A few hours before Harambee Stars faced Egypt in the semi-final of the 2011 Nile Basin tournament in Cairo, Anthony 'Teddy' Akumu received a phone call that would leave him with one of the most disturbing memories of his early international career.Download our Mozzart Sport app for more newsAkumu, then a young midfielder making his mark with Gor Mahia and the national team, says he and his regular roommate, defender Musa Mohammed, were summoned to a hotel room by two men from Malaysia.What followed was an extraordinary proposition: deliberately lose the match by a specific scoreline, 5-1, and each player would walk away with Ksh500,000.Kenya's U20 Africa Cup of Nations hopes extinguished after winless qualifier campaignThe two men, according to Akumu, appeared to know that both players were expected to start after featuring in all of Kenya's matches in the tournament.“They showed us wads of cash in different denominations and requested that if we agreed to lose the match by 5-1, we would both be given Ksh500,000,” Akumu recalls.The men allegedly began with a smaller incentive, pushing $100 bills towards the two players in an attempt to persuade them.##NAJAVA_MECA_9968579##When Akumu and Mohammed remained hesitant, the men reportedly brought in a former Kenya international to convince them.According to Akumu, the former player openly admitted that he was involved in match-fixing and claimed to have made substantial amounts of money from the practice.Mohammed, however, was the first to reject the proposal.STARS ABROAD: Kenyan midfielder features for Charlton Athletic in English ChampionshipAkumu says his teammate cited his Muslim faith, which considers match-fixing haram — prohibited or sinful.For Akumu, the decision was far from easy. He had only recently established himself in the national team after joining Gor Mahia the previous year, earning just Ksh10,000 a month.“I was young and was not earning much at the time. That money could change my life,” Akumu says.##NAJAVA_MECA_9968559##But the midfielder says he ultimately considered what accepting the money could do to his career and followed Mohammed's lead in turning down the offer.Then came the bizarre twist. Kenya lost the semi-final to Egypt 5-1, exactly the scoreline the two men had allegedly demanded.Akumu does not accuse any particular teammate of taking the money and acknowledges that Egypt were a formidable side at the time. However, the coincidence has remained with him over the years.Still in the woods: FKF Premier League kick-off postponed once again“There is no doubt that Egypt were a very strong team at the time. What is strange is that we lost by exactly the same score that the match fixers had wanted,” he says.“To me, that is proof that some of our teammates were compromised.”The result therefore took on a different meaning for Akumu, who says he could not help but wonder whether the approach to him and Mohammed was part of a wider attempt to influence the Kenyan team.##NAJAVA_MECA_9968580##He insists that the 2011 incident was the first and last time he was directly approached by people seeking to influence a match.However, the former Gor Mahia midfielder says that, over the years, he has witnessed several unusual results involving the national team that have occasionally raised questions in his mind about whether matches could have been influenced.
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