Football is the 3rd most money generating sports in the world after baseball and Formula 1. The property of Iron & Magnet is directly proportional to the property of Money & Gambler. Where there is money there will be gamblers who are always in anticipation to pollute the game in every possible way. Inspite of harsh punishment or a threat of life time ban to a life time jail, these match fixing in football continue to happen. Here’s the list of top 10 Football’s biggest match fixing scandals.
1:) British football betting scandal
- In 1964, the great British football betting scandal of the 1960s was entangled. A betting ring organized by Jimmy Gauld and involving several Football League players had been fixing matches. The most famous incident involved three Sheffield Wednesday players, including two England international players, who were subsequently banned from football for life and imprisoned after it was discovered they had bet against their team winning in a match against Ipswich Town.
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2:) Italian football scandal
- 1980 Italian football scandal (“Totonero”): In May 1980, the largest match fixing scandal in the history of Italian football was uncovered by Italian Guardia di Finanza, after the spalling of two Roman shopkeepers, Alvaro Trinca and Massimo Cruciani, who declared that some Italian football players sold the football-matches for money; implicating, among others, AC Milan and Lazio. Teams were suspected of rigging games by selecting favorable referees, and even superstar Italian World Cup team goalkeeper Enrico Albertosi and future 1982 FIFA World Cup winner Paolo Rossi banned with betting on football games. Both clubs were forcibly relegated to Serie B and Milan’s president, Felice Colombo, received a life ban.
3:) Portugal football scandal
- In 2004, Portuguese Police launched the operation Apito Dourado and named several Portuguese club presidents and football personalities as suspects of match fixing, including FC Porto’s chairman Pinto da Costa. Some of the wiretaps used as proof, deemed unusable in court, can now be found on Youtube.
4:) Bundesliga fixing scandal
- In January 2005, the German Football Association (DFB) and German prosecutors launched separate probes into charges that referee Robert Hoyzer bet on and fixed several matches that he worked, including a German Cup tie. Hoyzer later admitted to the allegations; it has been reported that he was involved with Croat gambling syndicates. He also implicated other referees and players in the match fixing scheme. The first arrests in the Hoyzer investigation were made on January 28 in Berlin, and Hoyzer himself was arrested on February 12 after new evidence apparently emerged to suggest that he had been involved in fixing more matches than he had admitted to. Hoyzer has been banned for life from football by the DFB. On March 10, a second referee, Dominik Marks, was arrested after being implicated in the scheme by Hoyzer. Still later (March 24), it was reported that Hoyzer had told investigators that the gambling ring he was involved with had access to UEFA’s referee assignments for international matches and Champions League and UEFA Cup fixtures several days before UEFA publicly announced them. Ultimately, Hoyzer was sentenced to serve 2 years and 5 months in prison.
5:) Italian Serie B fixing scandal
- In July 2005, Italian Serie B champions Genoa was placed last in the division by the sporting justice, and therefore condemned to relegation in Serie C1, after it was revealed that they bribed their opponents in the final match of the season, Venezia to throw the match. His president Enrico Preziozi was banned for five years after being guilty by the sporting justice. Genoa won the match 3–2 and had apparently secured promotion to Serie A.
6:) Brazilian football match fixing scandal
- In September 2005, a Brazilian magazine revealed that two football referees, Edílson Pereira de Carvalho (a member of FIFA’s referee staff) and Paulo José Danelon, had accepted bribes to fix matches. Soon afterwards, sport authorities ordered the replaying of 11 matches in the country’s top competition. The Campeonato Brasileiro, that had been worked by Edílson. Both referees have been banned for life from football and face possible criminal charges. Brazilian supporters have taken to shout “Edílson” at a referee who they consider to have made a bad call against their team, in a reference to the scandal.
7:) Fixing in 2006 Fifa World Cup
- The Fix a book by Declan Hill alleges that in the 2006 World Cup. The group game between Ghana and Italy, the round-of-16 game between Ghana and Brazil, and the Italy-Ukraine quarter-final were all fixed by Asian gambling syndicates to whom the final scores were known in advance. The German Football Federation (DFB) and German Football League (DFL) looked into claims made in a Der Spiegel interview with Hill that two Bundesliga matches were fixed by William Bee Wah Lim a fugitive with a 2004 conviction for match-fixing.
8:) Fixing in 9 countries
- In November 2009, German police arrested 17 people on suspicion of fixing at least 200 soccer matches in 9 countries. Among the suspected games were those from the top leagues of Austria, Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Turkey, and games from the second highest leagues of Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland. Three contests from the Champions League were under investigation, and 12 from the Europa League.
9:) Fixing in Turkey
- In July 2011, As part of a major match-fixing investigation by authorities in Turkey Nearly 60 people suspected to be involved with fixing games were detained by İstanbul Police Department Organized Crime Control Bureau and then arrested by the court. The case did not come to a conclusion yet. And the teams that are being accused of match-fixing are participating in the Turkish league currently.
10:) Finland’s fixing scandal
- In June 2011, trials started for people allegedly involved in fixing Finnish football matches. One team, Tampere United was indefinitely suspended from Finnish football for accepting payments from a person known for match-fixing.
