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!