24Jul

The Odd Odds Movements: Three Games in the World Cup had massive shifts in gambling odds

While the world focused on 'Red card gate', Donald Trump, Gianni Infantino and the scandal around Folarin Balogun, there were three games at the FIFA World Cup tournament that had strange, massive odds movements. Funny, you should mention that…. The New York Times’ Jacob Whitehead has just come out with an excellent article about betting irregularities at the FIFA World Cup. It came out the very day that I was posting an article on the same subject. The team at the...

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08Jun

CBC TV Interview: Why the FIFA World Cup Needs Basic Accountability

FIFA is a legally-defined criminal organization, yet Canadian taxpayers have to cover all the loses while FIFA keeps all the profits - why? And why can't we know how much the whole thing will cost? Democracy, anyone? https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.7226257 FIFA World Cup and the Absence of Democracy On my beloved CBC Television this weekend to discuss the FIFA World Cup in Canada. It was a strange interview - felt like it should have been done years ago, not a few...

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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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14Jun

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...

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23Sep

Requiem for a Fixer

  He was one of the best. Yet in the end, he was brought down in a futile attempt to fix a little team in a forgettable tournament. For those readers who do not follow the intricacies of the Singaporean legal system, you may have missed the story this week, that one was imprisoned for four years for match-fixing. The actual case involved Pal bribing the coach of the East Timor national team and some of his players with 15,000$ How Pal...

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24Apr

Media Spin, the Qataris and Chris Eaton

It is called ‘media spin’. If you missed the story, a man who is involved in the Qatari anti-corruption agency for sports  – Chris Eaton – is now claiming in the media that he is shocked about a new book that investigates whether the Qataris may have been offering bribes to win the rights to host the 2022 World Cup. Eaton has even said FIFA should investigate “if there is new evidence whatever it shows and whoever it implicates, then FIFA needs...

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