This next few days of games at the FIFA World Cup are where match-fixers find their success.

The match-fixers are already buzzing around the tournament and teams. The arrangements and initial payments made.

For those of you who didn’t get a chance to read it – I wrote a three-part series on match-fixers at the World Cup. The Daily Telegraph was kind enough to ask me to write a summation of the work.

Since then we have discovered – thanks to the excellent work of The Athletic that two players who have been arrested for match-fixing in the last month are playing in the tournament. This is along with the fact that the referee for the US vs. Australia match was banned for fixing games with the Sapina Gang. You really would think that FIFA could find a more suitable official.

Now, the situation will get worse.

It is the time of the third games in the opening round. The dead rubber matches – where one team needs to win: and where it does not matter for the other team. Throw in that some teams will not pay their players or pay them badly and the fixes will happen.

This situation is compounded because it actually may benefit some teams to lose games, certain as they are of their qualification. The Wall Street Journal points out the fear of Algeria and Austria fighting to lose to avoid playing Spain in the next round.

I do not know if this will happen but I do know that this issue is really easy to solve. All it takes is better tournament organization. The brainy nerds at the French University of St. Malo who specialize in the mathematical organization of tournaments (as do a number of my contacts – who support this view) say that FIFA’s organization of the World Cup – they call it, “the worst format possible” seems to have been driven by money-making rather than protecting sporting integrity.

It may be so, what is certain is that the tournament is not well-structured and the match-fixers will take advantage of it. They were at last World Cup in Qatar, they have been at almost all the FIFA tournaments since 1991. They will continue because no one in sports seems willing to fight them.