COVID complicates Asian football’s fight against match-fixing
While some progress had been made in fighting the crime, the arrival of COVID-19 has made it easier for match fixers. For years, Asia has been known around the world as a hot spot for match fixing in football. Especially in Southeast Asia, a region of around 650 million people that stretches from India in the west to China in the East, there are few leagues that haven’t had a scandal or two. Malaysia has been fighting to shake off the scourge of match fixing since football was rocked by a major scandal in the early 1990s. In Laos in 2017, 22 players and officials received lifetime bans by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). Just last month, the Football Association of Malaysia confirmed it was investigating two games played in October. Low salaries that aren’t always reliably paid provide fertile ground for gambling gangs based in Southeast Asia and elsewhere to persuade players, coaches or officials to help produce a specific outcome in a game. Conditions ripe for fixing “Once clubs stop paying players, then the fixers will start hovering,” Steve Darby, who has coached extensively in Southeast Asia with spells in Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia and Singapore, told DW. “You have not been paid for three months, you have rent to pay and two children to feed, then someone offers you six months’ wage for one game. This, I believe, is the most common reason for fixing.” According to investigative journalist and academic Declan Hill, author of The Fix and The Insider’s Guide to Match-Fixing in Football, the circumstances in the region are virtually tailor-made for match fixing. “There is corruption in league officials and teams in places like Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam,” Hill told DW. “Then clubs don’t pay players and there are systems of hierarchy, where senior players coach and train young players to go along with it.”
Other Interesting Articles
See other website
