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 

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

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