Europe’s governing body must take fast and decisive action to triumph over evil within the game
Uefa faces its demons
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Is it any surprise the world’s biggest sport, with a value running into billions, is a comfortable home to shady characters and chancers? It shouldn’t be.
News more than 200 football matches, including several Champions League and Europa League fixtures, as well as league games across eastern Europe and in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland are being investigated by Uefa’s integrity unit amid allegations of match-fixing is hardly a shock.
The surprise is the figure is not higher and it has taken so long for the authorities to unearth such a lengthy list of dodgy results.
Last year, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), formed to expose organised crime and corruption throughout eastern Europe, published a report in which an interview with a man described as the King of the Football Mafia appeared.
Velibor Dzaro, a leading crime figure in the former Yugoslavia and Macedonia, claimed to have fixed more than 80 matches but was prepared to talk about what he called his “life achievement”.
In 1988, the Yugoslavian internal affairs secretariat indicted Dzaro for fixing 12 matches and he was subsequently imprisoned in Split, Croatia.
The Serbian sports magazine, Tempo called him “the biggest evil in Yugoslav football”, but the charges against him were dropped and Dzaro was freed.
It was rumoured in return for his freedom, Dzaro had agreed not to expose corruption among Yugoslav football officials, although this was never confirmed.
In the OCCRP report, he was asked how he had managed to fix so many matches. His response revealed how startlingly easy the process was and, presumably, still is.
“In every club there’s someone who’s weak, a player who has gambling debts, needs money for his girlfriend and so on. Usually, I looked for a left back, centre half or goalkeeper. He just has to do one thing, like let the ball go in the goal, or go offside. But the player must be professional. He has to make the ‘mistake’ in a way so the public doesn’t notice anything. It’s no good if he gets a red card or a penalty. Everybody who fixes games works that way, in western Europe, too.”
Although Dzaro referred to a procedure common practice 20 years ago, it is clear even today, in some nations, match-fixing remains rife.
In Bosnia’s premier league for example, such is the extent of endemic match-fixing that during the 2007-08 season only 10% of away teams managed a victory.
In Germany the figure is 27%, while in Spain, it’s almost 30%. Little wonder Bosnian football stadiums remain virtually empty.
Relegation is rare and unexpected results even rarer.
Earlier this year, it was revealed around £1million which Bosnia’s FA should have paid in taxes had gone missing.
Its general secretary and treasurer were charged with abuse of office for extending interest-free loans to each other and losing documents which detailed the whereabouts of another £250,000.
The court-appointed auditor said the Bosnian FA’s accountancy records were the worst she had seen in two decades.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, ranked by Transparency International at 146th out of 180 on the organisation’s corruption index, level with Zimbabwe and Russia, two football clubs have been labelled “headquarters for organised crime gangs”. The tag is not the literary invention of an over-zealous scribe, but of the Ukrainian police force. This year, during a police raid on the Zakarpattya club’s offices, 36 armed men were arrested. They said they were preparing for an election meeting. The police later admitted an estimated 150 gunmen had escaped their clutches.
These incidents, by no means isolated, provide an indication of how easy it is for football clubs, administrators and officials to succumb to corruption and bribery. Once they are snared, there’s no getting away from ruthless gangsters who can accumulate millions, mainly through bookmakers in China, from betting on “their” teams to win or lose, confident in the knowledge no official is likely to expose them.
Most Britain-based bookies refuse to take bets on games played in leagues tainted by the spectre of corruption and match-fixing, which explains why gangsters have for so long been eager to gain a toehold in what were believed to be western Europe’s still relatively fair football leagues.
However, last week’s revelations suggest criminal organisations have finally managed to manoeuvre themselves into power in order to guarantee the outcome of some football matches.
Corruption is not merely a football problem but, because it is the world’s most popular sport, it commands attention, especially when its dirty tentacles infiltrate high-profile leagues and Uefa competitions.
Ultimately, vast sums of money are the root cause of the problem. If, however, football is institutionally prone to corruption it risks losing the support of billions of supporters more rapidly than a referee can award a controversial penalty.
For this reason alone, Uefa must act quickly and decisively to root as much of it out as is practicable and pursue perpetrators until they are behind bars.
