Monday, July 03, 2017

How Asian match-fixers are infiltrating European football...

On April 29, at 10:01 p.m., soccer fans Simon Miller and Paul Langley lost their faith in the sport.

The Irish men were sitting in City Calling Stadium in Longford, Ireland, and their team, Athlone Town FC, was behind 1:2. In the 80th minute of play, a Facebook message alert popped up on their mobile phones. A man who had been monitoring football bets for years wrote to them that the odds had just shifted dramatically and it seemed likely that another goal would soon be scored.

They both sat motionless as they watched the drama unfold on the pitch. Athlone's Portuguese coach, Ricardo Cravo, shifted Romanian midfielder Dragos Sfrijan to the defense, they say, and Latvian goalkeeper Igors Labuts suddenly began pressing forward on every corner kick, a potentially suicidal move that keepers generally only reserve for their team's final attacks of the match. But the show reached its climax in injury time: When a long ball flew into Athlone's half, Sfrijan clumsily jabbed at it, missing entirely, they say. And keeper Labuts, they continue, completely whiffed on the rather easy save.

"It looks like somebody made some money today," a fan wrote on the internet. Hong Kong's Asia Times newspaper would later write that winnings from the bets on the Athlone game had exceeded $600,000. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Singaporean jailed for fixing football match...
  2. The secret world of tennis gambling...
  3. Nigerian players banned for life in 79-0 and 67-0 match-fixing scandal...
  4. Cambodia's football betting Mecca fuels rise in match-fixing scandals...
  5. Top European football matches 'fixed' (Video)

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