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: