By Andrew Warshaw
March 1 – The Asian Football Confederation, stung by non-stop allegations of match-fixing, says the latest episode affecting a number of Lebanese players did not involve any of that country’s World Cup fixtures.
Penalties have been handed out to 24 players, including life bans for defender Ramez Dayoub and forward Mahmoud El-Ali, both of whom play their club football outside Lebanon.
Dayoub, who insists he is innocent and will appeal, played for Lebanon in the current World Cup qualifying competition last June, a 3-0 defeat in South Korea. In a statement the AFC it had “no knowledge on any suspicion surrounding any of Lebanon’s 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifying matches.”
Lebanon has announced that it is to bid to host the 2019 Asian Cup.
The latest bans are another blow for Asian football which has been plagued by match-fixing revelations in China, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and elsewhere. The AFC recently set up an internal task force to educate their members on ways of tackling match-fixing which will be among the hotly debated topics at a high-profile conference in Doha next month organised by the International Centre for Sports Security.
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