When the first football game was played in Britain 150 years ago, it was pure football: no referee, no bad words, no racism and no match fixing.
Years passed, the game improved, the audience and money increased. Competition is now sky high. This brought some big challenges and problems to the game.
Regulations got stricter and stricter due to unwanted events like hooliganism and riots. In some cases, this has helped minimise these problems.
However one serious problem remains: match fixing.
One example of this is Marseille. In 1993, l’affaire VA-OM happened and Marseille President Bernard Tapie was found guilty of match fixing against Valenciennes. The team was relegated to the second division and pushed out of other year’s UEFA and FIFA organisations.
In 2006, the biggest match fixing scandal in football history occurred in Italy. Juventus was demoted to the Serie B and were deducted 17 points. Milan, Lazio and Fiorentina started the next season in Serie A with minus points.
These were only two sample match fixing events, which are known by every football fan all over the world. There have been thousands of other examples, some coming off, and some not.
We are all lovers of sport. Whether basketball, football or tennis, the most important things are competitive, challenging and entertaining games.
Of course, everybody wants to win but it must be done legally. I don’t think that a real sports fan would want an undeserved triumph, even in a rivalry or a final.
“NBA Cares”, “UEFA Respect”, “Unicef”, “FIFA Football for Hope” are just some examples of good sports organisations. Similar style organisations need to become actively involved in preventing match fixing.
A level-playing field is essential to the success of any sport.
The Cattery
Roar Guru
That is the history of the modern footballs, and in 1858, with prosperous Melburnians wanting to play football together, this is precisely the problem that they encountered - people schooled in different parts of the UK knowing different rules. If either rugby or soccer had been formally established at that point, the newish colony would have played one or the other, or both, and an Australian game would hever have been created.
The Cattery
Roar Guru
I find this article a little bit unsatisfactory. The author has introduced the prospect of match fixing existing, but the meagre examples provided are well in the past, and as Damiano mentions, the 2006 Serie A scandal was not necessarily a true match fixing scenario, in fact worse examples have arisen from time to time in the Serie A in the past. Coincidentally, when Italy last won the WC before 2006, was immediately after a match fixing scandal, and Paolo Rossi had only just returned from a ban when he became the WC hero in 1982. But I digress, in our part of the world, the whole region is chock block full of match fixing allegations, and indeed, some examples have arisen in recent years in the lower European leagues and divisions, even in Germany, which is enough to make you spill your stein.
The Cattery
Roar Guru
With the 2006 Serie A scandal (the same year that Italy triumphed in the WC), wasn't part of the problem that Juventus was able to nominate its preferred ref? A look through the stats of the pens Juve earned and gave away over the 20 years prior to that is quite instructive. A stat Juve shares with the other big clubs - of course I'm sure there is a logical explanation for that.
ManInBlack
Guest
neos osmos - yep, I put it poorly. I wasn't implying that Rugby (the code) was a break away from London FA code. More that, a club like Richmond, which played that first game, never played it again and reverted back to the 'Rugby' style games. Blackheath too, being a founding member of the LondonFA ended up breaking away to focus on the 'Rugby' style games. That was the 'breakaway' element I was refering to. Main thing is - there was NOT perfect cohesion 140-150 years ago and no surprise that in Melbourne town in the late 1850s that it was easier to plot their own course than to try to sort out the malaise of the local variants of English mainly schoolboy football games.
Damiano
Guest
This is a poor article. There is no evidence the clubs accussed in 2006 actually broke the laws or gained any benefit from speaking with referees. What relevance has this articule got to current events. It simply dredges up incidents from many years ago, which has been discussed and disected many times over. Why write this article? Just to be negative?
Lucan
One thing you can applaud football for is the penalties dished out when perpetrators are caught.
neos osmos
Guest
Well said ManInBlack. And when established the game was a bastion of class snobbery. Fortunately soccer lost much of that snobbery quicker than the rugger buggers -- otherwise we'd have generations of broken little artists called Diego and Lionel crushed at the bottom of mauls, rucks and scrums. Though MIB, it's hardly the case that Rugby 'broke away' from soccer.
ManInBlack
Guest
be wary of rose coloured glasses are dangerous. was the first game 150 years ago really 'pure football'? The first FA game was played between Barnes FC and Richmond. It was experimental - not 'pure'. Richmond was not 'hooked', they went off down the Rugby track. It took about 10 years to massage the game, and merge the London FA game with the Sheffield FA game and end up with something more akin to soccer by about 140 years ago. What is clear though is there must have been 'bad words' - otherwise there would've been no 'Rugby' break away clubs!!! History wasn't pure harmony.