[Psycho]

I read an article about it on a German sport site, so for anyone who is able to understand some German, here's the link:

http://www.sport1.de/coremedia/gene..._20a_202001_20spiele_20manipuliert_20mel.html

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For the rest, I will give a small some up of the article and the situation itself:

As u might have heard, in Germany one ref was caught fixing matches in cooperation with Eastern European criminals to benefit from game betting.

The current investigations revealed that probably more nations are involved, including Serie A.

FIGC now have asked the German FA for information regarding the investigations, hoping to get new information about the 34th matchday of the Serie A season 2001, where the German betting company Oddset lost a lot of money due to very unconventional bets based on 5 matches.

These were Fiorentina vs Napoli (1-2), Juve vs Atalanta (2-1), Lecce vs Lazio (2-1), Reggina vs Milan (2-1) and Hellas vs Perugia (2-1)

For oddset, the fact that 2.5 Mio DM (around 1.3 Mio Euro) were based on these matches in Bavaria seemed suspicious, while in all other regions of Germany, just bets valued 55,000 € were placed.

Moreover most bets were placed in huge "steps" (500 € instead of the usual small sums) and always pretty close to the Austrian border of Germany.

In addition to this, in 4 out of these 5 matches, the decisive goal was scored in the dying mins of the game, due to gravious goalie or defense mistakes.

The total loss of oddset was around 10 Mio € with these 5 matches.
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I'm actually not suprised that this betting scandal aint limited to Germany only, in fact, I would have been more suprised if this were the case. However, in contrary to Germany, where so far just 2nd and 3rd division refs or players were corrupted, this seems to be even more severe (if true, of course).

Getting 1st division players, millionaires, to fix a match, now that's something u need a lot of money for. Not like some 24 yo 3rd divison ref.

Thoughts?

 

[Anomander Rake]

I just think that the betting company had been stupid and probably gave way too big odds for the minnows in these games. Everyone knows that in the last rounds in Italy "surprises" like that happen when the giants have nothing to play for. For instance I remember that we kind of stopped playing seriously when our players heard that Roma was leading and that our outside chance for a title was gone. Milan did everything short of an own goal to help Reggina score since they had nothing to play for. So my theory is that some people, probably Italians, got smart, went to Germany and bet on these games. Not playing to your full potential is not the fairest thing to do, especially if you ask the other teams involved in the relegation battle about the Reggina and Lecce games for example, but it's hardly on the same level as a ref who bets on the games he is charge of. That said, Serie A has its dark secrets but I don't think these betting statistics prove much.

 

[Ruffian]

You wouldn't need to bribe millionaire players in Serie A, but non-millionaire refs. At least the Germans have the guts to launch a full investigation.

 

[Psycho]

I was talking about the bribing the players since the article mentioned strange defense and goalie mistakes...

However I agree, to fix a match, a ref can be enough. Ask Moggi :tongue: Even though in Germany, the ref that so far is the only convicted one has failed to manipulate some matches, giving pens in the last minutes that were shot over the bar etc.

Anomander, u could be rite. It's indeed a very unsportship behaviour in Italy to totally give away those final matches for those teams that have nothing to win anymore. But not illegal though.

However seems FIGC takes it serious, otherwise they wouldn't have asked the German FA to share information about the current investigations.

 

[Anomander Rake]

Oh, it's good that they are taking it seriously but if they want to find glaring refereee mistakes they could look no further than this season instead of delving in the past.