It is the time for the fixes.
Here is what I know.
The fixers are in South Africa. They have been desperately trying to contact various teams. They have various runners and old contacts coming in and out of the hotels and training camps. They are trying ‘to do the business’ with various players and administrators.
Here too is what I know.
FIFA has put out lots of press statements and solemn talk about seriously vetting up-coming games. This is almost utter tosh. FIFA’s system of checking for fixed matches is practically useless. They repeatedly talk about their network of 400 bookmakers passing them information. Many of these bookmakers are not effective sources of information. They either do not know anything or will not say anything or will try to downplay any suspicious activity at the best of times. This is not the best of times. The gambling market on the World Cup is huge. FIFA and the bookmakers cannot monitor any suspicious activity as there is not suspicious activity to monitor. You cannot detect any patterns if the amount of money is too large.
FIFA also speaks of a liaison with Interpol. Interpol is pretty useless. Good for collecting official information and putting it in nicely-bound reports. Good for staging press conferences and saying polite pleasantries about the need to win the war on drugs, crack down on corruption, fight match-fixing etc, etc. But Interpol is almost useless for mounting a successful criminal investigation or preventing criminals from working on the ground. Their very mandate prevents them from doing anything effective.
Given these circumstances which matches should we red-flag for possible corruption?
1)Games where one team has nothing to play for. Even if they win the teams will not progress to the next stage of the competition.
2)Teams which have a history of not paying their players properly. It is the phenomenon of relative exploitation which drives fixing. The officials receive lots of money, the players comparatively little.
The games I will be watching closely are Cameroon vs. the Netherlands and Honduras vs. Switzerland. In no way do I want to suggest that I have heard anything about players on these teams being open to fixing matches. In no way do I want to suggest that even if they had been approached the players would have taken money. But I do want to say that if either of these teams loses by more than the Asian ‘spread’ of goals (2 goals and above) then FIFA should bring in their toothless tigers of investigators and begin to ask questions.
Tags: fifa, match fixing, world cup
[...] Declan Hill explains all in his blog, but here’s why he identifies those two games in particular (without accusing anyone of anything): The fixers are in South Africa. They have been desperately trying to contact various teams. They have various runners and old contacts coming in and out of the hotels and training camps. They are trying ‘to do the business’ with various players and administrators. [...]
[...] Declan Hill: It is the time for the fixes. [...]
Declan:
Just bought your paperback and will read through so apologize if this is a stupid question. What is the viewpoint on ‘fix’ with FIFA officials. Some really questionable card calls by refs in this match.
And let’s face it – the Brazil-Portugal match was a pure fix today. Ref over-carded and saved Brazil from red cards (!) and further Kaka gets a second yellow to ‘exhaust’ the yellow card following him into elimination rounds. Brazil-Portugal was a ‘nothing’ game for Brazil.
Portugal only needed a tie and Ivory Coast really tried to score goals to make it to the next stage.
watching England, Mexico, and USA all get terrible, inconceivable calls, makes me side with you 100%, i have to read the book no
Declan,
International Football to me has always given me the feeling for some time that games have been “adjusted” to suite a very large worldwide gambling community! Call the “fixers” what you want in the world, but FIFA’s non-action, either by not disgussing within the press or the sense that it wants NO investigations within it’s walls, tells me that they have something dirty hidden in their soiled laundry!!!
Years of very poor officiating and the officiating scandals that have come to light in rescent years in Football leagues around the world is only the tip of the iceberg, for FIFA to deal with!!!
Mr. Bladder, of FIFA, doesn’t give me the impression that he is a an open-minded person with the media and about change within his wonderfull game. He and his old world friends are in firm control of a Billion dollar worldwide corporation, that has very evident flaws with it.
I believe that it will take more investing by journalists like yourself, to bring the dirty behind the scenes laundry to light, for all fans to see. The only way to hurt these Billionaires crooks is where it counts, in there pocket books. I hope that day will come soon, to clean up this game, and make it wonderful once again!
Since reading your book and Jerry Bullivant’s blog I’m always on the lookout for matches which appear to be played out suspiciously. In this World Cup I think there’s been a few eyebrow-raisers:
Argentina V Korean Republic: Apparent total second half collapse by a clearly strong Asian side.
England V Algeria: England seemed very reluctant to complete a pass in the final third. Rooney had no designs on any form of ball retention. Lampard always sought to play backwards, sidewards or to the opposition. Gerrard shooting anywhere but at goal.
Portugal V DPRK: Surely a nice little earner for the Dear Leader’s dear subjects after they demonstrated their impressive bus-parking abilities against Brasil.
France V South Africa: Ridiculous over the top faux-anger from Cisse when Gourcuff was sent off (for nothing – was the ref in on it too?). Like England, no desire to play in the final third.
Netherlands V Brasil: Wasn’t expecting this in a big quarter final tie but all the goals looked really fishy indeed. Complete collapse from Brasil without Netherlands even having to move up a gear.
I’m not saying these matches were definetely pre-arranged results but going on the warning signs Mr Bullivant and yourself advise to watch out for these were the key matches in terms of setting off a flashing light for me. Hopefully we’ll get some better information on what’s really going on at this tournament from heroes like yourself because we certainly can’t rely on our mainstream media.