The Poor Man’s Illegal Betting & The Premier League

These are some pretty deadly words coming from Claus Lundekvam, claiming a long series of spot-fixing in the Premier League, betting on in-game trivialities. Which means the acronyms – UEFA, FIFA, SCUBA, ETC. – will be injecting their magic truth serums into any and all from the period in which Claus partook in English football – 1996-2008 – attempting to find the guilty parties.

They’d probably have preferred he spent a half-season loan on the bench instead.

ESPN:

“It’s not something I’m proud of,” Lundekvam said. “For a while we did this almost every week. We made a fair bit of money. We could make deals with the opposing captain about, for example, betting on the first throw, the first corner, who started with the ball, a yellow card or a penalty. Those were the sorts of thing we had influence over.”

Lundekvam claims, though, that results were never fixed, merely individual events within matches.

“The results were never on the agenda,” he said. “That is something I would never have done. We were professional competitors. Even though what we did, of course, was illegal, it was just a fun thing.”

Match-fixing is bubbling to the surface with alarming frequency, which means there is a serious market for a t-shirt emblazoned with, “Hey, we could be Italy!” (Gigi has the over on 10,000 sold.)

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Category: English Premier League