FIFA tell footballers how to avoid match fixers for World Cup

[David Guyatt]

It's one of the funniest articles I've read. The corrupt FIFA giving advice about match fixing. Hilarious.

The world really is upside down.

Fifa tells stars how to avoid match-fixers in fight against organised crime networks threatening World Cup

Integrity' advice for players at finals and anti-corruption hotline to report suspicious activity as security chief warns of 'wake-up call' to game in England


Fighting crime: Fifa's Ralf Mutschke, the most senior anti-corruption official in world football Photo: GETTY IMAGES


By Ben Rumsby, Zurich

10:30PM GMT 03 Mar 2014

England's players will be given special briefings about what to do if they are targeted by match-fixers during the World Cup.

For the first time at football's biggest tournament, players from all 32 competing nations will be given "integrity sessions" by Fifa officials, when they will be told to report anything suspicious via a special anti-corruption hotline available only to players and referees.

The threat posed to the World Cup by organised crime networks all over the world is being taken so seriously by Fifa that it has put a raft of unprecedented measures in place.

In his first major UK interview, Ralf Mutschke, Fifa's head of security, also issued a stark warning to English football over match-fixing, saying a series of arrests by the National Crime Agency last year should act as a "wake-up call" about the seriousness of the problem.

Mutschke, the most senior anti-corruption official in the world game, also told the British Government it would succeed only in combating the threat to sporting integrity in the UK if it passed a law specifically to deal with match-fixing, something it has so far refused to do.

Mutschke's greatest immediate concern was the World Cup, with the former senior German police officer determined to leave nothing to chance.
"Fifa, and in particular myself, has to make the presumption that the World Cup itself is under threat and implement the maximum protection for our competition as we can," he said. "We are trying to protect the World Cup from fixing and we have set up a pretty wide range of measures to do so."
As well as integrity briefings, those measures will include intelligence-led targeting of high-risk players, referees and fixtures. "We are also indicating the players, the teams and their histories in fixing and making a risk assessment," Mutschke said. "Is it a group match, is it the first match, is it the end-of-a-group match, is it a final? This indicates the vulnerability."
All 64 games will be monitored like never before, with security agents at each of the 12 World Cup venues and forensic scrutiny of suspicious betting patterns, as well as social media.
It is enough to put anyone off accepting an approach to fix a match in Brazil but Mutschke warned that to dismiss the prospect would be naive.
Indeed, he admitted players could arrive at the World Cup already under the control of match-fixers thanks to techniques now being employed to get them "on the hook". One involves spot-fixing, something from which no real money is made and players are more easily coerced to participate in because it may not affect the overall result of a game.
Once a player has taken a bribe deliberately to kick a ball out for a throw-in or purposely get a yellow or red card, he can then be blackmailed into match-fixing itself.
Mutschke said: "It's easier to keep them on the hook than to prey on them just before the World Cup."
Some of the arrests made in England last year related to alleged spot-fixing, while this week the players charged with conspiracy to defraud, following a Telegraph match-fixing sting, appear at Birmingham Crown Court to enter pleas.
Mutschke agreed the two recent high-profile fixing scandals had exploded the myth English football was immune from the problem, warning even the Premier League was under threat.
"English football games Premier League are offered on the betting markets worldwide," he said. "The betting market defines which matches are vulnerable and which are not.
"The ones that are not vulnerable on the betting side are not targeted by the criminals. And therefore it is I totally agree a wake-up call to be reminded such things can happen. You cannot sit back and relax and say it is the other leagues in Europe."
Mutschke also warned the UK Government that its response to the scandal had been insufficient. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is exploring setting up a centralised hotline for the reporting of match-fixing.
Mutschke welcomed the move but added: "The solution certainly is not the hotlines, because the criminals are not using the hotlines. To solve the problem is to arrest criminals, to investigate criminal actions.
"But, if you don't have proper laws then it's so difficult with the fraud paragraph to do something. My advice would be to have a particular paragraph that the Council of Europe is proposing as well to do something in particular to match-fixing."
Such a paragraph was tabled last month by the former sports minister and British Olympic Association chairman, Lord Moynihan, who inserted a match-fixing clause into the Gambling Bill currently passing through the House of Lords.
The amendment, which includes a jail sentence of up to 10 years, will be debated in the Lords on Tuesday and Mutschke said: "They should really come up with a particular law on match manipulation."
The German called for other governments to follow suit, insisting only a coordinated international effort stood a chance of eradicating match-fixing from the game.
He added: "I don't even think that there is an international database where all the fixers are stored and there's not an international reporting system implemented.
"If there's a major drug seizure somewhere in the world, it's going to be reported to Interpol. A fix? It's not going to be reported, most probably. There is huge room for improvement."