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FIFA officials are looking into reports of match-fixing after three players from Guatemala were suspended by their football federation. According to a note from the Associated Press published by ESPN, there are four matches suspected of having been tainted, and one of them was played against Costa Rica in the National Stadium in San Jose last week.
The most recent exhibition game between the National Men’s Football Teams from Costa Rica and Guatemala was a dull affair that left fans doubting if both CONCACAF squads really have what it takes to make it into the 2014 FIFA World Cup. That was on Friday, June 2nd, and the ho-hum match ended with Guatemala winning at their Mateo Flores stadium by one goal.
The previous, much livelier game was played at the National Stadium in La Sabana a week ago, and it ended in a victory for Costa Rica, 3-2. That is one of the games that has come under suspicion of match-fixing. The president of the football federation in Guatemala announced the names of the three players who were suspended, as well as the other three games:
- Guatemala versus Venezuela
- Guatemala versus South Africa
- Municipal from Guatemala versus Santos Laguna from Mexico (CONCACAF Champions League 2010)
The match between Municipal and Santos Laguna was a lopsided affair that ended in a 6-1 victory by the Mexican team. The three players under investigation played in that game. One of the suspended players, Guillermo “Pando” Ramirez, used to play for the Los Angeles Galaxy in the United States’ Major League Soccer.
The match-fixing news from Guatemala comes at a time when Italian prosecutors and law enforcement officials are conducting an investigation into rigged games. Sixteen suspects, most of them professional football players, have been arrested in Bologna, Naples, Rome and other cities in Italy. The ordeal prompted Prime Minister Mario Ponti, who assumed office after the controversial former PM Silvio Berlusconi stepped down last year, to ponder whether it would be a good idea to suspend all professional football activity in Italy for a couple of years.
According to British news daily the Guardian, some of the players implicated in the Italian match-fixing scandal may have been drugged as part of the game-rigging scheme.
Match-fixing in 21st Century Football
The motivation for match-fixing is invariably related to sports wagering and betting. A previous article in The Costa Rica Star looked at how some sportsbook operations in Costa Rica make use of artificial intelligence and complex algorithms for the purpose of odds-making and setting overnight lines. All the sophisticated statistical analysis and number crunching that goes into odds-making can be thrown off by match-fixing. Rigging of games ranges from the outcome to the point spread.
The number of match-fixing scandals in professional football has been increasing along with the popularity of online wagering. Even popular technology site Gizmodo recently published a step-by-step guide for rookie online sports gamblers to follow, and one of the sportsbooks mentioned therein is based in Costa Rica. Millions of Internet gamblers place bets on football matches at any given time, thus making the online betting industry a lucrative affair that villainous types seek to get their hands on.
The Guatemalan and Italian football federations are hardly the only ones affected by match-fixing. In the 21st alone, there have been major cases of game-rigging in South Africa, Greece, Germany, Finland, Brazil, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. It’s not always players who are involved , either: referees have been found to participate in match-fixing as well.
