Reports of Match-Fixing Rock Spain

By: chris | December 4th, 2008

Match fixing in football is, unfortunately, nothing new. Some may even say it’s par for the course, particularly if we’re talking about Eastern European football (Romania & Poland, I’m lookin’ at you). Oh, and Italy – Serie A has rivaled the WWE for legitimacy this decade. Even England has failed to go unscathed, with a former Prem player admitting to getting sent off to pay off debts to his bookie.

The newest culprit? Spain, both La Liga and the Segunda. Two games from the past two seasons are being looked at, which means four teams have some splainin’ to do.

The bigger of the two involves Athletic Bilbao and Levante, as it’s being posed that Levante threw a 2-0 win to Athletic on the final day of the 06/07 season enabling the Basque side to avoid relegation, a fate they’ve never tasted, and one which sent Celtic Viga to the Segunda.

On Wednesday, the station Popular TV released a recording of an alleged conversation between Levante president Julio Romero and midfielder Inaki Descarga which concerned a payment some of the team were said to have received for throwing the match.

Romero said Thursday that there had been no agreement with Bilbao. He also denied holding a conversation with federation president Angel Maria Villar, a former Bilbao player who Romero was alleged to have informed of the purported match-fixing.

As expected, there are lots of denials and a lot of people saying “I’m going to sue the living shit out of you”, but it doesn’t get much more damning than recorded evidence.

The other game in question is the final Segunda weekend’s fixture between Malaga and Tenerife, a 2-1 win for Malaga which saw them achieve promotion to La Liga for this season (where they’re surprisingly well – top half of the table). This one’s a bit buzarre because it’s being areported Jesuli of Tenerife has admitted to taking to throw the game….but didn’t play. Unless he pulled a Lawrence Taylor and bought skanky hookers for all of his teammates the night before the match, whether the integrity of the actual game was compromised sounds up for debate. Though Malaga’s suits are surely up to their eyeballs in shite, not to mention litigation.

It’ll be interesting to see what, if any, of this is true, but I can’t help feeling like football needs sweeping changes to protect the sanctity of the sport. Match-fixing has become too commonplace. Or maybe the Vatican can sponsor a league. Lord knows the legitimacy of the relegation battle between The Holy Rollers and The Pope’s People would never be questioned.