By Andrew Warshaw in Astana
March 26 – A fresh and more stringent crackdown on match-fixing and the rubber-stamping of a brand new European competition, the Nations League, to replace international friendlies look set to be the main items agreed by UEFA’s 54 member nations tomorrow.
Both subjects are expected to be included in UEFA President Michel Platini’s formal address to the organisation’s annual congress which this year has come to the capital of Kazakhstan in the far reaches of eastern Europe in a deliberate move by Uefa to provide political balance among its membership.
UEFA’s national associations will be asked to take a unified stand against match-fixing – and recommend that sports fraud is treated as a criminal offense across the Continent.
UEFA is rapidly losing patience with the number of clubs taking civil action to try and get round sanctions and wants its entire membership to sign a resolution for “harsh and strict” punishments to be imposed.
UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino made it clear at a pre-Congress briefing today that match-fixing had reached intolerable levels of frequency and that life bans should be one of the options considered for the gravest cases.
“What we want is that all over Europe there is common ground on how to deal with match-fixing,” said Infantino.
“We have seen that in different countries match-fixing is dealt with in a different way. This is not very positive. We are not a European police force but our task is to convince associations to approve tomorrow’s resolution, just as we did last year with a resolution for stricter measures against racism.”
“We are asking national associations to harmonise the regulations. In some countries you get point deductions, in others relegation. We have to have some kind of standard, implement a proper reporting systems via our integrity officers.
“It’s important to make sports fraud enshrined as a crime. This would allow police forces to act, otherwise they just say they have more important things to do. If it is a crime, the police are obliged to act.”
Regarding the much-discussed Nations League, to begin in 2018 and likely to have a promotion and relegation divisional format, Infantino declined to provide too many details ahead of the congress but confirmed that agreement would be sought to set up the lucrative new tournament that would run in parallel with the World Cup and European Championship.
“What has triggered what is being called the Nations League is the international calendar and the dates for friendly matches,” explained Infantino.
“We have been looking at optimising the structure of the calendar without bringing in any more dates. There are teams everyone wants to play against and other teams who struggle to get the opponents they’d ideally like. For all national associations, the fact is that national team matches are key for their development.”
As he does with most confederation congresses, FIFA president Sepp Blatter will also address delegates, his first high profile public appearance since the apparent foiled plot last week by unnamed members of his executive committee to try and shut down the corruption-busting role of FIFA’s chief prosecutor Michael Garcia, as reported by INSIDEworldfootball.
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