England: A Game Run By One Man … And A Recent Court Case That Proved Everyone’s Worst Fears.
There’s a perception in England that whoever the big team is at the time they get decisions, but how true is it?
Once upon a time, it certainly was; it was Man Utd for years, as Alex Ferguson had the ear and the fear of every official in the game down there.
Fergie Time, anyone?
Even our very own Hugh Keevins once said. “The game in England is controlled by one man.”He meant Fergie.
That was not accepted, but it was known enough that the media talked about it.
There are other examples in England, and these are not simply speculative but stone cold facts.
There was the enormous match-fixing scandal in 1963, which saw 33 players prosecuted, with some jailed, in relation to match-fixing covering at least four – and probably many more – games. This was viewed, at the time, as the tip of the iceberg.
Unusual betting patterns saw an investigation into a game between Accrington Stanley and Bury in 2008, at the end of which five players were banned from the game for varying lengths of time, four from Accrington and one from Bury after all had bet on Stanley to lose the match, which they duly did, by 2-o.
And that was nothing on the scandal which erupted in 2013, and resulted in criminal convictions for a number of footballers including Delroy Facy and Michael Boetang. The case was allegedly tied into a wider investigation, covering numerous other nations including Italy and Germany, and which involved Champions League games including one involving Liverpool. The Europol case, called Operation VETO, was the largest of its kind thus far.
But it “can’t happen here”?