Italy hands out point deductions and five-year bans to match-fixers

Mario Cassano_20-06-12

By Andrew Warshaw

June 20 – Italy may have progressed to the last eight of the 2012 European Championship but off the field the image of the game has taken another damaging blow after the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) announced it had upheld newly promoted Pescara’s two-point deduction and banned four players for five years over the country’s match-fixing scandal.

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Andrew Warshaw: IFAB giving the OK to goal-line technology cannot come soon enough

Andrew Warshaw

What goes around comes around. Ever since Frank Lampard was denied a clear goal when he crashed a shot against the underside of Germany’s crossbar at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the clamour for goal-line technology has become increasingly louder.

Fast forward two years to the 2012 European Championship in Donetsk last night and that clamour has now become a deafening roar.

This time England were the ones that had all the luck.

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