How big is match fixing in football, especially in the WCs?

Well its a big question obviously. I always wondered if another of the major tournaments I watched when I was younger was clean or not - ie. WC and Euro Championships. The first one that had me thinking was France 98, especially with my dad at the time giving his opinion - he says he a friend or 2 who are known to rig matches or run/partly own betting syndicates lol, but I largely dismissed it since he doesnt really know football or watch it much. But then some games in some tournaments really makes me think twice.

Euro 2004, I asked here b4 I think, most opinions I get is its all clean, but is it? I tend to remember, Portugal especially in the first group game vs Greece, played horribly, taking wide shots whenever they gone forward, it was like they were afraid to score or something...

A lot of upsets in big tournaments and from betting syndicate's pov, thats large profit....or is it? Since they adjust the odds anyway if its a big favourite, or in that Im not sure if big upsets really is that much mroe beneficial to the match riggers.

Obviously we see news of it happening the biggest in the Serie A in 2006, and with some leagues and european games, but rarely in the biggest leagues and comps.

Anyway, has anyone know about this? Do u think its all that clean and no suspect ever in the major comps? I hope so...but I doubt it...

since we beated portugal in the final too i dont think any game regarding us " greece" was fixed, my point proves that we beated them twice and we were better but we won almost every other game with luck scoring last minute goals etc.

it wasnt fixed !

Greece dont have the power to fix matches in such a competition. They won out of luck and good tactics. Zambia also won recently, these things happen.

But certain coincidences are extremely strange. I remember cyberman (not 100% sure it was him) posting a thread about some dude from the English FA who said Russia were helping Spain buy referees to win the WC and that Spain were gonna help Russia buying FIFA votes to host the WC.

Found the link, here it is: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/8685009.stm

Added with things like Qatar getting to host a WC (shamefull to FIFA, to say the least) and Korea robbing their opponents, or the cheating back in '66.

We all know there's something going on in the background.

idk,but something that was extremely fishy was that 7-1 lyon win vs zagreb this season that took ajax out of the knockout rounds

As a football fan i hope it's not true, but I'll be an idiot remaining close-minded if I didn't think something was going on behind the scenes.

stunt wrote:

Added with things like Qatar getting to host a WC (shamefull to FIFA, to say the least)

first of all when did football relat to politics
and second of all they had a clear had an amzing presentation
and ohhh they havent missed a page

Yep the Lyon 7-1 win was another good example...

In some place like China, match fixing is a known, and with the money countries like China, Qatar, Russia, etc., that get thrown into betting and football, its gonna tempt anybody even in the higher levels of European football. Even FIFA and UEFA is all corrupted as we all know, so the refs and clubs, teams and players would surely be tempted as well at times...

Perhaps there really is too much money in football.... I just hope the biggest teams, leagues, comps, obviously the WC are not involved...since largely becos they are rich enough to be tempted (although proven wrong by Juve and Serie A of cos)

In modern football the media is so ridiculously intrusive it would be hard to get away with

Funny you mention this, argentinas 78 world cup title is apparently going to be investigated for suspected match fixing where they needed to beat peru by a large margin to progress

Love Argentinian football but there's very little doubt in my mind that '78 was fixed.

For those who don't know, From wiki;

Perhaps the most famous alleged example was the match between Argentina and Peru in the 1978 FIFA World Cup. Argentina needed a four goal victory to advance over Brazil, an enormous margin at this level of competition, especially since Argentina had a weak offense (6 goals in 5 games) and Peru a stout defence (6 goals allowed in 5 games). Yet somehow, Argentina won 6-0. Much was made over the fact that the Peruvian goalkeeper was born in Argentina, and Peru was dependent on Argentinian grain shipments, but nothing was ever proven.

Greece winning the Euros can't be questioned. In my mind, that was a text book example of determination & discipline. And yes, luck.

Match fixing in toilets?

supra969 wrote:

stunt wrote:

Added with things like Qatar getting to host a WC (shamefull to FIFA, to say the least)

first of all when did football relat to politics
and second of all they had a clear had an amzing presentation
and ohhh they havent missed a page

Couldnt really understand your whole comment but I'll try to explain my opinion. The WC used to be hosted in countries with football culture, countries who needed their stadiums renewed, big countries with large populations.

Now, giving the WC to a country like Qatar, who has like 1 million people, is extremely small, has zero football culture, extreme temperature, and will most likely not be able to host the WC alone. Is shamefull to say the least.
Qatar got to host the WC because they were the country offering the most money. Same with Russia.

I think Match fixing in international competitions and friendlies is huge. When I say that I mean it for smaller countries who have players on there teams who don't earn a massive salary for being on a huge club team.

You think of some of the African countries and some of the small Concacaf and Asian countries and the players on there teams play in very small leagues and make low wages so they can actually make more money by fixing there match's then playing in them strait up.

I mean why not? They know there not going to qualify for the world cup and they will probably lose anyway so why not lose by 5 goals instead 2 and get paid for it, I mean they really have nothing to lose.

IT doesn't make any sense to rig big games because as long as they put a line on the smaller games you can win the same amount of money with way less attention.

And the refs for these smaller games make even less money and REALLY have nothing to lose and when there are circumstances like this there will always be people around to take advantage of them.

I don't believe in match fixing on a large scale in Internationals and the big leagues. You might be able to buy off a player or two to play shitty, but as soon as you need to fudge big results, there's just too many people involved, and it won't stay secret. Once more than a handfull of people know what's going on, someone is gonna screw up and talk.

Thats interesting points.... I used to think that too, its just too hard to buy a top team, in the past maybe, but nowadays the media and info is so easily gathered, the money, etc....

As said above though, definitely for the poorer players/refs/countries etc, they got nothing to lose...

And I guess not too surprising to learn about the Argentina WC 78 then...it was 78...and Argentina... a known corrupted country unfortunately

I wanted to bump this to see if anyone has missed it with more to add, cheers