Robust Video Technology Is Needed To Save Football From The Mafia
A very rare fusion article created by 'Football is Fixed' and the 'Infamous Wu Shu Hackers'
"When one game can attract 10 BILLION quid in bets, what makes anyone believe that the result isn't dictated by bookies? Or nobbled by bent referees? Or thrown by some players and coaches? And covered up by pundits with inside info?" - Henry Clarson (@HenryClarson).
Tonight video technology finally makes an appearance in English football.
Football is Fixed first called for the introduction of such technology in January 2007 so we feel justified in having something to say on the matter.
So, we're going to do that very thing...
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Preface
Mike 'Kipper' Riley, the compromised director of the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB), claims in the mainstream media today that match officials get 96% of decisions correct.
Even if we are to accept his word, it is an arbitrary statistic to combine goal-kicks and throw-ins with red cards and penalties.
So let's take a look at the performance of Riley's boys since the New Year window in live televised Premier League matches:-
Dec 30th 2017 - Manchester United 0 Southampton 0 (United denied a clear handball penalty by Craig Pawson - the result was known in the betting markets pre-match)
Dec 31st 2017 - Crystal Palace 0 Manchester City 0 (Jonathan Moss gives Palace a fallacious penalty and then fails to send off Palace player Puncheon for an assault on de Bruyne. SE Asian bookmakers were aware of this outcome pre-game as were numerous members of the BT Sport crew despite the fact that Manchester City had just won 19 consecutive league games)
Dec 31st 2017 - West Bromwich Albion 1 Arsenal 1 (Mike Dean gives a 89th minute equalising penalty to the Albion with a ludicrous call of handball - outcome known pre-match)
Jan 2nd 2018 - Swansea City 0 Tottenham Hotspur 2 (Spurs first goal was a metre offside but the assistant to Robert Madley thought otherwise - Spurs were heavily backed in key markets)
Jan 3rd 2018 - Arsenal 2 Chelsea 2 (Hazard dives to win an equalising penalty shortly after Chelsea had fallen behind but Anthony Taylor is Anthony Taylor and Craig Pawson was the 4th Official - there was significant dark pool activity against an Arsenal victory)
Jan 4th 2018 - Tottenham Hotspur 1 West Ham United 1 (a Mike Dean spectacular with Spurs being denied half a dozen second half penalty shouts before they managed to equalise as a result of a foul on West Ham's Lanzini - this was another event with dark pool power dominating the outcome)
There were 8 televised Premier League games in this window and the results of six of the matches were heavily affected by refereeing errors and these results were all known by top tier market professionals before a ball had been kicked.
It is these live games, of course, that have the greatest global betting volume (up to £10 billion for Arsenal vs Chelsea, for example).
And it is this degree of betting volume that is the reason that a robust form of video technology must be implemented. We cannot continue in a world where referees earning £2K per week are coerced or persuaded to aid market participants in multi-billion pound global betting markets.
It is this financial discrepancy that guarantees matchfixing and corruption.
https://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/something-is-rotten-in-state-of-britain_3.html
Anyway.
96% you reckon, Kipper?
And the fun continued into the FA Cup Third Round televised games.
The matches Fleetwood Town vs Leicester City and Newport County vs Leeds United were matchfixing events whose outcomes existed in the SE Asian markets pre-match - in the latter game, the disturbing 100% positive correlation between the market stance of a certain SE Asian bookmaker and the key in-play decisions made by Mike Dean continued.
Elsewhere on the television, the Magic of the Cup gave us Liverpool being given a fictitious penalty against Everton courtesy of Mr Madley and Mr Moss.
And Nottingham Forest were given two penalties, one entirely fake, as they defeated Arsenal. Additionally, the second penalty should have been disallowed for a 'double-kick' by the taker and a free kick given to Arsenal but not in the world of Mr Moss.
For Arsenal, this was the third game in a row that match officials have rumbled them which will teach Arsene Wenger to talk about the honesty and integrity of officials!
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Introduction
In January 2007, we blogged: "The use of technology to prevent erroneous decisions by the match officials in the Premier League needs to be urgently addressed by the authorities. Other sports have successfully incorporated the use of video replays without any loss of excitement in the game but football refuses to embrace technology. This extends to FIFA and UEFA too."
The referees and their assistants have too much control and influence in games. Poor decisions not only affect outcomes, titles, promotion and relegation issues but also the careers of the participants.
Matchfixing in the Premier League (EPL) is the elephant in the room. When we speak to managers, chief executives, agents, administrators, government or mainstream media, the discussion always centres around matchfixing.
But the EPL and the PGMOB do not want video technology in English football. Furthermore, they do not support the elements of the FA that have been calling for the implementation.
The core group of the PGMOB comprises just 15 individuals who officiate nearly 95% of EPL matches (including all the high betting volume tv events) and are frequently present as 4th officials at other games. This structure is primed for corruption.
Additionally, one individual who hides in the shadows selects referees for all EPL games.
One man!
In the other major leagues there is a proper assessment of referees and they are demoted in the close season if they are perceived to be problematical. They are also expected to retire at 45 years of age whereas the most impactful PGMOB officials are all pushing 50.
Keith Hackett, the former head of the PGMOB, has publicised the fact that Hawk-Eye has been ready for implementation since 2008 but foot dragging by the powers-that-be has energised numerous travesties of justice.
If the Premier League/ PGMOB are going to continue to insist on such a small grouping of referees then the potential market power of these referees has to be compromised repeatedly.
A mafia angle is as follows:-
If your business practices gravitate towards grey and black markets, why on earth wouldn't you seek control of a Premier League referee?
Twenty five games per season, with an average global liquidity in the several hundreds of millions of pounds for each match.
Direct market control over each of these events.
Tempting eh?
Video technology would make the game cleaner as it would be difficult for a crooked official to maintain a patently incorrect decision in the face of repeated video evidence.
'Errors' are too frequently the result of corruption.
There are those in the game who prefer for psychopathic, singular or cartelised control of match outcomes.
For this purpose, human input is far more malleable, shall we say, than Hawk-Eye.
Why choose human error over technological near-certainty?
Why wouldn't you want to improve the integrity of the game?
Really.
Why...?
When an entirely illogical infrastructure is being proposed, and when some of the individuals and organisations involved in the early experimentation of such an infrastructure have form, so to speak, the standard sousveillance techniques come into play.
Who stands to gain most from an expansion in the format of the corrupt template?
Who loses?
Additionally, who would lose the most if advanced technologies were chosen over flawed, and sometimes corrupted, humans?
It is an interesting aside to see which football talking heads line up on which side of the fence in the video technology debate. In fact, we would go further and claim that anybody who opposes video technology should be regarded with heightened suspicion!
This is a major battle over the future integrity of the game of football.
It is by no means the only battle.
Keir Radnedge on the alleged 'buying' of Bayern Munchen and the matchfixing of the Second Leg of the UEFA Cup Semi Final against Zenit Leningrad in 2008: "Even if we believe it never happened, the fact that there are more and more, richer and richer, organisations out there are cause for concern. No country, no competition is safe."
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Holistics of Video Technology
Former Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein speaking in 2007: "There is technology today, it’s been introduced in tennis and they can’t tell me technology is not there. Forty years ago, America put a man on the moon. So the technology is there."
The Laws of the Game, whether football, cricket or whatever, remain largely unchanged.
The Rules are much more malleable though.
And the Rules dominate the Laws to the extent that the Laws become a simulacrum of their true meaning, contorted to suit the requirements of the markets dictating the sports.
It is more critical for football to have video technology than cricket, tennis or rugby yet the authorities have refused to introduce anything more than goal line technology. Why?
An incorrect wicket in cricket, line call in tennis or try in rugby is rarely a match changing event 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 corrupted intent, there is a psychological deflation in the victim team. The sport is literally destroyed.
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.
The argument that football has to be officiated to the same template from the Premier League all the way up to amateur Sunday League games is bizarre and is indicative of the weakness of the anti-video technology crowd - amateur refs aren't miked up, they don't have goal line technology, there isn't a 4th official or match observer hidden away in a room surrounded by television screens.
Grow up with your fake arguments.
Video technology would add excitement if marketed correctly.
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!
The entities that gain from lack of video technology are, in no particular order of merit - UEFA, FIFA, the Premier League, corrupt referees, corrupt bookmakers, insider gamblers, underground criminalised betting markets, global mafia groups, corrupt football agents, dodgy committee men...
... while the losers are the fans, the integrity of the game and those within the sport outside the corrupt inner loops.
In season 2012/13, Dutch referee Serdar Gozubuyuk called for the introduction of video technology to help officials make the correct decisions after he denied Ajax Amsterdam two certain penalties in their home draw against Heerenveen.
The Amsterdam giants felt they should have been awarded a spot kick after Ramon Zomer handled the ball early in the first half, while they also called for a penalty after a foul on Christian Eriksen just inside the area.
"This seems pretty clear. I cannot see the incident properly because I'm looking at (Lasse) Schone's back," Gozubuyuk told Eredivisie Live after reviewing Zomer's handball.
"If it's up to me we would introduce video technology as soon as possible. That will prevent this kind of situation where I have to explain decisions that I could not see properly.
"We are all ready for the introduction of video technology. It's starting to become annoying to be criticised for decisions we have to take in a split second. Everybody else gets the chance to see an incident five or six times before judging."
The Dutch introduced a trial involving a video referee addressing match decisions at 24 top flight games in 2013/14. The results were hugely encouraging resulting in gross chameleon Sepp Blatter changing his mind to be in favour of video technology on the eve of the 2014 World Cup Finals.
A colleague in Holland has stated that the referral system could be implemented within 15 seconds and would have removed all controversy from the matches trialled.
Other sports also successfully implement video technology without the fabric of the competitive event being blown apart - tennis, rugby league, rugby union, horseracing, athletics, cricket etc.
An interesting impact of the Dutch experiment in 2013/14 was that the volatility of match outcome would have diminished markedly if the video ref had been able to overrule the match referee. Think about that. The price set by the global marketplace on a game is more accurate once integrity is reintroduced via taking power away from the referee. We prepared an internal research paper on this point as it is significant.
Our colleagues at
Match Fixing Analytics have extended this research to the current implementations of Video Assistant Referees (VAR) in Italy's Serie A and the German Bundesliga. Although the mechanics of the VAR process need to be made more efficient, the process is working - there is greater integrity in the result of the game. And VAR will be used in this season's Copa del Rey and next season's La Liga in Spain.
Germany, of course, is different. A member of the Infamous Wu Shu Hackers contacted the DFB in season 2015/16 to report a systemic corruption involving some match officials and the situation was remedied.
Instantly.
ScudamoreWorld has a lot to learn from the Bundesliga.
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The Delay in the Introduction of VAR in England
The Premier League is more than under-managed. It is an autocracy that answers to some very dubious masters.
The arguments for and against digital technologies being used in football are all superfluous.
There is only one overriding factor, a super-parameter.
It is one of those decisions that has only one logical input.
Integrity.
Football is already teetering on the edge of becoming horseracing, some leagues eg the English Premiership are now analytically identical to the modelling used in British horserace markets!
How weird is that?
Digital and video technologies are the only salvation.
In effect, the English Premier League and the Scottish Premier League, via their respective control of the Football Association and the Scottish FA, have been able to block all and any changes to the Laws of the Game with the support of just one other IFAB member.
Paul Gardner: "How can it be justified having the game's rules decided by a somnolent clique that includes permanent representatives from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland [sic], but no guaranteed presence from other countries that really matter [!], like Brazil, Germany, Argentina, Italy or Spain?"
With Britain a primary base for the corruption of betting markets throughout Europe, it makes no sense for the Home Countries to have such a say in the imposition of Rules that usurp the Laws of the Game.
Since 2003, Angel Maria Villar Llona,
the Spanish FIFA vice-President and Chairman of the Referees' Committee, has been involved in IFAB meetings - that was until July 2017 when he was arrested on corruption charges, imprisoned and banned for one season.
It is surely of relevance to the whole discussion that Javier Tebas, the Spanish La Liga president, believes that some bodies wish to hide the reality of matchfixing. Speaking in October 2016, Tebas said: "... there are also some important institutions that want to hide the problem. Our integrity department in La Liga, for example, last weekend detected match-fixing activity in the third division. We detected the problem and communicated it to the responsible authority, but they chose to hide it, probably because they don't want to recognise that this problem exists, even in the lower division."
The Stalinism continues with media silence, no interviews, hush money paid at end of referee's careers, no public ratings from internal assessments and generally no punishment for miscreants.
Additionally, since the beginning of season 2013/14, all match officials have been miked up to a secretive network which we will term the EPL Match Centre. All kick offs are coincident and referees are aided (or abetted) by other officials with access to tv replays.
Two points...
Firstly, this was illegal under the Laws of the Game.
Secondly, to what template have the decisions been made if made under such secrecy?
In a desperate attempt to keep fans on message, the mainstream media entirely ignores matchfixing in England despite journalists getting some of their leaks/stories from individuals who are orchestrating the matchfixing.
The tv pundits are worse!
#########, ############## and Robbie Savage work for bookmakers, Danny Murphy is in an extracurricular affair with a matchfixing agent, Michael Owen used to be bookie for the England team (linked to Goldchip private bookmakers), Steve McManaman was a business associate of money laundering fraudster Carson Yeung and Gary Lineker is, well, Gary Lineker.
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A Real Solution
Former 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.
The mainstream media-led arguments around VAR are peripheral to a better future for football.
The implementation of VAR must not be internalised between match officials miked up together in their own murky private universe.
The fans should be able to hear what the officials are saying to one another (as in rugby union).
Managers should be able to appeal two decisions per half (as in tennis and cricket).
There also needs to be a new institution established.
In 2014 Terry Steans, the former head of investigations at FIFA, wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph calling for the establishment of a sporting integrity unit to address matchfixing
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup/10918411/Football-match-fixing-We-need-a-sporting-integrity-unit-to-stamp-out-corruption.html.
We would go further.
More than ##% of Premier League teams have utilised Performance Enhancing Substances (PESs) this season and Leicester City won the fake league title partially based on doping.
UK Anti Doping (UKAD) is not fit for purpose and should be disbanded - we've had one Chris Froome too many already.
Instead, we call for a new independent entity to address both matchfixing and doping.
Let's call it ANTI - Analytics Networking Transparency Integrity - for a starter.
Terry Steans would be an excellent individual to run this body.
He understands that football is fixed and that all of the matchfixing 'integrity' bodies are fake and suffer from investigatory and regulatory capture - the FA Betting Integrity Unit, Federbet, Early Warning and Sportradar are a part of the problem not the cure.
ANTI should also include support for whistleblowers as we are all taking serious existential risks to expose these corruptions and when taking on mafia-based systemic corruptions you are literally putting your life on the line.
https://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/manus-manum-lavat-homage-to.html
In 2016, our late lawyer David McNeight communicated with then Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne about the systemic nature of the corruption in British football.
The Deep State in Britain seems to prefer corruption in their primary agendas - systemic arms dealing (as revealed by Andrew Feinstein in his book 'Shadow World'), City of London based market corruptions (fucking with the Libor rate, for example), money laundering via a global array of offshore financial centres (the very same centres where those corrupting English football launder and tax evade their winnings) and, nowadays, an attempt to take control of the global betting markets linked to football particularly via those rogue islands of Malta and Gibraltar.
Osborne was put between a rock and a hard place by our legal intrusions into the systemic corruption underpinning British football but he elected to profit the status quo rather than the Treasury which was an input to the end of his political career.
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Conclusion
We started by saying that we have demanded VAR since 2007.
By implementing a variety of delaying tactics in the intervening decade, the Premier League have allowed over 4000 games to be up for grabs for the criminal underworld and their stooges within the sport.
There are random realities and fake realities.
And the production of fake realities allow markets to be controlled by mafia and fortunes made.
It is with some twisted amusement that we view the first VAR experiment this evening:-
Brighton and Hove Albion - owned by professional gambler Tony Bloom who, backed by his ##### sibling, has been able to create a wealth of getting on for a billion pounds out of the black hole of murky football.
Crystal Palace - currently testing the legalities of doping as they have morphed from the least fit team prior to the November international break to the second fittest now, under the tutelage of
Roy Hodgson who is joined at the hip to one particularly
corrupt Scottish football agent and his equally corrupt
PGMOB poodle referee.
And the first VAR referee is none other than
Neil Swarbrick, who is also associated with the very same football agent and who was voted by our network as the most problematical PGMOB referee of 2017.
We expect a little spectacular to undermine VAR in the FA Cup and League Cup Semi Finals...
... some convoluted theatre to enable a longer window for the corruption of the sport.
In 2009, the Economist produced an article on organised crime in Britain.
As it is organised crime that is defiling our sports, some of the newspapers' points resonate with regard to football.
"Organised crime may do especially well... because it depends so heavily on the bribery of officials, reckons Michael Levi, a professor of criminology at Cardiff University. A poor border guard is easier to tempt than a rich one, and a struggling business may be persuaded to launder money."
And a referee who showed a preference for lady-boys in Bangkok on a pre-season Premier League tournament is owned for life...
Many of the most problematical PGMOB referees are nearing retirement and one Scottish football agent is behind the elevation of a whole new squad of compromised officials to the PGMOB Select Group. Some of these referees are of an age where they will be able to provide up to a quarter of a century of match manipulations to their handlers. It is critical for the future integrity of English football that VAR is introduced in a properly robust form with managerial review and open mikes to limit any such future systemic shenanigans.
Former leading refs Graham Poll and Keith Hackett have lacerated the current standard of PGMOB refs with the latter wanting Mike Riley removed from leadership of body and 5 officials stood down.
Hackett stated: "If [a manager] is at the bottom of the league then his job is at risk. At this moment in time he [Riley] is more than bottom. I am seeing a regression. The performances of the referees are not acceptable. He must carry the responsibility."
It is worthy of note that there will not be one single English referee at the World Cup in Russia.
It is also worthy of note that Mr Moss (a seemingly ever-present referee or 4th official on televised matches) was never able to reach UEFA/FIFA level.
So why do we have to put up with him?
William Gaillard, director of public affairs and communications at UEFA, a rather compromised individual himself, once commented: "The camera is not a faithful observer of reality, you have no idea of the impact, the intensity of the violence.".
Football Is Fixed: "The referee, his assistants and the 4th official are not faithful observers of reality, you have no idea of the impact, the intensity of the market manipulation."
Meanwhile Jérôme Valcke, FIFA's former secretary general who has since been arrested for "various acts of criminal mismanagement", claimed "Is there a risk the referee will not be as strong as he is today?"
You know what, mate, nobody cares about a referee's sense of personal power.
What we demand is integrity in the sport we love.
Football is Fixed operate as a cellular network.
We use the Iceberg Effect.
We release 5% of our analytics and any hacks made available to us.
We retain 95% for strategic defence, constructive negotiation, court.
In extremis, we recuse ourselves and operatives will ensure full publication of the relevant information in numerous territories.
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© Football is Fixed 2006-2018
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