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.
__________________________________________________________________________________
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.
_________________________________________________________________________________
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 40% 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.
We are taking serious existential risks to disclose these neohyperrealities of modern football.
THIS IS NOT HOW IT SHOULD BE.
__________________________________________________________________________________
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
