The beautiful game......

Soccer is irredeemably corrupt, rotten to the core both at national and international levels. The advent of big money has a corrosive effect on all sport but perhaps none more so than soccer.

 

Starting at the top, a season rarely goes by without FIFA being involved in a mega-scandal.

 

An Honorary President has resigned recently, along with two Executive Committee members for having trousered about £1.4 million in bribes. This has been going on for eight years, but Seth Blatter claims to have known nothing about it.

 

Tickets allocated to the FIFA movers-and-shakers are resold to touts.

 

The TV rights for the 1998 and 2002 World Cup were accompanied by allegations of bribery on a major scale.

 

There is vote-rigging at FIFA elections.

 

Members of the body that decides the venue for the World Cup are alleged take bribes for votes.

 

There are strong suspicions that there were substantial bungs when Russia and Qatar were chosen as venues.

 

But when BBC Panorama did an expose three days before the World Cup venue in which England was a candidate, Cameron criticised the BBC for damaging our chances. Maybe his moral compass could do with swinging.

 

Seth Blatter has presided over perhaps the most corrupt reign in sporting history. But you must hand it to the old larrikin. He’s a survivor!

 

Now for the national game.

 

Do you imagine that wealthy individuals buy English football clubs because they love the game, enjoy the chutzpah of lording it in the Chairman’s Box, and hobnobbing with the likes of the wondrously vulgar stars and their WAGS?

 

Not at all. They are in it for the big bucks, and not necessarily made from football. Eleven of the sixteen Premier league clubs are wholly owned by  foreigners whose actual knowledge of the game is possibly miniscule.

 

Top clubs are a financial asset that offer great opportunities for money-laundering and other hanky-panky. Here are some of the ways.

 

You have a big wedge from another of your business interests that you need to hide away. So you big-up the ticket sales and then make up the difference so that your money is now in the legitimate accounts. Or you can do the opposite and siphon off the cash.

 

You can overstate the transfer-fee when selling a player, and then launder your own money through the accounts.

 

Some players are ‘owned’ not by the club but by a third-party secret consortium and then rented back to the club. It also helps to have an offshore ‘vehicle’ that buys a player from the club that you own for a low price who is then sold-on at the real price.

 

Match-fixing is rife throughout the game in Europe, much of it through organised crime syndicates based in Singapore and other Asian hideaways. Europol’s Operation Veto has recently uncovered match fixing involving £2 million in bribes and an £8 million rake-off. Tax evasion and money-laundering is a feature of Italian football.

 

Randy refs are bought-off with high-priced hookers. It’s a funny old game.

 

Small wonder that a season ticket can set you back up to £1500. Welcome to the midden.