How corruption within football works, and how the players and refs get hooked

ENGLAND’S EASY MOVING TARGETS

Don  McMahon

This post is about impending corruption, probable slavery and definite destruction of a professional’s career and personal life. I felt compelled to write this after watching a series of Interpol educational modules available online

This website outlines the ease and perfidy with which criminal elements, profiteers, ruthless mafia con-men and some semi-legitimate power-brokers can entrap and ensnare naive and unprepared professionals.

Some of the more obvious pre-requisites to becoming a criminal’s slave or as they say on the website, a fixer’s tool, are:

1) A lack of maturity combined with a sense of superiority because one is ¨famous¨,

2) A conviction that one has ¨made it¨ when one signs a professional contract and has nothing to worry about once this happens,

3) A psychological blindspot when it comes to their failings or weaknesses,

4) An inherent mistrust of law enforcement and senior adults advice,

5) A conviction that one is untouchable and can do no wrong,

6) A personality whose strengths allowed them to achieve sporting success but which also makes them seriously prone to addictive behaviour,

7) Access to some seriously addictive and excessive options such as prostitution, drugs, gambling, drinking, illicit behaviour, adventurous living, etc.

 

There are other more subtle pre-requisites but the above are typical for both the rising youth ¨stars¨ and the more established adults in professional sport. There was a very interesting first hand report by a former Belgian pro footballer who was cornered into cheating in matches by his Chinese owner. In his statements, he regales us about how he was slowly but steadily drawn into the criminal behaviour his owner expected of the players, and how easy it was to become entrapped. When he was finally arrested, the owner fled the country and returned to China scot-free.  The player, on the other hand, is persona non-grata in professional Football!

Anyone who believes that this isn’t happening in Britain should listen to the statements of those trying to enlighten and educate professional sportsmen and women to the dangers inherent in any contacts with addictive options or criminal elements.

What really struck me was the ease with which these criminals can gain access to and begin to hook their victims because of their specific weaknesses or habits.

I could see the following scenario as being very possible for a referee or player in professional sports anywhere in the world:

1) The criminals identify a weakness that he can exploit from his ¨sucker¨and a place where they can entrap the target (a bar, a brothel, a casino, etc) .

2) The crook approaches the target and tries to befriend him or her using a rather innocuous gesture (buying them a drink, dinner etc.) which might open the door.

3) If it doesn’t work out….nothing lost, if it seems fruitful, the next step is undertaken.

4) The criminal offers the ¨mark¨ a potential payoff that is hard to refuse and which requires very little risk on the target’s part (for example a referee is asked to issue a red card in a game); not a particularly suspicious event in the normal run of things.

5) If the referee accepts, he gets his payoff and the criminal has hooked his fish.

6) When the referee begins to balk at doing more serious fixing, the fixer gently reminds him or her that they have a ¨deal¨ and that only the fixer can rescind it…if the slave tries to break the deal, there can be and often are very serious consequences.

These men are ruthless, inveterate and highly dangerous manipulators….nobody is safe from entrapment in their web and pretending that Britain is somehow untouched by this plague is tantamount to believing that Peter Pan is reality.

England is in fact prime territory for such corruption with sufficient gambling, mafia and mob involvement in all aspects of the British sporting scene and the media/government and sports governing bodies persistent denials of such activities. Interpol has made it abundantly clear that corruption and addictive entrapment can happen anywhere there are officials and players naive enough to be enrolled.

Please do visit the Interpol website above if you have any doubts about this.

——————-

1 July Anniversaries

• 1 July 1968: William Naismith “Billy” Blyth died
• 1 July 1953: Alan Sunderland born in Mexborough
• 1 July 1966: Flint McCullough joined from Millwall
• 1 July 1977: Kevin Stead signed on free transfer from Tottenham

The books…

• Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
• Making the Arsenal – how the modern Arsenal was born in 1910
• The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal FC: crowd behaviour at the early matches
• Royal Arsenal: from the Common to the Manor.  Coming next.

The sites from the same team…

• Referee Decisions – just what are the refs up to this season?
• The Arsenal History Blog from the AISA Arsenal History Society
• School sports minibuses: providing your child’s school with a bus