Celtic Schisms

Introduction

Celtic FC has a history and a network like no other.

The Irish Republican politics, the ground-breaking Lisbon Lions, the intense support (ask Messi or Maldini), the global fanbase, the web of talented individuals who have given and still freely give their time, money and expertise to advance the club strategically...
... or, in the case of John Keane, to save the club from financial oblivion.

All of the great global football teams have this linkage with history and political purpose and a sense of community.

But the impact of the current fallout between the Celtic financial hierarchy and the real owners of the club, the fans, is a major dysfunction that must be solved immediately before it creates yet more harm for the club.

                        Unfortunately, in postmodern football, history and politics are problems

For five days in September, I had the very best job in the world - a high level consultancy with Celtic to enable passage to the 2nd Phase of the Champions League this season.

Unfortunately Peter Lawwell, in his own heroic way, pulled on the deal.

The holistic of the consultancy was to protect Celtic against corruptions that occur to undermine the strategies of the club in the Champions League.
The irony of the failure to conclude the agreement is obvious.
We are a cellular grouping of forensic analysts revealing corruptions and Celtic are a football team owned by a bookmaker, Dermot Desmond (Betdaq supremo).

We have been informed that it was deemed too risky to proceed with the consultancy in case we came across internal issues in our monitoring of the external.

As a result, the club strategy for this year's Champions League Group Stage was diabolical in the early stages (http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/one-love-art-of-war.html).

And it did not improve thereafter.
The same strategic errors were repeated as last season with some new ones thrown in for good measure. No lessons have been learnt and the structure is simply one of the blind paying one another to lead one another blindly.

Nobody within the club hierarchy nor any of the agents leeching onto the club have any perception of UEFA hidden agendas and internal power-plays and linkages etc etc.
The club do not possess the template to even start planning any strategy for Champions League and future European Super League success.

As we are no longer willing to work with the club under the current regime, we are limited as to the solutions that we are able to offer in this place.
But we have found four areas worthy of discussion without impinging on any of our isolationist thresholds.

1. Club Interests Versus Private Agendas

We originally approached Celtic when we were informed via a contact within UEFA that the European governing body were going to be taking a very close look at the Champions League Qualifier between Cliftonville and Celtic in case any politics were seen in the UEFA sphere.

The UEFA Champions League, by and large, is a marketing process.
It is not feasible for Celtic to celebrate their past as this does not fit in with the UEFA brand - pony-tailed ball skills with a pirouette are preferred to anything approaching political reality.

Part of my discussions with Lawwell centred on this very point - he understands totally that the fans are the biggest asset of the club but wishes to cleanse them of their history to optimise European performance and cashflow.

One could call this a strategy (even if one views it as an inappropriate one)...
... but the club then sell short of achieving that 'optimisation' by focus on their own private agendas and connections.
When it comes to push versus shove, club versus self, enlightened self-interest wins the day.

If the club hierarchy are going to sell out on the fans, the history, the raison d'etre and grasp a share of this UEFA nirvana for the Celtic Brand, then surely they need to focus on the success of this brand absolutely rather than allowing their own private considerations to come into play.

At the moment, this is not happening.
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2. Politics

Bobby Sands MP, representing the Anti H-Block party, was elected as a member of the British parliament in 1981.

30,493 people voted for him in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone constituency.
There was an 86.9% turnout.
Sands had a public mandate to fight against inappropriate state power and terror...
... exactly the same as Nelson Mandela who was eulogised by UEFA after his death.

When the club were being punished by UEFA for displaying political imagery, why didn't the hierarchy point out the equivalence between the politics and strategies of Sands/IRA when compared with Mandela/ANC?

After all, Cameron wanted Mandela to hang, Thatcher thought him a terrorist and the US agreed by keeping him on their list of global terrorists until 2008 before he was whitewashed into someone else.

Instead the club have allowed their club brand to be demoted in the UEFA marketing pyramid without offering a stout defence.
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3. Club Ownership

As we have pointed out before (http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/how-to-solve-match-fixing-once-and-for.html) there are potentially issues of integrity when bookmakers own football clubs.

We have NO evidence of inappropriate fixing of Celtic matches due to Desmond/Betdaq link but this is a structure that should generally be regarded as one being primed for shenanigans.

And we are always wary of bookmakers that, like Betdaq, do not allow winning accounts as, after all, if you are not allowed to win off a bookmaker then the business interaction is something else entirely!

There must be occasions when Desmond's personal financial focus is different to that of the club...
... and this must be a concern.

When board members and club agents are known to bet on Celtic matches, is it invalid to express concern that people higher up the hierarchy might conceivably share a similar inclination?

And, as a background, there is something vaguely distasteful about Desmond being £2 million in pocket, Lawwell annually heating his driveway with £700K while the club refuses to pay a Living Wage at the bottom of the pyramid.
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4. A Way Forward

The atmosphere at the recent Hearts match was truly depressing.
Things need to change.
And fast.

From our position, we might suggest a discussion based around very basic foundational areas:

Who owns the club? The financial hierarchy or the fans? How might co-ownership be achieved?  What happens when the needs of the club differ from those paid to manage it?

Decisions made in the imminent future will determine the future of Celtic for decades to come.

Time to get strategic. 
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For Celtic to be self-harming in this window of massive monopolistic competitive opportunity in Scotland is a crying shame.
To waste all this energy turning inwards rather than planning for a brighter future in the European Super League is only helping one team, Sevconians.

And Lawwell was wrong on this too...
... Sevconians are not an imitation of a reality in the sense of Rory Bremner doing Tony Blair, because the real Tony Blair (unfortunately) still exists while the comedian performs his parallel.

Sevconians are actually a posthumous tribute act - just like a Michael Jackson one or an Elvis one...
... only with weaker songs.

Rangers no longer exist and Sevconians merely allow a little nostalgia and reminiscence for those who still care.

Rangers are the past. Not the future. 
Just mock them.

Hail Hail Hogmanay!


© Football is Fixed 2006-2013 

Premier League Does Peaky Blinders

                             How Did Michael Owen Ever End Up At Stoke City? Oh! I See

Bookmaker who owns a football club strikes out at policeman who refereed a highly suspicious football match.

With the news, carefully avoided in most of the British mainstream media, that Stoke City owner Peter Coates has lodged an official complaint to the authorities over the refereeing performance of Martin Atkinson in Newcastle United's 5-1 win over Stoke, the Premier League has taken a theatrical turn.

Atkinson, with considerable ineptitude, sent off two Stoke players, sent manager Mark Hughes to the stands and allowed a fictitious goal to stand.
He acted his part manfully with a permanent smirk on his face.

Most key market makers of our acquaintance regard this match as highly suspicious with regard to the integrity of the betting markets.

Just another collection of spurious realities, of course...

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

Michael Owen Issues A Statement On Behalf Of Football

Michael Owen, a horserace owning professional gambling former footballer claims match fixing "not a huge issue".
That's put that to bed then.

Michael Owen used to act as a bookies runner to the England team laying off the bets to Goldchip - a private bookmaker set up by his business partner, Stephen Smith in 2004.

Wayne Rooney ran up debts of £700K and Goldchip managed to achieve a remarkable return on turnover around ten times the industry average (http://www.theguardian.com/football/2008/jan/18/sport.comment5).

Additionally cash bets were taken from the England team and these are not included in the figures of visible profit for Goldchip - a sort of licit illicit activity.

Michael Owen: "It’s strong words, match fixing. When someone says match fixing to me I automatically think of 22 players fixing the result... but [it] is not necessarily people colluding at the highest levels to rig games."

Okay.

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

How To Solve Match Fixing Once And For All

Yesterday, Liberal Democrat MP Sir Bob Russell said that English professional football is "rotten to the core" and that a Royal Commission is required to clean up football with "parasitic agents" being the major problem.

If any such Royal Commission is to work then it will need to thoroughly address the six points outlined below.
Otherwise the game is up.
 
Also yesterday, UEFA announced that they are drafting an 11-point plan aimed to eradicate match-fixing, labelling it their 'top priority'.

Unfortunately, skimming over the pitch put forward by the aptly named UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino, we can only expect peripheral tinkering akin to that achieved by the British government's select committee who reported last summer.
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On Tuesday night, there was a highly suspicious match between FC Bayern and Manchester City in the UEFA Champions League (http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/was-fc-bayern-versus-manchester-city-fix.html) (http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-fixing-of-champions-league-games.html).

We may be polemical but there is evidently a case to be answered here.
This is a suspicious event between the Champions League holders and the richest club in the world!
And media silence.

Instead UEFA claim only 0.7% of matches are fixed and the mainstream media in Britain focuses on Whitehawk FC and DJ Campbell.

Infantino also indicated that UEFA want to strengthen the links between sports authorities and state bodies but this is a structure that can backfire dependent on who represents the state - there are many countries where state interference would only serve to increase the corruption.

We are employed by clubs as leech consultants.
We protect clubs against systemic and particular corruptions against their interests.
We analyse the zeitgeist of corruption.

To us, the most astonishing aspect of the match fixing 'crisis' is that when we have seen that government, the mainstream media, investment banking, the police, retail banks, the utilities, many other sports are all corrupted, there is this religious belief that, somehow, top level football is not tainted.
Football has taken over from religion - everybody is 'Something FC 'til I Die'.
And we don't want our New Deity to be killed off just yet.

But if football really wants to save itself from the neohyperrealities of the present systemic corruptions, it needs to implement every single one of the points below in their entirety.

No pseudo-11 point plan but an overhaul of an entirely corrupt mechanism from top to bottom.
But starting at the top.

DJ Campbell Is Innocent!
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1. The Betting Markets and Insider Trading

The primary concern are the global betting markets.
There are three levels of market activity - the public markets, the Dark Pools and the illegal underground markets based largely but not exclusively in South East Asia.

With a global network of this type, there has to be global regulation with jail sentences and life bans for miscreants.
The global betting market turnover on football is thought to have reached £1 trillion.
£1 trillion is over 50% of the Britain's annual GDP!!

All markets must be public.
All trading by insiders must be registered with a Commitment of Traders body to prevent inside knowledge being exploited.
All players, referees, agents, managers should be banned from betting entirely.
All suspicious betting must be reported to forensic analysts to detect fraudulent behaviour - the current level of expertise exhibited by Early Warning, Interpol/ Europol etc is not professional enough (we are able to detect insider betting and match fixing in many more games than 0.7%!!).
All spot-markets should be banned.
All Dark Pool activity must be regulated and made public, the same with the Asian underground and the developing undergrounds in Dubai, the Caribbean, numerous British offshore territories, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Tbilisi, Nigeria, Australia, the US and Canada, Brazil, Mumbai etc.

2. Agents and the Markets

Every single football agent that I have ever met has been criminalised!

Agents are a lubricant in the game and, in addition to leeching money from the sport, they facilitate corruptions relating to both the betting markets and the transfer markets.

Ownership of goalkeepers, linkage with referees (see below), multiple ownership of players in a game, even more extensive multiple ownership via linkage with other agents in a fragmented cartel of illicit match fixing and betting market activity.
Accordingly agents not only distort, corrupt and profit from the betting markets that they exploit, they degenerate the sport and impact upon trophies being won and relegations/ promotions etc.
The careers of players are also affected by these corruptions and the fan is forced to watch events where the outcome is clearly visible in underground betting markets pre-match!

Agents corrupt Champions League games at the highest level and yet UEFA do nothing.

Agents also, as is their wont, exploit the transfer market via 3rd party ownership.

There is no regulation for agents.
And no regulation or self-regulation is pointless.
Agents distort every single aspect of the sport and often utilise business practices that border on the slave trade when it comes to footballers from Africa and certain South and Central American countries.
Coercion of players relating to the betting markets is a major issue.
Additionally, under the table payments are the norm and ownership networks are structured similarly to the Tor proxy server concept!

Agents must be regulated.

3. Club Owners

Surely it is asking for trouble if club owners double as bookmakers.

There will inevitably be occasions when the financial self-interest of Mr Bet 365 The Bookmaker will trump the interests of Mr Bet 365 The Football Club (Stoke City) - the only issue is whether such self-interest is implemented.
Additionally, this incentive to fix can result in club owners stopping their own teams from winning to the absolute detriment of the fans who are paying the wages and the integrity of the game.

All club ownership should be open rather than underground and opaque.
Fit and proper persons rulings should be robust and thoroughly implemented - the Championship in England is a veritable Hotch Potch of Inappropriates when it comes to club ownership...
... and the Premier League is only marginally better.

4. Referees

Referees are an issue.
Relatively underpaid in a millionaire's paradise, they are ripe for corruption.

Referees are chosen from too small a pool (only 18 for the Premier League - the most liquid betting market on the planet, for example) and have very long careers.
Market ownership of a referee is a big earner for both parties.
Referees are additionally 'owned' by other participants in the game - clubs, mafia, even UEFA chooses referees relating to its own annual marketing plan AND the importance of allegiance to the G14(18) power base of clubs.

If referees were selected meritocratically then corruption from this source would be harder to implement.
To this end, the ratings of referees need to be made public and the implementation of video technology (see next point) will enable 'under-achievers' to be rooted out and discarded.

5. Video Technology

It is more critical for football to have video technology than cricket, tennis or rugby yet the authorities refuse to introduce anything more than goalline technology. Why?

An incorrect wicket in cricket, line call in tennis or try in rugby is rarely match changing yet those sports guard against such occurrences by using technology ...
... in football a goal or a penalty or a sending off very frequently is a match changing event and yet we have virtually nothing.

Up to 40 wickets in a Test Match, 240 points in a tennis match, half a dozen tries in a game of rugby...
... and one goal.

Furthermore, because professional footballers are well aware of the corruptions taking place, once a referee signals his intent, there is a psychological deflation in the victim team.

The most striking aspect of watching cricket or rugby is how fan conversation always relates to the game itself due to the utilisation of video technology for virtually all contentious decisions.
This serves to produce the correct result, massively reduce corruption and act as a measurement of performance of referees and umpires.

The argument that it would slow down the game is fatuous.

It would add excitement if marketed correctly.
UEFA and the Premier League would be able to bombard us with messages from their media partners while we waited to see if it is a penalty or not!

6. Whistleblowing Hotline

When we have meetings with administrative bodies, chief executives, football managers, club owners, analysts, bookmakers, many fans, there is acceptance that football is corrupt but that nobody is going to do anything about it due to both financial self-interest and fear.

Remember Mike Newell? He soon disappeared from the game!

A global whistleblowing hotline needs to be set up to allow knowledge of match fixing to be made available to the various bodies that will need to be established for Points 1-5 to be achieved.
This must be anonymous and rewarded.
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People like ourselves who receive threats and menaces due to their efforts to expose football that is "riddled with corruption" need to be protected.

The sport is flooded with mafiosi interests - at the moment, I am enjoying extensive conversations with a contact over the role of Serbian mafia in Italian and Serbian football and the role of Albanian mafia in the Austrian game.

But such groups are only able to exploit the integrity of football due to an entire lack of regulation in many areas and loopholes elsewhere.
If FIFA and UEFA eliminated these distortions, we could have betting markets on a level playing field and football would not be fixed. 


We are taking serious existential risks to disclose these neohyperrealities of modern football.

THIS IS NOT HOW IT SHOULD BE.

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NB: Please note that myself or other members of our cellular body are available for media in this window. 
You can reach us via a Direct Message at Twitter (@footballisfixed) or via email (footballisfixed02@googlemail.com).


© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

Football Markets Are Not The Only Markets That Are Fecked

Eugene Fama was one of three winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics this year.

His hypothesis regarding the efficiency of financial markets is indeed elegant (which sometimes is enough for an award to be made) but it is also utterly and completely wrong.
Not particularly impressed with his Fama-French Three-Factor Model either (but more on that later).

If there were no government interferences, no psychopathies, no behavioural irrationalities, no corruptions nor criminalities and if market sectors didn't always evolve towards maturity, he would be right.
But as these inputs drive all markets, the laureate is surely wrong.

Fama's Efficient Markets Hypothesis was put forward in 1970 and formed an intellectual basis for the shock doctrine disaster neo-capitalism that the world has experienced since.
By being a part of the "intellectual" framework gathered as an neo-con edifice at the University of Chicago, Fama bears some responsibility for this sociopathic system.

So, what is Gene's hypothesis and why is it incorrect?

The Efficient Markets Hypothesis is split into three levels - strong-form, semi-strong-form and weak-form efficiency.
Strong-form suggests that market prices reflect all information, public and private, and it is not possible for anyone to earn excess returns.
In semi-stong-form, prices adjust to new information rapidly and rationally.
While in weak-form structures, prices simply follow a random walk.

Before we go any further we need to look at the architecture of markets.
The public markets are just the top of an iceberg of submerged Dark Pool markets - there are hundreds of unregulated Dark Pools where insiders trade against insiders in markets that the public only sees when an excess of over-enthusiasm occurs. It is in these markets that the big market plays are made not the public ones.

For all assessments of Fama's Hypothesis, therefore, it will need to be addressed on two levels - the public markets and the Dark Pools.

1) The most dominant input to the wrongness of Fama's Hypothesis is behaviouralism.
Work in the sixties by Daniel Kahnemann, Amos Tversky, Paul Slovic and Richard Thaler had already introduced psychology to the market and, in 1979, Kahnemann and Tversky developed Prospect Theory which represented the final psychological nail in the coffin of Efficient Markets. Investors do not behave in a rational manner in the marketplace for a whole continuum of different reasons that both exist within themselves and also interact in complex ways between themselves to produce the behaviours that we project. Market prices represent mass human psychology far more than they do unproved economic fundamentals.
So by 1979, Fama's Hypothesis should have been put to bed...
... unfortunately, it took the blinkered Chicago School until 2007 to acknowledge the impact of behaviouralism in markets, attempting to convince us in the meantime that an efficient pricing infrastructure underpinned the alleged validity of Friedmanian late capitalism..

Slavoj Žižek: "The problem is today when you have chaos or disorder, people lose their cognitive mapping."

2) All of the information is not in the market. Even if behaviouralism did not exist and we were all perfectly rational in all of our decision-making, efficient markets would be compromised on all three levels of Fama's efficiency hierarchy.
Public markets are largely inefficient being too far from the core Dark Pools to be benefiting instantaneously to the flow of real information. The public markets offer a distilled filtered form of this driving underground Dark Pool marketplace. Dark Pool trading strategies become converted into a holistic market strategy as Dark Pool liabilities are hedged in the public sphere.

What about the Dark Pools?
Are they a proof of Fama efficiencies?

No.
Behaviouralism is a "plug in" in any market, public or Dark Pool.
Additionally, the information flow in Dark Pools is, by its very nature, opaque.
Proxy trading, algorithmic distortions, hidden players away from the table, consortia strategies, disinformational trading, cornered markets etc etc.
At any given time, the market tends to inefficiency.
As mature markets might evolve into anything the primary operators desire, the price can be anything too.

Mature markets (and these are the ones most traded in the Dark Pools) are largely under the absolute control of a small grouping of operations, think OPEC. Individual members of OPEC have their own hidden agendas over and above the shared agenda with fellow members. Even when the structure is held in place with extra robustness due to government scaffolding around the market, the major player(s) is/are still able to make the market whatever they desire whenever they desire.
In effect monopolistic corruption distorts any semblance of efficiency in the market while duopolistic or cartel behaviour offers a slightly diluted version of the same.

3) Disaster capitalism undermines any efficiency in any financial market.
The Friedmanian disaster capitalism complex thrives on chaos. When a disaster strikes or, as in the case of Chile, is created, the Chicago school Hayekians move in with their shock tactics to further destabilise an already destabilised people. As US security entities move into the vacuum, the markets are utterly chaotic. Although some efficiency and robustness is added to the marketplace ironically by the strategies of these security operations (the same template being micro-adjusted from territory to territory) the holistic performance of the markets is driven by irrationalities and the efficiencies fall off the bottom of Fama's ratings chart.

4) Private information is introduced to the market in a variety of strategies that, by their very nature, imply market inefficiencies being created for the advantage of Dark Pool operations.
Knowledge within a company, governmental or central bank policies, trading disinformation for future profits, competitive market poker play all are based around the possession of the ultimate power play for the marketplace. Just think of the variety of ways in which, say, Ben Bernanke could have utilised his absolute knowledge of the variables related to quantitative easing. An individual, with evolving strategies, could make money without the full reality hitting the market by placing trades laterally and peripherally.

Noam Chomsky would call this "cogntive regulatory capture" and it is a structure typical of late capitalism.

5) The most obvious way in which financial markets are inefficient is by their refusal to accept the cost of externalities in the price of an asset.
How on earth can a price be efficient in the holistic sense if externalities are not included in the calculation? The price can only be considered in any way efficient in short time frames as, when the true costs are included, the asset value is very different indeed. The timing of this market implosion can be an unknown variable.

Friedmanism underprices risk and ignores externalities.
The eventual impact of these externalities is infrastructurally significant.

Andrew Haldane, who should have been made governor of the Bank of England, calls this "disaster myopia".

Disaster myopia in disaster capitalism complex!

Although Dark Pools are displaced up the efficiency hierarchy due to lack of time lag and the primary element in the insider trading, the market increase in efficiency is only marginal and only due to corrupting inputs being introduced to the market price.
If all corrupt inputs in a mature market could be known and assessed both singly and in association with one another, only then might a corrupt market approach strong-form efficiency and in a non-regulated marketplace this is simply not going to occur.

Which brings us to the conclusion of yet another aspect of the fake of Friedmanism.

Fama's only other claim to fame is the Fama-French Three-Factor Model.
This attempts to replace the old Capital Asset Pricing Model (which, by the way, is also inadequate).
Needless to say the Three-Factor model doesn't work as it ignores corruption and behaviouralism.

Entertainingly, Foye, Mramor and Pahor (2013) have shown an improvement in the performance of the Fama-French model if one of the terms is replaced by a term that acts as a proxy for accounting manipulation!

These papers are amongst the first tentative steps of economics crawling towards holistically analysing the hyperreality.

Benoît Mandelbrot: "Financial economics, as a discipline, is where Chemistry was in the 16th century: a messy compendium of proven know-how, misty folk wisdom, and unexamined assumptions and grandiose speculation."

As a former pupil of Mandelbrot, Fama should know better...
... grandiose models, unexamined inputs, misty economic wisdom mixed with the status quo.

And, anyway, as economics in rather dubious fashion claims to be a science, let's address it as such...

Michel Foucault: "If one recognises in science only the linear accumulation of truths or the orthogenesis of reason, and fails to recognise in it the discursive practice that has its own levels, its own thresholds, its own various ruptures, one can describe only a single historical division, which one adopts as a model to be applied at all times for all forms of knowledge."

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013  

The Fixing Of A Champions League Game

Only one winner and three finalists in the 22 year history of the Champions League have not been from the power group of G14(18) clubs.

When there appears to be systemic corruption, it is little wonder that clubs and individuals lower down the food chain also wish to feed at the trough of greed.

This is the fifth season where Manuel Pellegrini has managed a Champions League team - Villarreal (twice), Real Madrid, Malaga and Manchester City.
His 'error of judgement' in Munchen on Tuesday has been put down to a lack of knowledge regarding the rules of qualification.

Notwithstanding the fact that a meticulous mathematician of a manager would not make such an 'error of judgement', Pellegrini has been in very similar positions twice before going into the final round of Champions League group games...
... and on each occasion, he was strategic in the need for a particular result.

In 2009/10, Real Madrid had to win their final match away to Marseille, otherwise Milan could have finished above them due to their head-to-head matches (1-1 and a 3-2 win to the Italians).
If goal difference had been the issue then a draw would have been enough as Madrid had a 6 goal advantage in this department.
Real Madrid won and finished top of their group.

The previous season at Villarreal, Pellegrini was in a similar position going into the final match except that, on this occasion, although the team were level on points with Manchester United and both head-to-head games between the teams had finished 0-0, United's two goal difference advantage plus the Mancunians home advantage against Aalborg of Denmark resulted in Pellegrini resting 8 first team members with the outcome being a 2-0 defeat at Celtic.

Each of these structures would suggest that Sr Pellegrini is well aware of the rules of qualification for the Champions League 2nd Phase.

We are aware that Interpol and Europol have been informed regarding this match but don't hold your breath as corruption must only be seen to occur in eastern Europe and the Balkans.

But what exactly was going on in Munchen on Tuesday?

NB: Please note that myself or other members of our cellular body are available for media in this window. 
You can reach us via a Direct Message at Twitter (@footballisfixed) or via email (footballisfixed02@googlemail.com). 

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

Was FC Bayern Versus Manchester City A Fix?

We cannot prove for certain that the Champions League match between FC Bayern and Manchester City was criminalised because we are not able to access the particular betting market where any insider trading from the Bavarian club surfaces.

But, structurally, there are numerous reasons to be fearful...

1) The holistic match structure was very similar to the two equally suspicious matches featuring Germany and Sweden in the World Cup 2014 Qualifiers (Germany threw away a four goal lead in half an hour with the first match ending 4-4 while coming back from 2-0 down to win 5-3 in the second). Eight of the players involved in this latter game emanate from FC Bayern.

2) FC Bayern threw away a 2-0 lead last night to lose 2-3. If Manchester City had scored a fourth goal, they would have been top of the group and seeded going into the 2nd Phase giving them an easier match and route.

3) FC Bayern were unbeaten for 40 games having won 37 of them prior to yesterday. They had only let three goals in in their unbeaten run of 10 Champions League games before letting in three in around 30 minutes last night. They had won 7-0 away at the weekend and Manchester City were available at up to 250/1 at 0-2 behind.

4) FC Bayern did not have one shot on target in the second half apart from a 40 yarder down the centre of the goal from Shaqiri. At 2-3 down, Guardiola substituted top scorer Mandzukic and replaced him with the Swiss player who was returning after a long injury lay off. Why would you do that thing?

5) Even at half time, suspicions were aroused both in our trading room and in the Sky studio.
Graeme Souness: "Bayern Munich are going through the motions."
Martin Tyler: "It has been a strange first half."
Niall Quinn: "... strange kind of flow to the game. Bayern took their foot off the pedal."
Glen Hoddle: "Its been a strange kind of game."

6) All market analysts that we have spoken with this morning (both in Europe and Asia) reckon that the match was fixed.

7) Why did Pellegrini not go for the 4th goal that would have given City top place (there is a vast discrepancy between the winners and 2nd place teams this season). He didn't bring on arguably the best forward in the Premier League, Sergio Aguero, and substituted Edin Dzeko later in the game, replacing him with a holding midfielder, Jack Rodwell. Why would you do these things?

8) Recently, we undertook a leech consultancy with an individual at FC Bayern and these types of match structures featured very prominently in our analyses. For it would appear that FC Bayern did not wish to equalise while Manchester City didn't want to win 4-2 and finish top of the group.

But we can't prove anything on this particular match...
... it is simply very very suspicious.

But the Germans had quite a night all in all.

In Athens, Wolfgang Stark was refereeing his last ever Champions League game with the match between Olympiacos and Anderlecht. 
Herr Stark gave three penalties to the Greeks and sent off three Belgian players.

John van den Brom, the Anderlecht manager had this to say:
"Let us start at the beginning - it was soon clear to me that we could not win this match," he said.
"Were all the decisions of this man [the referee] wrong? Yes.
"I also hear that it was the last Champions League match of the referee. Well, then I'm happy for the other teams in the Champions League. This was just outrageous."

Farcical.

NB: Please note that myself or other members of our cellular body are available for media in this window. 
You can reach us via a Direct Message at Twitter (@footballisfixed) or via email (footballisfixed02@googlemail.com).


© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

The Eff All

An FA Cup Final and numerous England internationals have been fixed yet yesterday, the FA general secretary, Alex Horne, informed us that match fixing "isn't a big issue" and denied that his body had been complacent about corruption in the past.
The man is incorrect on both counts.

The FA have lived up to their name and done fuck all about match fixing in England.

When systemic corruption is being rumbled in any sector of society, insiders are headlined across the mainstream media in desperate attempts to spread doubts over the publicly perceived narrative.

People in the game have reported both proofs and suspicions of match fixing to the FA and the FA have done precisely nothing in response.
Nobody has been questioned.
Nobody has been banned.
Perpetrators continue to fix.
The public is kept in the dark.

As we reported the other day (http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/surfing-zeitgeist-of-corruption.html), when current Lincoln City manager, Gary Simpson, reported a fixed match, he was told that he was correct and that there had been irregular betting patterns on the game but no action was taken even though the referee would appear to be a part of the fix.
When Simpson went public with this reality, only European papers reported the story with all the mainstream English press staying unusually silent.

Marcus Gayle and numerous others have also reported rigged games or attempts to fix matches to the FA with the same inaction.

Meanwhile the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) have released a statement:
"The PFA is aware of the reports in yesterday's media regarding allegations of 'match fixing' and other related activity.
These allegations, if proven, unfortunately demonstrate the real issue football faces in terms of corruption and highlights the necessity of the work carried out by the PFA and other stakeholders in the game in educating players of these risks. We take the issue of integrity very seriously and will continue in our efforts to eradicate this evil from our game."

The PFA statement might have greater gravitas if PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor hadn't run up gambling debts of over £100K!

The focus by the mainstream media on spot-fixing is a further damage limitation exercise.
When a match result is corrupted, fans are outraged...
... when a player deliberately gets booked (whether for personal financial gain or for strategic reasons in the Champions League), to be honest, who cares?

But gambling addiction is identical to drug addiction.
Individuals who start off spot-fixing end up match fixing.

As an example of this,leading football agent John Colquhoun's first venture into his current raison d'etre was rigging the 'time of first throw in' markets with the spread betting firms.
From little acorns...

And while all this is going on, while our beloved sport is being denigrated to the level of greyhound racing, there is a deafening silence from Richard Scudamore and his backers at the Premier League.
Much better to leave it to the inappropriate men in suits at the FA, chosen non-meritocratically, taking their freebies and being entirely unaware of the monstrosity that is under their noses.

Until football incorporates video technology for all key decisions, until referees are appointed on ability rather than underworld reasonings, until agents are regulated globally by FIFA, until FIFA becomes representative of the game it is supposed to govern, until global regulations covering football betting are developed, until the footballing equivalent of the Commitment of Traders Reports governing insider trading is created, until tax authorities work worldwide to address tax evasion on gambling profits and until perpetrators are arrested, given lifetime bans and jailed, the game is up.

NB: Please note that myself or other members of our cellular body are available for media in this window. 
You can reach us via a Direct Message at Twitter (@footballisfixed) or via email (footballisfixed02@googlemail.com).


© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

A Fixed FA Cup Final And A Corrupted Premier League Relegation (And Stuff...)

As English football desperately attempts to be perceived as what it is not, the stories are going to keep on surfacing as a critical point has been reached where full disclosure of the extent of the corruption is now an option.

So, while the mainstream media attempt to create a narrative suggesting that relatively poorly paid lower division Black men are spot-fixing, the real issue is that the corruption and insider trading in English football are systemic.

And such corruptions and biases determine trophies, titles, relegations and careers.

In the last decade...

One FA Cup Final was fixed via a collaboration of referee, players, management and agents.  

Reading were relegated from the Premier League via a fixed match between Portsmouth and Fulham which saw input from players, other insiders and agents. The then Fulham manager, Roy Hodgson, has never looked back.


Manchester United experienced a run of 24 consecutive penalties/ sendings off in their favour in the 18 month window between losing 1-6 to City and securing the Premier League title last season.

But run-of-the-mill insider trading, match fixing and other corruptions are a regular feature of football at the highest levels in England.

The infrastructure is primed for these criminalities.

1) No video technology for the vast majority of key decisions.
2) Only 18 individuals are allowed to referee Premier League games in careers that can last two decades.
3) There are no regulations preventing football agents fixing match outcomes and transfer markets.
4) One man selects the referees for all Premier League matches.
5) Referees are legally prevented from discussions with media for life.
6) There are no binding rules of disclosure forcing bookmakers to reveal insider trading or for the authorities to act on such information even if received.
7) The mainstream media is controlled by insiders.

Take a couple of examples of the infrastructure...

This last weekend, Sky provided 4 live Premier League games.
The outcomes of three of these matches were determined by refereeing 'errors' and, in the other game, Wenger complained bitterly about Howard Webb's differential in the treatment of fouls from Arsenal and Everton.

Sunderland v Spurs - Sunderland denied a clear penalty for handball that was clearly seen by Lee Mason the referee. Sunderland lost 1-2. 4th Official was Martin Atkinson.

Fulham v Aston Villa - Mike Dean gave a ludicrous penalty to Fulham while denying Villa are markedly more obvious one. There were suspicious betting patterns on this game. 2-0 for Fulham.

Swansea v Hull City - After the PGMOB changed the referee from PC Chris Foy to PC Martin Atkinson, Swansea equalised with a handballed shot and Hull were denied an evident penalty for another handball. There were suspicious betting inputs here too. Being a policeman, Atkinson also booked four Black men and a Latino. Ended 1-1.

Arguably, all four weekend live Sky matches had their outcome altered inappropriately by the input of match officials.

And the referees for the four live Sky/BT matches next weekend are Atkinson, Dean, Foy and, for his 10th live match of the season, Jonathan Moss.

We are absolutely not saying in this place that Messrs Moss, Mason, Dean, Webb, Foy and Atkinson fix matches.
But we are saying that when £1 trillion is bet globally on football with around £200 billion of this turnover being on the Premier League, surely a more robust system of regulation, selection and assessment of the structure is needed.

And why won't football allow the technology that has cleaned up cricket, keeps Rugby Union authentic and prevents errors of human judgement in tennis?
Why doesn't football want outcomes of integrity?

And why is football focusing on lower league corruptions perpetrated allegedly by Afro-Caribbean, South and South East Asian individuals when ALL the corruption that we detect in English football has a white face attached to it?

Societal hierarchy always attempts to show corruption as a few bad apples, peripheral distortions of a system.
But the 2007 financial crash changed all that.
It is an illusion that the well-paid are not corrupt.
Everybody has a price...
... even we do!

But the very key issue is one of power.

One football agent who fixes Premier League (and other) games is petrified of a mafia grouping that controls the council of one particular British city...
... and when British (and South East Asian) mafia are competing for control of our sport, you know that the game is up.

NB: Please note that myself or other members of our cellular body are available for media in this window. 
You can reach us via a Direct Message at Twitter (@footballisfixed) or via email (footballisfixed02@googlemail.com).

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013   

Ten Fixed Matches

While the mainstream media focuses on Afro-Caribbean, South Asian and Singaporean match fixers as opposed to the largely white Caucasian expanse of managers, players, referees, owners, agents, bookmakers, administrators, commentators, media analysts and a former senior government individual who are systemically corrupting the English game, we provide you with ten matches involving English teams that were conspiratorially fixed and/or involved excessive insider trading.

We take these matches from all levels of the game in England across half a decade to demonstrate how widespread the corruption is.

• Manchester United v Real Madrid (Champions League 2012/13) - agent control/ insider betting
• Manchester United v Crystal Palace (Premier League 2013/14) - fixed match/ insider betting
• Portsmouth v Fulham (Premier League 2007/08) - fixed match/ Reading relegated
• Wigan v Tottenham (Premier League 2008/09) - insider betting
• Fulham v Wigan (Premier League 2007/08) - fixed match/ insider betting
• West Brom v Manchester United (Premier League 2012/13) - competing insider betting in 5-5 draw
• Finland U-21s v England U21s (European Championships 2013/14) - fixed match/ insider betting
• Norwich v West Ham (Premier League 2013/14) - fixed match/ insider betting
• Barnet v Macclesfield (League Two 2011/12) - fixed match/ insider betting
• Buxton v Stocksbridge Park Steels (Northern Premier League Premier Division 2013/14) - fixed match 

Marcus Gayle: “I never thought match fixing was possible. But now I have changed my mind, for obvious reasons. Now, I am convinced it’s all over the place."

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed
© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

Run Those Neohyperrealities Past Me Again

Insider gamblers are still targeting English Premier League games.
We have detected SIX matches where insider trading occurred since the announcement of the "biggest scandal in decades" last week.
There have only been 11 games in this window. 

Not all insider gambles represent fixed matches, of course.
But some do. 

And, anyway, why should insiders be betting at all?

Some forms of corruption have been eliminated from the Premier League Market Profile this season.
Other forms of corruption have moved in their place as is always the case when a reality has morphed through "the phases of the image" to a neohyperreality.

Just six days ago, the Daily Telegraph announced that its investigation had revealed agent-led match-fixing in English football.
The newspaper claimed that this was the biggest scandal in decades to hit the English game.
By Saturday, all traces of this "biggest scandal in decades" had been removed from the Telegraph and all other mainstream media in England.

Meanwhile, on Saturday it was revealed that agents had taken nearly £100 million from the Premier League in the year to September 2013.
This represented an increase in take of 25%.
There were virtually no references to this in the mainstream media.

When this "biggest scandal in decades" was reported, newspapers with close links to agents didn't allow 'comments' and there were considerable column inches desperately separating this corruption from any link to the Premier League.
This despite the Premier League being the biggest betting market on the planet.

So the only questions of consequence are these...

1) At what point did this charade become a charade?
2) What the hell happened to this "biggest scandal in decades"?

Jean Baudrillard: "These would be the successive phases of the image:

1) It is the reflection of a basic reality.
2) It masks and perverts a basic reality.
3) It masks the absence of a basic reality.
4) It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum."

Football has become a fifth level of these phases of the image.

Football not only bears no relation to any reality whatever but also the constituents that determine the fake realities within this simulacrum are themselves hyperreal too.

Football is a neohyperreality. 

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed
 
© Football is Fixed 2006-2013

The Dirty Dozen - The Role Of Agents In The Criminalisation Of Football

How Agents Are Destroying Football


1. Many firms of agents have an interest in the global betting markets. Some firms specifically target goalkeepers, for example. A very high percentage of the sixty plus betting scandals to be currently under investigation feature agents as facilitators due to the way in which agents seemlessly lubricate the system.

2. Betting interest soon morphs into market control. preferably in-house otherwise in a fragmented cartel. There are a variety of tipping points where the critical mass of the control of a match corruption is reached. Matches are fixed via participants on behalf of their agents. Agents target both club and international matches.

3. Player loyalty to club is increasingly a rare factor in football nowadays. Players have an agent for life (pre to post career) and any number of clubs. Badge-kissing is simply marketing the brand of the self. Clubs that employ several players from the same firm of agents or from a web-like cartel of agents risk losing control of their matches although some of the better run clubs limit such exposure as a matter of strategy e.g. FC Bayern, Milan, Barcelona and Blackpool.

4. Once control of a very liquid betting market becomes the focus of agents/ cartel of agents' attention then control of those lily-livered reprobates, the referees, becomes the primary strategy. At the poker table of postmodern football, one goalkeeper + the referee is a very strong hand indeed. Referees are underpaid outliers with football envy - psychologically many referees are desperate for 'acceptance' within the game. Media silence and retirement hush money aid any shenanigans.

5. Once an agent/ cartel is seen to be influencing market outcomes, market makers and bookmakers enter stage right. Hence surface level criminalised trading migrates to the European and Asian underworlds, undergrounds and offshore financial centres. It is not surprising that a £1 trillion annual market attracts such intricate infrastructures.

6. Agents bleed the game of money that should be going to grass roots projects. For the year ending September 2013, agents took virtually £100 million from the Premier League (over £2.5 million for every round of games).This was a 25% increase and elicited no mainstream media attention in a week where the words 'agents' and 'match-fixing' kept appearing in the same sentences.

7. Due to loyalty to self/ agent rather than club, a perverse incentive means many players will perform fully only when playing in live tv matches with massively increased global exposure. Similarly, 'injuries' and choice of timing for operations etc are determined by agent not by the club.

8. Agents always boast about the black market sides of their job - the under-the-table illicit payments to drop interests in a player, the insider gamble that the bookies couldn't stop. Agents take far more than £100 million out of the English game in the grey and black market sectors.

9. Agents undertake mainstream media control for the promotion of their clients, the suppression of inappropriate news and reality leakages, the advancement of transfer strategies and, in the case of the Guardian, the 'creation' of an entirely fictitious neohyperreality in the form of the Secret Footballer. How apt that, with editorial involvement, a newspaper that robbed the secrets from Wikileaks and Snowden should create their very own imaginary secrets via a fake entity linked to a leading football agent!

10. There is no regulation of agents. Consequently, all agents eventually, if not initially, become linked to mafia - this is the only evolution feasible in Friedmanian capitalism in a sector that is entirely non-regulated. Market Maturity = Monopolistic Mafia. Although agents police themselves, a whole variety of mafia groups police the agents.

11. Third Party Agreements are not only still the norm but Fourth and Fifth Party ones exist too. Self-regulation means, in effect, no regulation as agents create the necessary infrastructure to allow them to optimise their operations.

12. Top agents have links to government in Britain (both Labour and Tory). Bizarrely, agents and (the limited) control of a hugely liquid global financial market that they bring are one of the few hyperreal growth areas in our austerity-wrecked post-imperial wasteland of a fake-service economy. Of course, government cannot boast this economic success story: "our match-fixing and market distortions are bringing jobs to Britain..."

When a former player-turned-agent Delroy Facey was named as a key operator in Invisiblegate - the English match-fixing scandal which allegedly happened last week - we expected an imminent media blackout, a separation of the Premier League from any allegations of match-fixing and a markedly legitimate weekend in the Premier League. And that is what we got. It was just like the old days. No sendings off and just one penalty (to Manchester United, of course). No controversy. We cannot find any other weekend in our databases with so little referee influence. What a remarkable fluke!

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed
© Football is Fixed 2006-2013
 

Mediastan - Everything That Never Happens Will Never Happen Today

After three days the English match-fixing story is out of the mainstream media.

Three days ago the Telegraph were claiming the "biggest scandal to hit English football in decades".
Now they are offering us silence.
Aready.
Buried.

Additionally, the Daily Telegraph have made it quite clear that they are not willing to expose Premier League corruption. 

While The Guardian football section (under control of agents) do not allow comments on any of the match-fixing articles on their website.

No mention of the match-fixing on Match of the Day and that funny little guy with the dodgy trousers on the Football League show claims that "the week was dominated by managerial casualties"...
... as opposed to match-fixing in the Football League presumably.

Meanwhile, Premier League referees do not give one penalty or sending off on Saturday...
... in fact they seemed incapable of making any decisions in a combined display of invisibility.

Meanwhile...
... the 25% increase to £97m in earnings for agents from Premier League transfers doesn't even warrant a mainstream media headline.

But meanwhile...
...outrageous amounts of mainstream media headline space and column inches for Wenger saying that English football is 99.9% clean.

Nothing to see here.
C'mon, move on now.

BUT THE MOST SIGNIFICANT DATA FROM SATURDAY WAS THAT PREMIER LEAGUE BETTING VOLUME WAS DOWN BY 20% ON PROJECTED TURNOVER

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed
© Football is Fixed 2006-2013