As the organizers of next year’s World Cup, the Germans have received lavish praise for their smooth preparation work. Efficiency was to be expected from the Germans, of course, and last week should have earned them even more admiration when they announced that, right on schedule, the Internet sale of tickets to the public would begin today.

The Germans did indeed get a lot of attention from the soccer world last week, but they were anything but elated about the news that was suddenly dominating the headlines – the revelation that dark and dirty deeds were afoot among German referees.

“It’s a catastrophe,” said Franz Beckenbauer, the most admired figure in German soccer and the man running the organization of the World Cup, “They’ll be talking about this all over the world.”

The DFB, controlling body of German soccer, announced that Robert Hoyzer, a 25-year-old referee working mainly second-division games, was under investigation for allegedly manipulating the results of games that he had worked. The DFB’s suspicions centered on a Cup game last August that Hamburg (from the country’s top league, the Bundesliga) had played at SC Paderborn, a third-division team from a small Ruhr town, with an 8,500 capacity stadium.

All that smallness made Paderborn the obvious underdog, but after Hamburg had comfortably established a 2-0 lead, Hoyzer made his presence felt. He ejected Hamburg’s star forward Emile Mpenza, then awarded Paderborn two penalty kicks. Final score: 4-2 Paderborn, a considerable upset.

The question is inevitably being asked: Why has it taken so long for the DFB to take act?

If the result itself and the circumstances under which it came about were not warning enough that something might be amiss, the DFB received a much more persuasive alert two days later when a top betting firm told them of unexpectedly heavy betting on Paderborn. But the DFB waited nearly five months before acting, until two weeks ago, when four referees came forward to report their suspicions about Hoyzer’s officiating.

Hoyzer initially denied the accusations, then resigned and claimed that, as he was no longer a referee, he didn’t need to answer the DFB’s questions. Theo Zwanziger, co-president of the DFB, tried to downplay the news: “This is a regrettable and unforgivable incident…as we see it now, it is a one-off case.”

Now it is clear that Zwanziger can forget about such a hope. Hoyzer’s bravado lasted only until last Thursday, when he confessed all.

“The public allegations against me are correct,” he declared, and admitted having rigged the results of at least four other games. Even more worrying was his statement that “a lot of other people were involved.”

According to the Munich newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung,Hoyzer has implicated other referees and some players. He also revealed the involvement of professional gamblers, admitting that, for rigging game results, he received $65,000 from a betting syndicate in Berlin, believed to be run by Croatians.

Hoyzer’s admission of guilt has left all of Germany – not just the soccer part of it – waiting for the other shoe to drop. Worse, there is a feeling that there may be quite a few more shoes to hit the floor. These fears were reinforced last Friday, when the German police announced the arrest of four unidentified men on suspicions of fraud. The scandal deepened on Sunday, when SC Paderborn admitted that one of its players had received $13,000 from an unknown man, with the club’s president, Wilfried Finke, commenting that the money might be “just the tip of the iceberg.”

The DFB’s nervousness was evident this past weekend, when the scheduled referees for all nine Bundesliga games were switched at the last minute. “There are security reasons,” a DFB spokesman said tersely. “We won’t say any more about it.”

As the legal process gathers steam, the ramifications are becoming clearer. Three more players – they are from the Bundesliga club Hertha Berlin – have been implicated. The former Hamburg coach Klaus Topmoller, who was fired fewer than two months after the shocking defeat by Paderborn, has declared: “The referee cost me my job. We were doing well until the Paderborn game. After that it all went downhill.”

Topmoller has yet to find another job and is contemplating suing Hoyzer. He may also add to the DFB’s woes by including it in the lawsuit, because he believes that it failed to be sufficiently aware that suspicious results were occurring.

The possibility of player involvement raised unwelcome memories for the Germans of a major scandal in 1971, when eight players from Schalke – including two top national team players – were banned for up to two years for taking money to throw a Bundesliga game against Arminia Bielefeld.

The suborning of referees, or more accurately, the fear of such suborning, hovers constantly over soccer. Referees receive periodic reminders from FIFA that they must exercise the greatest caution in accepting what is politely called “hospitality” – the practice of clubs giving gifts to them.

The gifts can take many forms. In 2000, the Romanian club Ceahlaul Piatra Neamt offered prostitutes to the officials involved in an upcoming match (its thoughtfulness earned the club a five-year ban from European competition). That same year, in Italy, it came to light that the owner of AS Roma had spent about $70,000 sending Rolex watches to all the Serie A referees.

The Italian soccer federation expressed outrage and ordered the gifts to be returned. But many in Italy saw the largesse as simply part of the sport, almost business as usual. In 1966, clever investigative work by the veteran English journalist Brian Glanville had revealed heavy suspicion of at tempts by Inter Milan to bribe referees. Glanville named names, dates, financial figures … but little was done, either in Italy, or at FIFA, to follow up the charges.

Back then, all referees were amateurs with full-time jobs outside soccer. The feeling that highly paid pro referees would be less vulnerable to bribes was slowly acted upon. Fulltime referees today are much better paid; in England and Germany, top referees can make up to $90,000 a year. But Hoyzer, refereeing in the lower division in Germany, would make no more than half that amount.

It hardly needs adding that a potent brew of righteous wrath is boiling up in Germany over Hoyzer’s activities. A call for lifetime bans from soccer for anyone involved has come from Bavaria’s governor, Edmund Stoiber.

Michael Muller, the deputy leader of chancellor Gerhard Schroder’s Social Democratic party, told the International Herald Tribune: “It is very damaging. We have had a reputation of having clean and fair soccer.” Referring to next year’s showcase event, he added: “We have 500 days to repair the damage.”