By Andrew Warshaw, Chief Correspondent
January 18 – Although match fixing has become arguably the greatest scourge in the game, FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke is confident that elite matches in competitions like the Champions League and World Cup matches are immune from any illegal activity. But he says there needs to be a co-ordinated approach.
Valcke is insistent that all the relevant authorities work together to try and reduce what is becoming an epidemic of unlawful gambling.
“I am sure that at the level of the Champions League and the World Cup that there is no match-fixing,” Valcke told an integrity conference in Rome attended by delegates from 50 nations. “What we have to look at are the lower leagues and where they’re just starting to play football.”
If the bigger, higher profile nations are clear, the same isn’t necessarily the case in all international football. In August, Malta midfielder Kevin Sammut was handed a 10-year suspension by UEFA after being found guilty of match-fixing in the Euro 2008 qualifier against Norway.
“We need Europe to understand that we must have a common legislation on match manipulation,” said Valcke. “As long as there isn’t an understanding from all parties that law enforcement, national and European authorities and the football family are all working together there is no chance we will succeed.”
Valcke’s opposite number at UEFA, Gianni Infantino, sounded even louder alarm bells. “We are not geared up to fight criminality,” he told delegetes. “We are geared up to deal with fouls from behind or maybe some stadium violence. It’s not like doping, where we can make tests and we know whether something is dope or not. (But) we will continue to fight this cancer.”
Interpol set up a specialist match-fixing task force in 2011 which helped Italian authorities make a number of high-profile arrests in recent months . Fifa, meanwhile, have donated 20 million euro to Interpol in a 10-year partnership to try to tackle the illegal betting rings, most of them based in the Far East and said to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
Forty one South Korean players were handed worldwide lifetime bans by FIFA this month following a match-fixing scandal in the country’s K-League.
Interpol general secretary Ron Noble warned against complacency in countries with no apparent match-fixing problems.
“A German court recently found that a European-based syndicate fixed a match in the Canadian league,” he said. “Based on interviews with players and officials, a recent article in Canada revealed that players in this obscure league were regularly approached to fix matches; the journalist reporting on this issue has received death threats following that.
“The Canadian match fixing scandal demonstrates the long reach of match fixers in all types of leagues all around the world.”
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