Football
ESPN staff 7y

Agent Pino Pagliara says he lied to Telegraph about manager bribes

Italian agent Pino Pagliara says he was not truthful when he told undercover reporters that Premier League managers received bribes in player transfers.

Pagliara was filmed in the Daily Telegraph's coverage of corruption in football as saying multiple top coaches in England accepted illegal "bungs."

But in interviews with ITV and the BBC on Friday, Pagliara says he was only telling the journalists "what [they] wanted to hear."

"They believed that the only guaranteed and assured way of being able to do a transfer of a player was if they had a manager in their pocket," he told ITV.

"If the manager is taking money from us then we are assured of success. After trying to explain that wasn't the case I felt that it was probably easier to say, 'OK, whatever you say, we'll bung them.'"

Pagliara told the BBC that he was hoping to impress the reporters, who were posing as representatives of a firm offering a position as a consultant.

"I allowed them to believe that the managers I was speaking to would not drop the money on the floor if I gave it to them," he said.

Pagliara also criticised the Telegraph for vilifying the managers involved.

"The Telegraph hasn't got a clue of how [the football industry] runs. It doesn't have any ability, any competence in the industry," he told ITV.

"Whether [corruption] runs deep or not the investigation would be better spent in realistic areas and not creating them because it's hard enough to try to find the villains -- why create ones that aren't there."

The Telegraph issued a statement defending its reporting.

"Our investigations team had numerous meetings and telephone conversations with Mr Pagliara over many months," the statement said. "The transcripts of our investigation, which are currently being prepared for the police and the FA, make it very clear what he said about a series of Premier League managers."

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