The Comrades Marathon, a 90-kilometre race between Pietermaritzburg and Durban, is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest and oldest ultramarathon in the world.
In 1999, on Youth Day, as Nelson Mandela stepped down and Thabo Mbeki was named President, relatively unknown 21-year-old Sergio Motsoeneng came ninth – because he’d swapped during the race with his 19-year-old brother Fika!
The first episode, The Marathon Bros, premieres on Showmax on Monday, 19 August.
Watch the trailer for False Glory
“I’m never going to condone cheating in any way in our sport – but it is quite ingenious,” says Bruce Fordyce, who won the Comrades a record nine times – eight of which were consecutive. “It is also fraud, and fraud is criminal… They’re lucky they didn’t do jail time.”
Other interviews include Comrades winners Andrew Kelehe, Cheryl Winn and Nick Bester; Sarel van Der Walt, the journalist who broke the story; and the brothers’ former coach Eugene Botha.
“They had really, really great talent,” says Botha. “They came ninth – but they could have won it.”
The second episode, Match Fixing, premieres on Showmax on Monday, 26 August.
In 2010, Togo’s national soccer team traveled 3 500 miles to play in an exhibition game against Bahrain – but the Togolese authorities knew nothing of the match…
The bogus game had been set up by Wilson Raj Perumal of Football 4 U International, who, after his arrest, claimed to have rigged South Africa’s friendlies before the 2010 FIFA World Cup – and more than 80 other matches around the world. He claimed to have a 70-80% success rate.
Adeel Carelse, the South African Football Association’s Director of Referees, says he was a whistleblower about the friendlies and raised his suspicions early. He says he even locked the suspect Football 4 U International referees in the changing room before the South African-Denmark friendly, so that proper referees could officiate the game. But as a result of the match fixing, Carelse was banned for two years by FIFA.
“I lost my house. I lost my life savings. I lost my two cars. But, most important, I lost my name,” says Carelse, who claims to have been made the “scapegoat” for a “political hatchet job.” “If I should meet Perumal, it’s going to be ugly, because I’m not sure if I would be able to control myself.”
Other interviews include Bafana Bafana star Katlego Killer Mphela, who scored the winner against Denmark; Timothy Moloby, the journalist who broke the story on South African match fixing; and Francesco Baranca, the former general secretary of Federbet, a non-profit working against illegal gambling, fraud and fixed matches.
The third and final episode, The Baby Footballers, premieres on Showmax on Monday, 2 September.
Many children in Cote d’Ivoire grow up wanting to be the next Didier Drogba. The Baby Footballers is the story of four such Ivorian boys, aged between 12 and 17, whose parents agree to sign over guardianship so their children can move to Italy on the promise of footballing glory.
One of them, Christian Kouamé, is now playing for Fiorentina and the Cote d’Ivoire national team. But he’s the exception to the rule. Another, Samuel ‘Ndri Kouassi, allegedly found himself adopted by a man he’d never met and then, after an injury, asked to sleep in the stands, then released by his club, and was left homeless and to fend for himself as an illegal immigrant.
This led to a groundbreaking illegal immigration case against the likes of Paolo Toccafondi, the then president of AC Prato, for importing the minors – one of the first cases like this to make it to trial in Europe.
“Christian Kouame made it,” says Italian journalist Paolo Nencioni. “He’s a player who at one point cost €15m and I don’t know how much he earns: definitely not a small amount. Others didn’t make it. The families, they probably have this lottery ticket in their head. It could be either the winning or the losing one. Perhaps, rather than saying ‘selling’ baby footballers, we should find another term, because nobody takes them and puts them on a boat and forces them to come here. It is a much more nuanced situation.”
Other interviews include Gbane El Hadj Seydou, the boys’ Ivorian coach, who adopted two of the children to get them into Italy, but later found himself sleeping in shipping containers as an illegal immigrant, and Filippo Giusti, the then president of Sestese Calcio, who adopted Christian and was then accused of illegal immigration, facing up to 15 years in prison if found guilty.
False Glory is directed by Arianna Perretta and produced by CMG Productions, who won Best Documentary at the 2023 Broadcast Digital Awards for The Footballer, His Wife and the Crash and were nominated for a 2024 True Crime Award for Football Fraudster.
Arianna and CMG are also behind the recent Showmax true-crime sports series Dark Side of Glory, which investigated a Blue Bulls rugby player who became an axe murderer, as well as the murder of Kenyan runner Agnes Tirop, who’d just set a 10 000m world record.
False Glory is being distributed internationally by CMG Productions.
