The Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) has reduced the life ban imposed on former Nigeria national team coach Samson Siasia, for match fixing by world governing body FIFA, to five years.
In 2019,FIFA accused Siasia of being “guilty of having accepted that he would receive bribes in relation to the manipulation of matches in violation of the FIFA Code of Ethics” and also fined him 50,000 Swiss francs ($54,000).
However, CAS, on Monday the 21st of June, 2021, said the imposition of a life ban was “disproportionate for a first offence which was committed passively and which had not had an adverse or immediate effect on football stakeholders” while the fine was also set aside.
“The panel acknowledged the need for sanctions to be sufficiently high enough to eradicate bribery and especially match fixing in football,” the CAS said.
“However, the panel considered in the particular circumstances of this matter that it would be inappropriate and excessive to impose a financial sanction in addition to the five-year ban since the ban sanction already incorporated a financial punishment in eliminating football as a source of revenue for Mr Siasia.”
Siasia, 53, played as a striker for the Nigeria national team and later coached various national youth sides before a spell as senior coach in 2016.
He was the coach of the U-20 team that got silver medal at the World Youth Championship in the Netherlands in 2005 and lost in the final of the 2008 Olympics men’s event to Argentina, incidentally the same Argentina his side lost to three years earlier.
His reign at the 2016 Olympics men’s team fetched Nigeria a bronze medal, Nigeria’s only medal at Rio Olympics.
