Euro 2008 draw held amid match-fixing probe

The draw will be made for the Euro 2008 finals with the spectre of a match-fixing inquiry hanging over football.

UEFA, the sport’s European governing body, have asked police to examine 15 matches played this season after an early-warning system detected suspicious betting patterns.

UEFA would not name the countries or clubs involved for fear of jeopardising the Europol investigation, but said none of the Euro 2008 qualifying matches are under suspicion.

A German magazine reported that UEFA were looking into up to 26 matches dating back to July 2005, and said the majority involved teams from eastern and south-eastern Europe.

According to Der Spiegel, the matches under scrutiny include three fixtures from a preliminary round in the Champions League, two in the UEFA Cup and a Euro 2008 qualifier.

But, as officials and coaches from 16 nations gathered in Lucerne for the draw for the tournament in Austria and Switzerland, UEFA insisted none of the Euro 2008 qualifying matches is under suspicion.

“There are no investigations under way into any of the qualifying matches for Euro 2008,” the body said in a statement.

“As a responsible governing body, UEFA is continuously monitoring football betting patterns and will take disciplinary action in any cases where that may be justified.”

UEFA introduced an early-warning system a year ago to monitor irregular betting patterns, and cooperate with police forces across Europe to stamp out attempts to rig matches.

The system alerted UEFA to unusual betting patterns in the early rounds of some European club competitions.

“In one case, a second-round UEFA Intertoto Cup match, the disciplinary inspector considered the circumstances serious enough to bring the case before the UEFA control and disciplinary body,” said the statement.

“At its meeting on Thursday, November 29, it requested further investigations be carried out before taking a final decision.”

Der Spiegel reported that the matches mostly involved teams from eastern and south-eastern Europe – including Croatia, Bulgaria, Georgia and Serbia.

The magazine said betting syndicates in the Far East worth millions of euros were believed to be behind attempts to rig matches.

Graham Bean, former head of the Football Association’s compliance unit, said draconian punishments would be needed if the match-fixing allegations were proved.

“These are clearly exceptionally serious allegations – but having said that, they will be extremely difficult to investigate,” he said.

“Clearly for UEFA to pass this report across (to the police) they must have evidence of some kind – perhaps as a result of betting patterns, or individuals telling them what they know.

“For something of this magnitude involving these type of games like Champions League matches, then this is potentially one of the most serious things that has ever happened in world football.”

The match-fixing topic was raised at a two-day conference in Brussels earlier this week, convened principally to tackle hooligan violence in sport.

UEFA president Michel Platini and European Commission vice-president Franco Frattini have agreed to hold a conference next year to look at “criminal phenomena” in sport – such as money-laundering, match-fixing and illegal betting.

The inquiry comes in the wake of an unrelated City of London Police investigation into allegations of corruption in English club football, which saw the arrest of five men, including Portsmouth FC manager Harry Redknapp.

Platini said: “It’s a big problem for us. We have known that for a long time and it could become very bad for football, and for all sport, in the future.

“We know that in Hong Kong, Singapore and elsewhere in Asia you might have a single bet of 10 million dollars on a match ending 4-4.

“It’s coming to the end of the match, it’s 2-2 and there are four penalties, and it finishes 4-4.

“We knew about these cases because we do have an early-warning system in place. We do know that some teams were approached by people.

“These are 15 games we knew about because of the early-warning systems and because we knew, we were able to ’protect’ these games. But I am concerned and this is a big problem for the future, not only in Europe, but in Asia.”