Declan Hill's The Fix: Is organized crime endemic to soccer?

The Game Room
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I have not read The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime, but I understand that the author contends that soccer games are often fixed by Asian betting interests and that the corruption extended into the 2006 World Cup. Europe isn’t immune either and FIFA studiously ignores the problem.

Are these allegations well founded? Does it matter? Or is it only a game anyway? And what about that ref from Mali?

2

This question sounds interesting so I’m going to bump it…but not with my hands.

3

Paging wintertime; Paging wintertime; wintertime, to the white courtesy telephone please.

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I have not read The Fix and thus cannot speak to any allegations it makes, but I think it’s fair to say that “Europe isn’t immune.” Italian football, in particular, has ungone at least a couple of high-profile match-fixing scandals, including the most recent “Calciopoli” scandal that centered on Juventus.

That one wasn’t ignored, though: Juventus were stripped of the 2005 and 2006 league titles and relegated to Serie B for the 2006-07 season and deducted 9 points. Other clubs were punished as well, including AC Milan and Fiorentina. Whether true or not, I believe Italian football still has a reputation for being a bit dirty.

There was a separate match-fixing scandal in Germany in 2005, but it was not as widespread, involving match-fixing for only a few lower-level games. And as far as I know, German football is not considered generally to be fixed. In fact, other than Italy, I can’t think of any other European league with a reputation for frequent cheating.

The last such thing I can recall in England was the 1964 betting scandal, but that again was fairly minor in comparison to Italy.

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Googling: In the 2006 World Cup, the last-16 football match between Ghana and Brazil during the 2006 World Cup may have been fixed. In the bigger games, the fix money can swim in a deeper betting pool. Declan Hill witnessed a guy fixing matches: later he received phone calls accurately predicting the scores of various games.

How does it work? Fixers have to have connections with both teams and betting parlors. Bookies are wary of this sort of thing, so often fixers use a network of frontmen. Fixers often bribe the losing team: they might bribe a couple of guys 26 and over. In sports, superstars make oodles of cash, your typical player may not make so much. And as they get near the end of their career, the fix money is tempting. Then again, in some cases the winning team, the losing team, the referee and the linemen are all in on it. In Africa or Asia, a $20,000 bribe might be spread out fairly widely.

Well, the thread is getting moldy now and I merely pulled some material from Google. We could
a) move this thread to its final burial in GQ
or
b) have a contest to see who can provide the most jaded commentary on this state of affairs.

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Not exactly corruption within football, but a few years ago a Malaysian betting syndicate came up with an elaborate scam:

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Declan Hill understates the problem: he sidesteps the corruption at the top. Here’s my understanding. FIFA gives referees a fair amount of discretion in making calls, except of course that they can’t consult with any instant replay, even it it’s projected in front of the entire sports stadium. Yes, this happens. FIFA does however take a hard line on local manufacturers making knockoffs of Official World Cup gear. Also, players are subjected to rigorous drug testing-- but they can boast to the press about blatant cheating without censure. This happens too. Why?

The butcher has a heavy thumb: large television markets are systematically favored. France and Germany must enter the World Cup, even if they suck (which admittedly they rarely do.) Teams from large municipalities such as Milan are smiled upon by the refs at the expense of smaller markets such as Verona.

Finally, the low scoring nature of modern soccer makes it a poorly designed experiment: scores of 0-1 or 1-2 represent very low sample sizes. So FIFA has another (lame) reason to manipulate the results.

Cheating and corruption rarely stay confined. If FIFA can manipulate the refs, so can gambling interests. And if FIFA decides that it doesn’t like instant replays, all sorts of shenanigans can ensue. Here’s a picture of Netherland’s Nigel de Jong delivering a front thrust kick to the chest of Spain’s Xabi Alonso during the World Cup finals. Soccer players wear cleats. Ouch. No red card was delivered for that infraction. No assault charges were filed either, though I suppose that’s not FIFA’s fault.

The preceding was gleaned from Tim Parks’ article The Shame of the World Cup in last month’s New York Review of Books. Errors, extrapolations and naiveté are mine.

Personally, I’ve had it with these clowns: count me out on the next world cup. Oddly enough, I happened to catch a few minutes of a local soccer match on TV: the Chicago Fire vs. the New England Revolution. The level of play was quite a bit lower, but it was nowhere near as frustrating as the nonsense in South Africa. There was no karate, no thespianism, no pulling at the opponent’s shirt. They just played the damn game. Now if we could only get them to widen the goals.