21May

The Seven Secrets of Why There Will be Match-Fixing at the World Cup – Part 2

Match-fixing has a long, ignoble history at the FIFA World Cup. The fixers are intelligent, well-resourced and well-connected. Some of the football officials are deeply corrupt. There have been fixers coming to almost every FIFA international tournament since at least 1991. They have approached hundreds of players, coaches, and referees. In 1995 at the World Youth Championship in Doha, Qatar. Two young Portuguese players had been invited up to a room to discuss an interesting proposition by two attractive young Malay...

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03Nov

Why has the Sports Integrity Industry Failed?

The FBI investigation of the NBA, and alleged Mafia involvement raises a massive question - why has the sports integrity industry failed so badly that few are surprised by this scandal? The New Yorker, asked me to contribute my quotes to their article “The Sports Betting Disaster”… here is my longer response. The Match-Fixer The match-fixer was completely at his ease. I thought he was going to be nervous. His gang travels around the world corrupting major sports events, so I...

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16Dec

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 Airport.  There...

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29Sep

It was the best of trials. It was the worst of conferences.

It was the best of trials. It was the worst of conferences. Lets start with the best. In Paris, last week, a proverbial rocket hit the world of sport. The former head of the International Athletic Association Federations (IAAF) - Lamine Diack - was convicted of collecting millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks.The actual scheme was shocking. Diack, along with many of his top aides - including his ‘thug’ son (his words) - was running a racket where athletes, coaches...

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16Oct

How to Survive an International Sports Integrity Conference

You ain’t in Kansas anymore Dorothy. Back in the day, international sports integrity conferences - like Play the Game, happening right now in Colorado Springs - were jovial affairs where independent journalists, saddened whistle-blowers and beleaguered sports officials could meet, chat, drink and sometimes dance. Now, everything has changed. Sports are battle grounds of geopolitical soft power. Hard power is the idea that you can conquer another country with tanks, planes and lots of death. Soft power is the idea that you...

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09Mar

Poor, Old Qatar: labour conditions and the compromised fight against match-fixing

The timing could not be better. Just as the sporting world endures another hot-air session a.k.a. an international conference on match-fixing sponsored by the Qatar 2022 World Cup Committee, out comes a new report on labour conditions in Qatar and the building of the World Cup infrastructure and stadiums. The report,  by the external company charged by FIFA to monitor workers' conditions, makes for sobering reading. It seems – no surprise – that despite all the words, all the clichés, all the high-level negotiations...

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24Jan

Whatever It Takes: The Inside Story of the FIFA Way

After reading - Whatever It Takes: The Inside Story of the FIFA Way - you feel dirty. It is like bathing in a pool of scummy water for hours, but is nonetheless a fascinating story from a former insider of the FIFA world. Bonita Mersiades was a senior executive in the Football Federation of Australia (FFA) and one of the point people in their doomed bid to win the 2022 FIFA World Cup. From 2008 - 2010, she had an intimate view...

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04Aug

Why Neymar is Cheap at 220 Million Euro

It is not about the sport. The sporting giants like Jürgen Klopp and Arsène Wenger have weighed in to denounce the transfer of Barcelona’s Brazilian star Neymar for 220 million Euro to Paris Saint-Germain. They claim it is against the spirit of sport and is “beyond rationality”. Their rival José Mourinho at Manchester United, somewhat, agrees saying say that the real problem with the Neymar transfer is that the whole player market will now go berserk. In sporting terms they are...

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28Jul

Secret Transcripts of the Middle East Soccer Argument

There is an argument going up and down the halls of power in Washington. No, it has nothing (well, not directly) to do with Donald Trump. Rather on one side are keen, hungry FBI agents and their Department of Justice counterparts. These police and prosecutors are usually clothed in dark suits, dresses with shoulder pads and black sunglasses. They spend their weekends competing in triathlons or running up and down mountains. On the other side of the argument are the U.S....

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