Soccer: The beautiful game or just the dirty game?

A Europol report last week claimed that 380 soccer games in Europe and 680 worldwide were ‘suspicious’. Match-fixing has tainted the world’s most popular sport, drawn in major crime gangs, and ruined players’ lives, writes Sheila Norman-Culp

SOCCER is falling under a cloud of suspicion as never before, sullied by a multibillion-euro web of match-fixing that is corrupting increasingly larger parts of the world’s most popular sport.

Internet betting, emboldened criminal gangs, and even the economic downturn have created conditions that make soccer a lucrative target.