as long as the situation is not clarified.

The French Minister of Sports, Marie-George Buffet, called for tough sanctions against the clubs and the players. “If we let these inexcusable practices go unpunished,” she said, “we would be fomenting doubts about the legitimacy of results.”

According to her Ministry, the judicial inquiries concern three or four first division clubs. But sources near the prosecutor’s office in Paris recognised that at least 78 passports of foreign players were being checked.

This number necessarily means that the investigation affects several other teams.

Possible sanctions against the clubs are the loss of points gained at matches in which the non EU-players were illegally lined up. At worst, such a penalty would mean the forced retrogradation of one or more teams into second division.

This would be the case of Strasbourg, which, during the season 1999-2000 narrowly escaped the loss of the category. The Nancy Football Club, which descended on the occasion, has demanded a revision of these results.

In appearance, the players involved would go without a sanction if they co-operate with French justice. The Ukrainian goalkeeper Levytsky was indeed detained some hours this week, but after the questioning the prosecutors allowed him to leave France and join his new Russian team.

The scandal was revealed on Dec 2, when Saint Etienne lined up the striker Axel as Brazilian and the Ukrainian Levytsky as Greek. The rival team, Toulouse, realised that Axel had played the match to go some weeks before as Portuguese and Levytsky as Ukrainian. Toulouse immediately protested.

Saint Etienne is the most glorious club in French football. The team, also famous because of his green dress, dominated between 1955 and 1985 the national scene and successfully competed on European level. Saint Etienne counts among its former players the legendary Michel Platini, who was recently named “French player of the 20th Century”.

But a financial affair and a vile fight among the club managers during the 1980s almost destroyed Saint Etienne. The club lost the permanence in the first division in 1985 and just regained it in 1999.

The affair has also severely discredited French professional football, which over the last two years gained international respect thanks to the triumphs of the national team at the World Cup in 1998 and at the European Cup six months ago.

But the affair goes deeper than professional football. Experts assert that falsifications are routine in the French football amateur leagues.

According to sources, the most frequent falsification concern dates.

“It is very common to falsify the player’s year of birth, to keep them under a certain age. Another beloved scheme is to let somebody play under a false identity,” the sources said.

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