By Jaroslaw Adamowski
December 19 – Poland’s Ekstraklasa, the operator of the top tier of Polish professional football league, is aiming to educate young footballers on the risks related to gambling. The initiative, carried out by the Ekstraklasa Foundation, is launched in cooperation with Transparency International which also collaborates with six other European football leagues on similar programmes.
The Ekstraklasa says that the project will contribute to preventing match-fixing by educating footballers, in particular those who are just beginning their career in professional sport.
“In today’s modern football, we are facing other types of risks related to corruption than those encountered just a few years ago,” Marcin Animucki, chief executive of the Ekstraklasa Foundation, said in a statement. “The project aims to start educating young players at the earliest stage so that they comprehend as soon as possible the responsibility they are undertaking in professional football.”
Animucki said that footballers must understand that one moment of weakness can “waste all the effort they put into years of training and building their careers.”
Under the plan, the training will be carried out by the end of the 2013/2014 season. The project is supported by Lotto Foundation, an entity funded by Poland’s lottery operator Totalizator Sportowy.
Set up in 1993 and headquartered in Berlin, Germany, Transparency International is a non-governmental organisation focused on monitoring and combating corruption in politics, business and society. The NGO says it is present in more than 100 countries.
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