Mielke The Football Fan
Mielke served as chairman of Sportvereinigung Dynamo, the sports club of the country's security forces. He acted as the powerful patron of football club Berliner FC Dynamo helping his favourite side by manipulating the outcome of the team's games through various means to ensure its dominance of the first division DDR-Oberliga. The team won ten consecutive titles from 1979 to 1988 assisted by crooked referees, unfair player transfers from other teams and assorted other unsportsmanlike practices. Dynamo was reviled by many of the citizens of Berlin and the cheating was so blatant that it incurred the unofficially expressed displeasure of the country's ruling Politburo.
Read more about this topic: Erich Mielke
Famous quotes containing the words football and/or fan:
“... in the minds of search committees there is the lingering question: Can she manage the football coach?”
—Donna E. Shalala (b. 1941)
“Hard times accounted in large part for the fact that the exposition was a financial disappointment in its first year, but Sally Rand and her fan dancers accomplished what applied science had failed to do, and the exposition closed in 1934 with a net profit, which was donated to participating cultural institutions, excluding Sally Rand.”
—For the State of Illinois, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)