Recently we've had the cricket betting scandal. Some of my friends who follow cricket have said that they had often seen strange events in cricket but had never really questioned them until the latest test scandal. They always thought decisions were down to human judgement.
I've always thought the same about football. Partly because, having refereed matches, I believe that you do your best but that you might not see an event or misinterpret something on the pitch. Professional referees will make similar mistakes. The other reason why I believed that match-fixing would be difficult in football, as with any team game, is that it would require too many people to be involved - you'd need to bribe the players from both teams and the match officials.
In the light of the cricket scandal, the thing that worries me, is not result fixing, but event fixing for the purpose of gambling. This could include awarding/disallowing goals, fouls, free kicks, penalties, throw-ins, corners or foul throws in a match. Any of these events could influence the result of a match but this would not necessarily be the aim of the fixing. Ray Winstone appearing at half time on televised matches with the plethora of bets that you can place is worrying because it shows the sorts of things tha people are betting on.
Players are paid a lot of money so it would need a lot of investment/bribes to change their behaviour. More worrying is the role of match officials. They are relatively low paid (particularly in our division and below) and so a smaller amount of money could in theory be used to induce them to take certain decisions. I am not suggesting that the penalty given against us today was associated with betting but it could plausibly happen - only the referee can award a penalty (or not) - it might not necessarily affect the match result but that's not what people are betting on.
Also an increasing number of bets are placed on matches that don't get Sky or BBC levels of coverage. Indeed, reserve and academy matches have been subject to betting.
We were subject to a betting scam. remember the floodlight incident?
I'm not paranoid about this, it will sound like the usual moans from a football supporter, but does anyone in football/FA look for patterns or do they think (like cricket used to) that football is incorruptible and that every other sport has the problems?
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English bookies are a joke they don't call them bet£3.65 for nothing
So I don't think there's much of a chance of corruption in footy at a highish level
End of last season in a non league fixture people backed in from 25-1 to 6-1 one team to be winning at ht but losing at full time shock horror it happened and I don't think the bookies paid out
Spot on Mortimerician.The infamous Equadorian referee Brian Moreno suspended for 20 matches after the Korean World Cup has just been caught at JFK Airport New York with 20kgs of Heroin hidden in his underpants.
Please note that when someone turns a blind eye its because they are taking their cut.The money in Football is so big that nothing makes sense anymore.
Funny, I've often wondered why so many Asian business people have become involved in British clubs.
Occasionally they'd pass on info about other sports and the only time I recall this being on a football match was the Scottish League Cup final. Can't remember who was playing (deffo not Celtic or Rangers) but the tipped side ran out 2-0 winners!
Police have charged three players from the Australian top flight on suspicion of betting corruption after allegedly manipulating yellow cards.
New South Wales (NSW) police allege a senior player took instructions from an "organised crime figure currently offshore in South America", to organise for yellow cards to occur during games in exchange for money.
It is alleged bookings were manipulated on 24 November and 9 December 2023.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cg3lenv291zo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c2llxjxq955o
Can't imagine it takes a lot to prove either. They surely only need to show evidence of a large amount of bets going on him combined with footage of the needless bookings and he's getting a very long ban.
I suspect they must already have the evidence or they wouldn't have charged him.
Oh dear, how sad, never mind!
Of course, there could be gangsters involved; it could be a compulsion; there could be any number of mitigating circumstances. But spot fixing takes enough pre-meditation that this is stupidity of the highest order.
But it does sound like there is more at play here because Paqueta isn't the one who was actually betting. "suspicious bets placed in Brazil traced to where he grew up" suggests either his mates were in on it, or maybe even a local gang made threats to people he knew.
If found guilty it would signal the end of his career because the benchmark for punishment is a 10 year ban.
"It is alleged the senior player paid the junior players up to 10,000 Australian dollars (£5,300) to intentionally receive yellow cards."
Throwing your career away for 5k is wild.
https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/sri-lanka-news-lpl-terminates-contract-with-dambulla-thunders-following-owners-arrest-1434899
Can't remember the match but it was live on TV and Paqueta in between doing sublime passes did 3 tackles that were clearly yellow cards but it was only on the 3rd bad foul that he actually received a caution.
I commented to my son that he seemed determined to get a yellow card !
Have no idea why rich footballers do this but if bigger punishment aren't handed out then it will continue to be a problem.
If the thrill of being a pro footballer and earning shed loads of money isn't enough of an adrenaline rush then they should try having a proper job and earning peanuts in comparison and for many working until they are 70+ as the state pension will soon only be paid out at that age in the next decade or so.
There were rumours about Harry years ago but of course they couldn't have been true. Lol
Former Southampton captain Matt Le Tissier has explained how he and team-mate Gordon Watson tried to kick the ball out for a throw-in to win money for their friends - having bet £10,000 together on the outcome. Appearing on Ray Parlour and Alan Brazil's Pub Talk, Le Tissier was asked about the time he had trouble with "one of those quirky little bets on throw-ins".
In response, the ex-England international explained: “So, one of my team-mates came to me when I was the captain of Southampton at the time and he said ‘great opportunity, this spread betting business, you can bet on the time of the first throw-in and first corner and all that kind of stuff’.
“He said: ‘A load of my mates have got spread betting accounts, a load of my mates in London. If we get a kick off in one of the games, we just boot it straight out, my mates would win a load of money. They’ll probably weigh you in a couple of quid.’
“I was like ‘alright, ok, whatever’. So, we go and play Wimbledon. Obviously with this bet you have to bet that the first throw in was going to be sharpish.
“So I had to speak to the Wimbledon captain and go, I think I said to him ‘what end do you like kicking in the second half’ and he went ‘well we like kicking it towards our fan at the end.’ I’ve gone ‘we’ll let you kick that way in the second half, just let us have the kick-off in the first half.’
“Anyway, the ball gets rolled back to me from the kick-off and, it’s live on Sky right so I don’t want to just smash it into the stand, so I just tried to drift it over.
“Neil Shipperley stood out on the left wing and he didn't know about the bet. So I’ve tried to clip it over his head and I didn’t hit it hard enough so he’s just headed it back into play.
“Me and Gordon Watson just looked at each other. For the next 60 seconds it must have been funny footage just me and Gordon Watson running around the pitch trying to get hold of the ball to boot it out of play.
“We got it out of play in the period, because if you get it out before 60 seconds then they win money, after 75 seconds they start losing money and it can be a lot of money. We were panicking and we got it out in that period of time between.”
Le Tissier spent his entire professional playing career with Southampton, scoring 165 goals in 433 appearances for the Saints between 1986 and 2001. He first revealed the story about his spread betting scam attempt in his 2009 autobiography, Taking Le Tiss.
He said Southampton were safe from relegation at the time and he never would have done anything that might have affected the outcome of the match, "but I couldn't see a problem with making a few quid on the time of the first throw-in".
Le Tissier said in his book: "My team-mate had some friends with spread-betting accounts who laid some big bets for us. We stood to win well into four figures but if it went wrong we could have lost a lot of money.'
Following his revelation in 2009, the Crown Prosecution Service and Football Association decided not to take any action against him.
By fixing the outcome of a bet.
Bloke is a grade A ****.