Mario Bigoni was a Swiss-Italian footballer who played as a defensive midfielder.

Playing career

Bigoni started his youth career at FC St. Gallen and played for their reserves in the 1. Liga. In 2006, he moved to

FC Gossau FC Gossau is a Switzerland, Swiss football (soccer), football club from the city of Gossau SG, Gossau in the canton of St. Gallen (canton), St. Gallen. It currently plays in the Swiss Challenge League, Challenge League, the second-highest level o ...

, helping them win promotion from the 1. Liga to the Challenge League in his first season. After 70 league matches and one goal for Gossau, he was dismissed on 23 November 2009, due to his involvement in an international match-fixing scandal. In early 2010, he briefly played for FC Sirnach-Stella until he, along with former Gossau teammates

Marc Lütolf Marc Lütolf (born 24 June 1987) is a former Swiss footballer. In February 2008 he joined Gossau. He was released in February 2010. In May 2010, Lütolf and former teammate Darko Damjanović, Mario Bigoni were given open-ended suspensions a ...

and Darko Damjanović, were indefinitely suspended by the

Swiss Football Association The Swiss Football Association (, , , ) is the governing body of football in Switzerland. It organizes the football league, the Swiss Football League and the Switzerland national football team. It is based in Bern. It was formed in 1895, was a ...

in May 2010. Following this, he returned to his previous profession as a mechanic and became a youth coach at FC Rheineck.

Betting Scandal

The Croatian mafia is alleged to have manipulated several matches of FC Gossau. This became apparent as the club lost numerous consecutive league games against both strong and weak opponents. After the 2008–09 season, Gossau was relegated from the Challenge League to the 1. Liga. At the end of the season, Bigoni stated that a match from the previous season was "not clean" (a 0–4 defeat against

FC Locarno FC Locarno is a Swiss association football, football club based in Locarno in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland. As of the 2019–20 season, Locarno play in the Swiss sixth level, 2. Liga (Switzerland), 2. Liga. His ...

on 24 May 2009) and that he received an offer from a teammate to fix the match, allegedly from the first choice goalkeeper, Darko Damjanović. It remained unclear whether he accepted the offer, but he was suspended by FC Gossau and banned by the

Death

Bigoni died under mysterious circumstances. On Saturday, October 8, 2011, he spent the evening with friends at a floating restaurant on the

Rhine The Rhine ( ) is one of the List of rivers of Europe, major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Austria–Swit ...

near Gaissau in

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

. Subsequently, he disappeared without a trace. Allegedly, he was heavily under the influence of alcohol when last seen. He was then declared missing, and several search teams were summoned. His body was found on Sunday, October 23, in the riverbed of the Old Rhine near Rheineck. The discovery location was 1.5 km from the place of his disappearance. The subsequent forensic report found no signs of foul play, suggesting an accident.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bigoni, Mari 1984 births 2011 deaths Swiss men's footballers Italian men's footballers Men's association football midfielders FC Gossau players Footballers from the canton of St. Gallen 21st-century Italian sportsmen 21st-century Swiss sportsmen 20th-century Swiss sportsmen