I know, I know – you are sitting there reading reports of Italian national team players being arrested at their training camps: the coach of Juventus being taken in for questioning mere weeks after winning the national championship: dozens of other players being arrested – and you think, ‘There is no way that it can get worse! My goodness if even a tenth of these allegations are true. This is awful.’ However, all these stories are superficial details of a major theme that has emerged.
Listen up and listen well. I have said this before. I have been warning about this issue for seven years and most sports officials and journalists have deliberately ignored the message, so listen carefully this time and then take action.
We are speaking about an industrial-system of corruption in European football. This is no longer about allegations of key players and officials being involved in fixing, but a business model of corruption that is enveloping the sport.
Why the strong words?
First, over half the professional teams in Italy are now under investigation for corruption. Those are the teams, not individual players that are being questioned by police. If such a large number of teams is alleged to have been involved, it becomes part of an accepted business model to be corrupt. It is no longer about sensational details, but an informal system of governance.
Second, take a look at the Black Book by the umbrella organization of players’ unions in Europe – FIFPro. In January of 2012, they produced a very good survey of over three-thousand of their members (current European football players). More than ten percent of their members reported direct involvement in match-fixing, they had either fixed themselves or had been approached directly to fix. Another twenty-three percent of their members knew of fixing going on their leagues. The authors of the report write they think these numbers are an under-estimation of the amount of fixing going on as many teams that were rumoured to be corrupt refused to allow their players to take part in the survey.
With these kinds of numbers we are speaking of a business model – a professionalization of corruption. The allegation at the centre of all these scandals is that club officials and senior players are sitting down and choosing which games to win and which games to lose based on their own balance sheets and pension plans. They will plan to win twenty games a season, and lose ten. Because they have the certainty in losing – they can make more money by losing those games then they can by winning all the rest.
Who is fixing the Italian league?
According to the police documents that I am reading, it is the same group of Asian match-brokers and fixers that I wrote about in The Fix. They allied with a gang of Balkan semi-criminals who were their ‘runners’ and they entered into alliances with players, coaches and team officials.
I wrote about these guys and their methods. I named names. I showed how they went about their business. This scandal should not be a surprise to any sports official.
Is there any hope?
Yes, thank goodness for the Italian police and state prosecutors. Unlike their sports officials they have actually taken the problem seriously and are doing something about it. Hopefully, they can save Italian and European football before all credibility is gone.
Tags: FIFpro, italy, juventus, match fixing
Great piece Declan, as an avid fan of calico I am, like many, disappointted but not surprised by recent events in Italy. However I do find the media and opinion from elsewhere, specifically the UK, to be very judgmental and naive about this type of thing. Italian football is being rightly judged for its activities but treated as they they stand alone in corruption. As you point out though, good on the authorities and police for facing up to this when ignoring or brushing under the carpet must be very tempting. Is this type of thing, in your opinion, also likely to be occuring in the EPL, Liga, Bundesliga etc ?
Declan.
As you know I took some convincing about fixing scandals. Seems the Italian police have a handle on what’s happening. The hope is they can deal with the latest outbreaks. The fear is this is endemic to the game in that country (and elsewhere apparently) and will never be stamped out.
How excruciatingly sad for the game.
Richard
Romano: With absolute certainty, it’s happening in the other leagues as well. And it may not be just the Asians — a lot happened in the last day of the EPL season which was far too coincidental for my liking. Joey Barton almost merits a discussion unto himself in the “What was he thinking, or was it worse?” department.
The thing is, I disagree with Declan on one major point. Italian football is so corrupt that I’m not sure if it’s not part of the FORMAL system of governance, on a true level.
Richard: The true sadness is that, short of suspending all play in Italy for a time or even expelling the Italian association from FIFA, I’m not sure that the breadth of this comes to light. I fear it won’t be stamped out, and, between the fixing stuff in Italy, Turkey, and Eastern Europe in general, plus the racism explosion which threatens Eastern European football, this Euro 2012 tournament could descend very quickly into farce.
Yes I agree with you. Very few believed you in Finland when you predicted six years ago after the “Allianssi affair” that a tsunami of gambling money arriving and messing up badly European leagues. The Allianssi affair that was led by a Chinese, Zheyun Ye, living in Singapore had ties to the Balkans, Belgium, Italy and Sweden but the police did very little back then to investigate it in Finland which was sad to see. I followed it and a few other cases since then. I am starting to see very dark picture. Perhaps the most frightening of this is that the players get all the public shame and blame and the biggest crooks in the background are still largely invisible. They are often “legitimate looking” business man who get into right circles of football clubs and take the over with help of good international business lawyers. Soon these shady business men’s illegalities become and appear to be completely legitimate. They are seen as saviors. My latest story on this was published in German by a Swiss magazine Zwölf (May/June issue) and then translated by FC Servette’s fans into French. It is also sad to see how small minded media is in this mess. The police and investigation can often to do very little because legal restriction but the press and the media could do a lot more but they almost always prefer to keep their perspective very local and narrow when in fact these crooks operating in the business have a long time been very global players.
Hi Declan,
Good post. I’ve read your book in 2009 in Dutch. We know match fixing doesn’t stop at the Italian border. Unfortunately politicians and Dutch FA directors in my country don’t take fixing seriously. But since you can bet even officially on everything including Amateur matches like the Dutch Topklasse and youth matches there should be match fixing in Holland and probably every other European country.
Maybe you remember Zagreb 1 – Lyon 7 (all goals of Lyon scored in about 30 minutes, with really, really poor defending). Is there match fixing in de highest level of European football: the Champions League and maybe even te Euros in Poland and Ukraine? I am afraid so.
Our beautiful game is dying.
Romano In Italy the courts have wide ranging powers for example phone tapping is common and that’s why these scandals come to light. See this article on the subject :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/29/is-italian-football-more-corrupt
In England the FA and at the authorities are slack. The match fixing scandal in the 1990s involving Grobbellar and Segers? It’s conveniently forgotten, hidden under the carpet or dismissed as a joke. It’s unthinkable that Liverpool, the biggest club in the country at the time, would be relegated yet that’s precisely what happened in Italy to Juventus.
Sporting Gijon have been accused of match fixing but Spanish football is a joke, clubs dictate terms to the league and the banks, how likely are they to face strict punishments?
http://www.goal.com/en-us/news/88/spain/2012/04/30/3070054/lfp-raises-concerns-over-alleged-match-fixing-in-la-liga
Yes sad and strange to admit but Italians have being strangely almost honest about this. They have actually done some heavy actions on this issue. Have you heard of any other European top leagues doing anything like this? After the sentence that I just wrote I have to stop and ask stupid questions and wonder are the big teams in Milan as innocent as their appear to be in this scandal and what about Napoli? I wish
Funny, in Ireland it was seen not as a scandal by RTE Sports but an opportunity for Ireland in the Euro 2012 Comp! Isn’t that a fair summing up of general responses to date??
In terms of punishment no one does it like the Italians so they must be given credit for that. There was a match fixing scandal in Turkey but the clubs were conveniently cleared. I’m hugely suspicious of the EPL. As the most popular league, the league with the most money bet on it and gambling widely accepted as part and parcel of the British game I would be amazed if it was clean.
The players and coaches involved in the calcioscommesse scandal were named weeks ago. No Milan, Inter or Napoli players are involved.
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I think that it is a pity that something like this happens. Because Sports is something to make an example for all those kids that they like to do something healthy.