FIFA to investigate Lundekvam claim
Claus Lundekvam told a Norwegian newspaper he had been involved in betting fraud
FIFA's chief investigator in England will look into claims by former Southampton skipper Claus Lundekvam that he, team-mates and opposing captains were involved in betting fraud.
In an interview in a Norwegian newspaper, Lundekvam said the players manipulated incidents such as the first throw-in for betting purposes.
The world governing body FIFA announced on Wednesday they will investigate the claims and a statement said: "FIFA is monitoring this issue and involved its chief investigator in England. Once all information is known it will be decided who is leading the investigations."
Lundekvam claimed the spot-fixing took place in Premier League matches in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
He told Norwegian TV station NRK: "It's not something I'm proud of.
"For a while we did this almost every week. We made a fair bit of money. We could make deals with the opposing captain about, for example, betting on the first throw, the first corner, who started with the ball, a yellow card or a penalty.
"Those were the sorts of thing we had influence over."
Lundekvam insisted he and his fellow players never rigged the result of a match.
He said: "The results were never on the agenda. That is something I would never have done. We were professional competitors. Even though what we did, of course, was illegal, it was just a fun thing.
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They must have changed the way goals are counted then because nowadays conceding a penalty can have quite an impact on who wins.
And the horrible thing is this could be true. Young Mr Wilshere should note this and make sure he doesn't get involved. There's two Pakistani cricketers serving jail sentences for spot bet fixing at the moment , and if this is proven to be true the same thing should happen to the guilty footballers. . {although as it happened in the late 90's they've probably all finished playing by now.}
If Claus thinks doing such things had no effect on results he is an idiot, giving away corners or even throwins can enable a team to score, not to mention penalties. He should name names and soon. If he did this he is a cheat. Don't they earn enough money, that they had to go and cheat to earn more. It makes me sick to think I paid out my hard earned cash just so he and his buddies could rake in the more money for themselves.
@Grim
very true my man, but what I don't understand is why come out now and say it, what is the motive in revealing this information and what is the benefit of doing so, like you said the players involved are probably retired now, can charges still be brought against them even though it was so long ago?,
and then if he names the people who were alledgedly involved how is he going to prove it, this is a very strange move by Lundekvarm, and it can't be because of a guilty conscience
Knowing it goes on is not new news, but knowing it goes on doesn't help anyone to think of how to prevent fixing trivial betting incidents.
The fact that someone arranges to create the first throw doesn't mean the game's result is fixed, neither does it cause concern with the bookmakers unless heavy money is laid on times when a penalty will be conceded etc...
I think that while bets can be made on the colour someone's bootlaces will be in a match, there will always be those who can influence bets doing so!
Why is this making the headlines again? Matt Le Tissier released an autobiography about 2-3 years ago which detailed the exact same information as Lundekvam has now come out with.
Unbelievable how FIFA can turn around now and say they will look into when they said the same thing when Le Tissier's autobiography was released... If they did the investigation they said they were going to do the first time around... what do they have to gain by investigating the exact same thing again? Surely they can just come back and say, "actually we did this two years ago and we found out everything is ok".
That is, unless they never did anything about it the first time around... which means they are just as unlikely to do anything about this!
