During the investigation, Hill had undercovered match-fixing criminal organizations in Asia and Europe, and explored how they can infiltrate the game for profit and corruption. Here, using the conversation between Hill and the New York Times reporter, he explained how match-fixing is repaired. What happened and how to stop it. "Foot-fixing: Football and Organized Crime" tells the story of a match-fixing investigative journalist Hill Declan Hill, who mainly studies match-fixing to repair the spread of football in professional football matches. Hill faces the multi-billion-dollar illegal Asian gambling industry and has interviewed more than two hundred people over the past four years, including professional gamblers, mafia killers, undercover police, top international football players, referees and officials. After Hill’s initial research was questioned, he traveled across four continents to confirm his story. He found the Football League and confirmed that counterfeit control accounted for more than 80% of games in the early twentieth century.
"This book explains the struggle between good and evil that exists in international football today. This book will forever change your thinking and feelings about professional football." This sentence comes from the New York Times' best book of the year "Fake Football" , Match-fixing is the most explosive corruption story in sports. "Foot-fixing: Football and Organized Crime" provides convincing evidence that some of the world’s top football matches may have been repaired, including: UEFA Champions League , The Olympic Games and the World Cup.
In "Foot-fixing: Football and Organized Crime", Hill explained the structure and mechanism of illegal gambling groups, what football players and referees do affect the results of the game, why they are relatively wealthy and high status Of athletes will fix the game, how clubs and game officials bribed referees to stand by them. Perhaps the most shocking thing is Hill's discovery that the restorer has successfully penetrated all football matches, right down to top international matches.
Hill spent four years in research, and it was not until Declan Hill published "Foot-fixing: Football and Organized Crime" in September 2008 that the European football authorities were ready to face the scourge of the game. Investigative reporter Hill once said in a telephone interview with the New York Times: “When I discovered the true face of football, there was a mentality that refused to admit that this is happening.” One day after Hill published the book,UEFA officials met with officials from nine national football associations and discussed how to deal with the match-fixing scandal that was taking place at that time, the largest match-fixing case in European football history, Anta Sapina. The gambling group has more than 300 People involved in the amount of more than 2.7 million US dollars, the focus is that the criminals suspected of repairing the game include players, coaches, referees and other betting groups. It is believed that these criminal companies have affected and repaired 200 games, including the Champions League and European Cup games. Since then, FIFA and UEFA have launched a global match-fixing repair and governance work.
The following is the content of Hill’s conversation with the media, announcing how the ball-fixing fix happened and how to stop it:
Media: When we talk about the fixation of the match, the ball-fixing fix is what? Are both teams involved in a game? Or is there only one team, one player or referee?
Hill: There are two forms of match repair, one is club members repairing the game, and the second is the gambling organization, where the gambling organization will buy and control more players as much as possible. I have learned about an Asian case in my research. The gambling organization repaired all the players of one team, all the players, coaches, substitutes, referees and linemen of the other team. The gambling organization controlled everyone in the game.
But in Europe, the gambling organization is not deeply entrenched. If they can control three or four key players in a weak team, they will be happy. When I started researching, I thought that the target of repair must be a stronger team, just like the Chicago White Sox in 1919, but this is not the normal way most match-fixing repairers work. Most match-fixing repairers use weak teams. As the goal.
If a weak team is organized to defeat a strong team, fans and players will spread the discussion about the game, but when the strong team wins the weak team, this kind of normal probability event will not be affected by the authorities Note that there are relatively few rumors about the repair of match-fixing, which is exactly what the repairers expect. Although the profit is reduced, it is much less questioned and reviewed by the regulatory agencies and the police.Similarly, if I invest 1 million euros to buy a strong team to lose the game, the bookmaker will not accept my bet, but if I spend a large sum of money on betting on a weak team to lose the game, the bookmaker will accept it.
As a repairer, I can easily enter a weak team, because they can’t get huge rewards in the game. I can say to weak team players: “You know your team will fail. When you lose and complete some other goals at the same time, you can get a good return." Among these players, they can earn more money by repairing the game during their normal career. They have a long-term cooperative relationship with the repairer.
I once thought that the professional football players of the star team would not participate in the counterfeit repair, but the fact is that they also rely on the repair cooperation to make more money in their careers. According to the survey, 95% of professional players have a short career. If they can participate in the game for five to seven years, they are lucky. During this time, football players are very fragile. If the player is injured, it is the player’s fault. If the player breaks his leg, his career is over. Even if the players are not injured, their career is very short, five to seven years will soon end.
In my investigation work, I compiled a database that contains the ways in which the restorers contact the players and those players are more likely to be manipulated. The interesting thing is that the team discipline is not A control variable, team discipline and legal constraints are irrelevant when a player decides whether or not they take the money. However, it is the age of the player that really affects whether a player participates in the match-fixing: once a player is over 26 years old, they start to take money more frequently, because they are about to end their professional career after entering 30, maybe they are married and have families with children, they just want Make as much money as possible.
Media: How does the match-fixing fixer do this?
Hill: Imagine that the repairer's tool is a spider in the middle of the web, and it enters the sport with the web. The restorer must contact the players, coaches and referees. The method they often use is to use "runners (i.e. middlemen)". The runners will run back and forth between the restorer and the players, especially those who have a significant reputation during their careers.They just left the game recently. Maybe they don't have enough money. For them, helping repairers is the best way to make money.
On the other side of the spider’s web is the gambling market. It is as difficult for a repairer to operate a gambling market as it is to win over players. A repairer in the gambling market is like insider trading in a stock market, even if you are a Honest gambler, if you always win, it makes it difficult for bookmakers in the sports betting market to accept. Bookmakers like losers. They hate winners. Game fixers are the ultimate winners because they often have guaranteed bets, so They must create an illusion to conceal the fact that they are betting. Players who make money for the repairer need to disguise their identity, pretending to be an ordinary bettor, but actually work for the repairer.
Even if the truth is buried, counterfeit control is still a problem in Europe. The European market is small. In many countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands, the only legally-operated sports lottery is the government-run sports lottery, so counterfeit repairers work Of players can only be offshore gaming companies, but the gaming companies are also extremely strict with players. Once a gaming company discovers a player's suspicious betting behavior, it will report it to the regulatory agency of the country where it is registered.
Therefore, there are fewer match-fixing in Europe than in Asia. The Asian gambling market is huge, larger than the sum of Las Vegas and European bookmakers, and the largest in Asia Part of betting is illegal. When anyone in Asia wants to place a bet at a peripheral betting company, the only thing they can bet on is in an industry that is hidden by criminals, so match-fixing fixers can do so in the Asian betting market. Easier to hide fraud. In addition, there are many betting companies in Asia. Even if a betting company finds suspicious bets in a certain type of player, he will accept the bet and pass it on to the competitor. The betting company can use the match-fixing fixer to hurt other competitors.
Media: How does the club fix the game?
Hill: I am really surprised by the sex life of referees in the Champions League,At least until the end of the 1990s, referees had a culture of sexual bribery in major European football matches. I'm not talking about all clubs, but some clubs would provide referees with expensive prostitutes in exchange for referees to support their teams.
There is a Welsh referee who presided over 45 top European games. In 12 to 15 games, he had sex with women before the game. The top European football leagues, FIFA officials and referees, as well as those who have sent some prostitutes to referees, have recognized this culture. This culture is very famous in this sport, but few people want to stop it.
I wrote in the book that the football authorities should promptly promote the promotion of female referees and eliminate the "culture of sexual bribery". The most critical method for the restoration of the game is to introduce female referees to participate in football. In addition, before the 1990s, referees paid for the game at the end of the game. It took 40 years for FIFA to realize that this was a mistake!
Media: For those trying to fix the game, who is the easiest goal?
Hill: Relatively poor players are more likely to be manipulated by restorers. According to the survey, restorers have participated in major international competitions for at least 20 years. Players, referees, team officials, FIFA administrators and the restorer themselves have all confirmed this. The restorers do not target goalkeepers or old players. They target the poorer teams, among which African teams are from the former Eastern Europe or Latin America. Players in the Americas are the easiest to be manipulated by restorers. Usually, in top tournaments, players will not get the corresponding value they paid. Even if they win the game, the host country’s Football Association will give the money to officials instead of players. So some players are very angry about this, leading some of them to look for ways to earn extra cash. In 2006, I took my voice recorder to Germany and followed a group of Asian restorers to a meeting with runners and players. It was an extraordinary process of witnessing.
Media: How do investigators discover these plots and how do they catch cheating?
Hill: The German Bochum police performed the best in this regard. They deployed undercover staff to the match-fixing repairers organization.According to what I have seen and heard during my investigations in Asia and Europe, this is really the only way to enter the repair organization. If you do not do this type of work, it is really difficult to prove a match-fixing. There are two reasons for this: first one Real star players, fans will never think that they will kick the ball into the goal. If this happens in the game, it will attract players' attention to the football game. This is a human factor, and the error is the game. Part. Therefore, it is very difficult for investigators to figure out whether they made mistakes intentionally or unintentionally.
Second: The player psychologically refuses to admit that this is happening. When I started researching, I thought that the perfect match-fixing was like the murder of Agatha Christie. Someone committed a crime and the police couldn't catch the murderer. The murderer escaped and it was over. Since the publication of this book, what I have realized is that when it is determined that a football match is a real match-fixing, many people don't even want to admit that it happened when it happened.
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