It is an important aspect of confronting the corruption endemic in English football to demonstrate how other countries deal assertively with match manipulation by the participants (for example, see http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/02/absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely-4.html).
Reuters reports that "the Bulgarian Football Union (BFU) has banned two referees for life and suspended three others for a year for making mistakes in premier league matches". And Romania's Central Referees Commission (CCA) banned a referee and an assistant referee following two separate incidents at the weekend in the matches at Otelul Galati and Steaua Bucuresti.
The statement by CCA President Gheorghe Constantin is one that I cannot imagine being replicated by duplicitous Keith Hackett and his team of merry manipulators -"Salomir and Gheorghe's serious mistakes changed the results of the matches and made the clubs angry. Both are banned for an undetermined period."
A similar structure in the Premiership and the League Cup Final last weekend would have resulted in open-ended bans for Webb, Bennett, Poll, Wiley, Walton, Mason plus several members of the Portsmouth operation for complicit behaviour.
As a Romanian colleague once said "in Romania, it is called corruption; in Italy, the mafia; and in England, the system"...
