I just finished reading Declan Hill's The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime. It's a sobering tale of what can happen at the highest levels of football competition when gangsters and gamblers become involved in the game. Hill writes with the passion of a missionary, and he tells a compelling tale of how dirty money leads to corrupt behavior in football.
And wouldn't you know it, the German football league (the DFL, responsible for running the 1. and 2. Bundesligas) just announced a campaign called "Transparency and Integrity in Football". It seeks to develop a series of measures, including workshops, help desks, and informational campaigns aimed at players and coaches to prevent match fixing. I can't help but applaud the DFL for taking this step and sincerely hope that it produces meaningful results. But so far it's little more than a wish list - though one backed by an organization (Transparency International) that has experience in combating and exposing corruption.
But back to fixing matches. The Fix tells a sad tale; without clean games that we can believe in, people's faith in football dies. This is not altogether different from what happens in other areas of life. Corruption breeds cynicism about politics, too, among other things. And if you know something about corruption and its pernicious effects, you are unlikely to be surprised by Hill's revelations, given the geographic distribution of corruption around the world. Take a look at Transparency International's global map of corruption around the world.
Clearly, corruption is more common the further South and the further East you go on the map. And these tend to be poorer and less democratic countries. All this jibes with Hill's tale of corruption in Asia and Africa.
But this doesn't mean corruption in soccer stops there. And this part is critical.
While much of Hill's story revolves around Asian mobsters and the manipulation of professional soccer matches in Malaysia, Singapore, and China, he ventures beyond Asia and traces the manipulation of soccer matches in Europe, including in Belgium and other places.The fact that corruption in soccer easily transcends borders and cultures makes the book worth reading for anyone concerned with the integrity of the game: it serves as a potent reminder that we live in a globalized world, where corrupt practices can diffuse very easily, as he discovers match fixing in places as varied as Finland, Belgium, and Malaysia. The European and North American leagues do not exist in a vacuum free from outside influences. Mind you, Finland is one of the "cleanest" countries in the world, according to the corruption watchers, and if gangsters can fix matches in Finland, they can probably fix them anywhere if they try hard enough (and I bet they're trying).
Hill doesn't fault the players or referees (who are clearly guilty) as much as he indicts the people who run soccer. He is highly critical of them for not following up and working harder to prevent future abuse (and sometimes even punishing those come forward to expose the crimes). This part of the book more clear-cut: though there is a fair amount match fixing around the world, there is even better evidence that national and league soccer authorities would prefer not to hear about match fixing and have been singularly ineffectual in preventing the infiltration of the game by sophisticated and very, very rich gangsters. So I'm heartened the German football league is talking about transparency and integrity in football; let's hope it's more than cheap talk and a cynical and self-interested publicity event.
