UEFA Games Under Investigation for Match Fixing

By: Laurie | December 1st, 2007

Scandals, scandals, and more scandals.

We’ve come to expect them to pop up periodically wherever there’s money, and there’s a lot of money in European football.

But I was startled this morning to see the words “UEFA” and “match-fixing” linked together. I guess I naively thought that UEFA games were too big to be fixed. Silly me. Apparently Asian betting syndicates have enough money to buy God, with enough left over to fix the occasional high-level soccer game.

Details are sketchy at the moment, but The Guardian reports that Interpol is “currently investigating fifteen matches in cooperation with Europol.”

The matches are thought to be from the Champions League, Intertoto Cup, Uefa Cup or the Euro 2008 qualifiers, and have all taken place this season. The German magazine Der Spiegel, which originally reported the claims, has alleged that most of the teams involved are from countries in south-eastern Europe, mentioning Croatia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Serbia, and the Baltic countries. Der Spiegel said betting syndicates in the Far East worth millions of euros were believed to be behind attempts to rig matches.

Uefa, the sport’s governing body in Europe, confirmed the matches were all played this season, but would not say which competitions were affected and would not name countries or clubs involved for fear of jeopardising the investigation. No British teams have so far been linked with the inquiry.

Champions League and Euro qualifiers? You don’t get much bigger than that. Could these really be among the fixed games? The amount of money involved would have to be truly obscene.

Earlier this week, UEFA opened an investigation into the Intertoto Cup match between Bulgarians Cherno More and Macedonia’s Makedonija on July 7, which Cherno More won 4-0. The Bulgarian club have strongly denied any wrongdoing. “It’s an extremely unpleasant case but we think that the charges are unwarranted,” Cherno More’s lawyer Mihail Statev said at a news conference on Tuesday.

I’m furious that the highest levels of the sport have apparently been corrupted, and I’m thrilled that Interpol is handling this. Because with Interpol involved it can’t get swept under the rug, like so many other soccer scandals.

It can’t get swept under the rug. Right?

Update: Goal.com lists the games under investigation as:

12 UEFA Cup qualifiers, eight Intertoto matches, three Champions league games, two UEFA Cup ties, and two Euro 2008 qualifiers

Thanks, Jan, for the update, and Martha for the original article.

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Category: Champions League, Europe, World Football

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Jan

Goal.com pokes fun at Italy. Their article about this scandal has been filed under the 'Italy News' section.;-)

http://www.goal.com/en/Articol...

The Champions League match in question is a qualifier. Probably from one of the first two qualifying rounds, which makes it slightly less big than an actual CL match.

Anyway, considering that the eastern European leagues are very poor and that clubs don't have a serious chance to survive the UEFA Cup qualifiers, they seem to be susceptible to cash in on that otherwise useless UEFA Cup spot, I assume?
Laurie

My original lead paragraph poked a little fun in Italy's direction, but I decided the subject warranted something more serious. But you're right. It will follow them forever. Sadly, I don't think they were the only guilty parties, and possibly not even the worst.
Mele419

Oooh. Burnnnn. But what should they expect? That's going to follow them forever now. Fools.
chris

Has anybody checked the whereabouts of Juventus during these games?
Mele419

With enough money, you can buy a big enough rug to sweep anything under it. Sadly. Oh, the state of things these days...