If referees in the Premier League earn a couple of grand per week while officiating on matches with global betting volumes of £5 billion,
If referees for all Premier League games are selected by just one individual;
If referees work with agents to promote the agents' clients on the field of play,
If referees are at the root of most matchfixing crises:
If bookmakers accept insider trading merely treating it as competitive advantage in the marketplace,
If bookmakers trade such knowledge at dark pool poker tables of corruption;
If bookmakers own football clubs and, on occasions, coerce players to perform appropriately,
If bookmakers create spot markets to corrupt the minutiae of in-play actions:
If agents are non-regulated and are the primary lubrication of criminalities in the sport,
If agents work together in a fragmented cartel to pool ownership of players to solicit matchfixing;
If agents are engaging in third party ownership and the trafficking of children from developing countries,
If agents pay backhanders to managers to pick certain players for mutual benefit:
If institutional bodies decide on winners and losers according to private agendas of power and marketing,
If institutional bodies incorporate systemic corruptions at top levels of the game;
If institutional bodies established to monitor insider trading and matchfixing are infrastructurally compromised,
If there are no global, EU or governmental actions to confront these corruptions:
If clubs, owners, managers, referees, agents, administrators and players bet on the outcomes of games,
If clubs exert power over lesser clubs in the same leagues with agreed outcomes being the norm;
If clubs focus more on unearthing lucrative marketing deals than on winning trophies,
If clubs built on debt can only survive by matchfixing their games:
If coercion, threats, menaces, violence and murders are the primary modes of controlling non-acquiescent individuals,
If transnational organised crime and global mafiosi are actively involved at all levels of corruption;
If suitcases of cash and offshore illicit money flows are the norm in financial transactions,
If there are administrators who facilitate these corruptions based on laissez faire capitalism:If the Fit-and-Proper-Person Test results in clubs being owned by entirely unfit and entirely improper individuals,
If owners take over clubs to asset strip and to monetise the debris via inversion capitalism;
If money laundering, fraud, utilisation of offshore financial centres and beneficial ownership is the norm,
If clubs are held offshore for tax and/or regulatory avoidance to the benefit of the owners:If spurious and fake arguments are repeatedly made against the use of video technology in the sport,
If there are no laws against insider trading and no Commitment of Traders' reports;
If there is widespread use of performance enhancing substances and their related masking agents,
If the market capitalisation of major clubs is dwarfed by global betting turnover on any of their matches:
If fans and the public are kept in the dark about all these machinations due to a blackout by the mainstream media,
If there is nowhere for whistleblowers to go with information about corruptions;
If the reward for being a criminalised player is a lifelong role as a media analyst or commentator,
If huge fortunes are being made while meritocracy is always trumped by the performativity of corrupt practices:
Then FOOTBALL IS FIXED as is everything within it,
And - what is more - the fixing?That would be a private matter, my son.
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