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A few years ago, the organizers invited an anonymous guest to an international seminar on the subject of match-fixing. The match fixer, who only appeared with his voice, was asked in which country it was easiest to fix games.
The answer was: Sweden.
That is As mentioned a few years ago, fewer and fewer football matches in Sweden have been reported as suspiciously manipulated. The reasons for the positive trend are the attention that match-fixing has received in the mass media and the large resources, including in the form of money, personnel and prevention work, that Swedish football and politicians have made available.
This does not mean that the match fixers have retreated.
When I asked an official from the Slovak Football Association how the country was faring after several match-fixing scandals, he pointed to statistics showing that the neighboring Czech Republic was among the most targeted countries last year.
– It crossed the border, said the Slovakian.
And that’s how it works in this carefree world. In a series of articles, Finnish newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet has reported on how match-fixing has hit the country in recent years.
Finland got 2024 The Center for Ethics in Sport FCEI reported 45 suspicious games. Last year the number was 53. In Sweden, a record number of games were reported in 2018 and 2019, 44 and 47 respectively, while only a few were registered in recent years.
There are therefore good reasons to suspect that match-fixing has crossed the line here too – or rather, has returned. Anyone with a good memory may remember the big match-fixing scandal in Rovaniemi and the RoPS football club. In 2011, it was revealed that one of the world’s most notorious match-fixers, Wilson Raj Perumal, had infiltrated African footballers into the RoPS, who fixed matches on orders.
Perumals Liga later appeared in Sweden when they tried to recruit players for Division 1 team Nyköping BIS.
Hufvudstadsbladet reveals how Ukrainian players suspected of match-fixing in Finland fixed games in the Czech Republic, and how Brazilian match-fixers infiltrated players into Finnish teams. In 2019 they tried the same thing in Växjö.
Countries are different but the methods are the same. Match-fixing is a lucrative international criminal activity, with ringleaders often located in one country and perpetrators in another.
Nowadays have Another neighboring country was also hit by a match-fixing deal. Last week, Norwegian police arrested seven people suspected of gross corruption and fraud, two of whom were identified as KFUM Oslo’s top league players. The betting shops noticed different play patterns in the yellow cards that the two players received. Both deny wrongdoing.
Do you feel it again? Well, it was precisely because of the intentional yellow card that former Allsvenskan player Pawel Cibicki was suspended in an Allsvenskan game in 2019.
Norway has also been hit by match-fixers in the past, although the scandal involving several Division 2 games in 2012 was controlled from Sweden.
Even though the number of suspicious matches in our country has fallen dramatically, there is no reason for complacency. Last summer, betting shops in Asia placed big bets on a southern Swedish U21 team losing three games in a row, which they did.
Have in Finland The most recent case had consequences. Hufvudstadsbladet reports that the Finnish Football Association is kicking Division 3 team Finnkurd out of the series. The reason: It is considered that the management of the Helsinki proposal did not do enough to counteract the extensive match-fixing at the club.
Maybe something Swedish football could follow.
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