The Mystery Final

There are some games that are far larger than just a sporting competition.  There was that game in 1936 in Berlin when the England team were forced to raise their arms in Nazi salutes. There was that game in Belgrade between Red Star and Manchester United on February 6, 1958.  It was to be the last footballing appearance of the Busby Babes. After the match, many of them flew off into the skies of football immortality in a crash at Munich...

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Why the Match Fixers are at the World Cup in Russia

The hot tub of World Cup match-fixing This article first appeared on playthegame.org Potential corruption and match-fixing at the World Cup is aided by corrupt national football association officials, . FIFA’s ‘often odd’ attitude towards these officials protects the fixers at the World Cup. Uncle Frankie, the match-fixer, sat in the hot tub with players from the Swedish World Cup team. It was in a Los Angeles Hotel before their third-place match with Bulgaria at the 1994 World Cup. Uncle Frankie offered the...

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Canada’s Shame

The success of Toronto FC aside, Canadian soccer remains an abject embarrassment — not because of quality of play, but because European police and sports officials say a lower-level Canadian league remains a hot spot of corruption and match-fixing. “You are supposed to be honest people,” Kee, a Chinese-Malaysian bookie who runs an illegal gambling site in Kuala Lumpur, said last year. “How can you be honest when so many fixed soccer games are going on in your country?” These accusations...

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How to Investigate Sports Corruption without upsetting the Senior Executives

Lets judge them using their own words. Today, (October 7) the Qatari-sponsored International Centre for Sports Security (ICSS) prepares to officially launch another alphabet soup of an organisation - the Sports Integrity Global Alliance (SIGA) or possibly they will announce a shift in their own organization's deck chairs while attempting to convince the sports world they should be taken seriously. The next day, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will continue their long, slow murder of the World Anti-Doing Agency (WADA). They...

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Games Night at Zurich Hotels & Why Dan Tan Should Be Released

Crikey – the arrests of FIFA executives is getting so routine at the five-star Hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich the management should build it into their daily schedule: 5 p.m.     -                   High Tea 6 p.m.    -                   Cocktails & Happy Hour 6 a.m.    -                    FBI & Swiss Organized Crime Police arrests of FIFA executives 7.15 a.m.   -                Continental breakfast Possibly the hotel has, like chocolates on the pillows, turn-down service and concierges, criminal lawyers standing around...

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Singapore’s Middle Finger to the Sporting World

Well this is interesting. Dan Tan the man Interpol once described him as the “the mastermind and leader of the world’s most notorious match-fixing syndicate” has been  released from jail by a Singapore Appeal’s Court judge. Three technically accurate points and a chronology: 1)    It is technically true, the appeal judge’s assessment is accurate: there is no available evidence that Tan ever fixed a match in Singapore. 2)    It is technically true that Interpol described Tan, after he was arrested, as “the mastermind...

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