New app allows players to report match-fixing bids

Players who are approached to fix matches or who suspect games are being manipulated will be able to push a ’panic button’ on their mobile phones to report their suspicions.

Under a new system developed with European funding, footballers across the continent can now download an anti-match-fixing app to their phones and will be given a password to report any approaches via a red button.

The international players’ union FIFPro will make the system available to all players and it is now up and running ahead of the new season.

Harri Syvasalmi, member of Finland’s sports ministry and chair of the European Union’s Expert Group on match-fixing, revealed details of the system and said FIFA needs to do more to combat the problem.

Syvasalmi told the Press Association: “This will be available to all players through FIFPro.

“A player gets a password and he can push the red button anonymously and the message goes to a place that will investigate it. He does not have to identify himself if he or she does not want to do so.”

Syvasalmi said players would even be able to report suspicions about matches they are watching on television.

He added: “That’s a possibility as well as you need those guys who watch games and understand what is going on.”

Part of the issue with tackling match-fixing is that it is international, so as a result no one body has taken full responsibility for dealing with it.

Both Interpol and the European agency Europol have stated they have ongoing investigations but Syvasalmi said the problem was even more widespread than those law enforcement bodies had acknowledged.

He said: “That’s the problem with the Interpol statistics – there are four or five times more cases. In the last five years there have been about 1,000 cases, and they can report only 70 a year as they don’t have any system in place. It’s 200-300 a year globally.

“We need to improve the monitoring systems markedly.”

Syvasalmi gave credit for UEFA’s efforts in tackling fixing – decisions on officials at three clubs involved in fixing are due this week – but said FIFA needed to do more.

He added: “UEFA is on the right path. They are monitoring 30,000 matches-plus but FIFA only 1,500.

“I think what UEFA puts in to that is really professional but absolutely FIFA needs to do more, and not only FIFA most of the sports federations need to do more.

“People think this is just a problem in football, there are a lot of cases in football but it’s is also problem in other sports – tennis, cricket, rugby.