How mafia and corruption scandals rocked Italian football

High-profile cases of corruption, ticket touting and match fixing have led Italians to lose faith in the beautiful game, writes criminologist Anna Sergi.

Football could be considered Italy’s most popular sport, with world-class teams worth billions attracting a dedicated following across the country. But more than that, football shapes the nation’s collective identity, bringing people from the smallest village to the biggest city together in their love for “the beautiful game”.

But over the past decade, media investigations and research have uncovered an unseemly lack of virtue within the industry. Mafia infiltration and corruption have come to characterise Italian football to the point that malpractice, deviance and criminal behaviour might seem to be the norm.

Journalist in Ghana who exposed soccer corruption shot dead

FRANCIS KOKUTSE AND GERALD IMRAY, AP

ACCRA, GHANA January 17) – An investigative journalist in Ghana who helped expose a high-ranking official at world soccer body FIFA as corrupt was shot dead by gunmen on a motorbike as he drove home alone at night, police said on Thursday.

A final for all time, sacrificed on the altar of the modern game

That is what soccer has become: an entertainment complex squabbled over by fiefs and autocrats, a way of exerting soft power and measuring importance that is worth almost any price, a circus paid for in bread | RORY SMITH

Tens of thousands of River Plate fans who bought tickets for last week’s Copa Libertadores final now will be prevented from seeing it in person | Marcos Brindicci/Reuters

FIFA suspends Palestinian football chief Jibril Rajoub for ‘inciting violence’

Turning truth on its head, FIFA gives year-long suspension after Mr Rajoub allegedly called on “football fans to target the Argentinian Football Association and burn jerseys of Lionel Messi.”

Palestinian FA chief Jibril Rajoub

‘Sports integrity’: The surreptious Saudi campaign to steal the World Cup away from Qatar

Currently, a battle is going on between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, one that is affecting international football as well. There is no doubt that Saudi Arabia wants to take the World Cup away from Qatar in 2022. The “Foundation for Sports Integrity” was launched in a lavish setting in London in May with buzz words about “transparency” and “corruption” that made several participants ask about the source of the money. Two of them were Andreas Selliaas and Jan Jensen*, who have tried to track the secret backers of the new initiative. Jim Waterson of the Guardian also weighs in with additional facts. Interestingly, with regard to awarding the FIFA World Cup 2026, which was announced later in Moscow in July, Saudi Arabia backed the winning, so-called “United” bid of the United States, Canada and Mexico, while Qatar backed the Morocco bid.

Panel discussion at the FFSI conference | Andreas Selliaas

(London, Updated 28 June) – The Foundation for Sports Integrity (FFSI) was launched at the fashionable Four Seasons Hotel at Ten Trinity Square in London on 31 May. The founder of the FFSI is Jaimie Fuller, the Chairman of SKINS, one of the persons behind the initiative New FIFA Now and a familiar face to those attending Play the Game conferences.

FIFA defends bans for defamation, spreading ‘false information’

By ROB HARRIS

AP (Aug. 15) – Justifying an overhaul of its ethics code, FIFA asserted Tuesday that people who “tarnish the reputations of others” must be banned from soccer.

The Associated Press revealed Monday that a new offence of defamation had been added to the document governing the conduct of participants in soccer, with scope for a ban of up to five years from the game.

Who is singing now?

By TONY SEED

(July 11, revised July 19) – The world has been saved from an England-France Brexit final at the 2018 World Cup, renditions of “Three Lions” and “Rule Britannia” in the stadiums, and the tsunami of British chauvinism unashamedly embraced by the Canadian media.

What goes around, comes around. The dodgy English threw their final match in the opening round with Belgium back on June 28 with the pretext of resting players and avoiding injuries for the Round of 16. “Sometimes, you have to make decisions with the bigger picture, and that’s what I did tonight,” rationalized head coach Gareth Southgate at the time – as if the decision was his and his alone. That “bigger picture” seems to have included getting a better draw in the knockout stage, that is, to avoid Brazil and therein build the size of the betting pool, the TV market, the revenues of the English Football Association, and a “hearts and minds” diversion from the Brexit crisis at home – giving a new definition to match fixing and a level playing field. Such are the elastic ethics of England.