Crime committed, celebrities not involved.

By: Dan | September 27th, 2009

In case you hadn’t already heard, UEFA is investigating a rather significant number of European qualifying round matches from recent seasons for evidence of match fixing. There really isn’t a whole lot to say about match fixing that doesn’t invite a response of ‘duh, really?’. That altering the results of sporting contests for profit is bad is a universally acknowledged notion. What’s interesting here is the tone that the media coverage and UEFA officials have taken in the reports, which grants the identity of those not involved equal or greater importance than the clubs that are.

This interpretation of events does as much for reinforcing the ironclad, financially based caste system among the clubs of Europe as it does for the purposes of information. By taking pains to make sure we know that the big brand names aren’t involved, it’s almost as if the competition is divided into the ‘real’ portion where the teams you know and love face off against each other, and the pointless, substandard portion featuring unknown minnows. Casting the early qualifying rounds as a kind of obligatory, burdensome sideshow for the little guys is, on some level, helping to create the very atmosphere in which corruption seems justifiable on some level to the eventual participants.

Since match fixing is a serious breach of sporting morals and rules regardless of who commits it, the names should ultimately be of secondary importance. Granted, there is an obvious difference in impact when names like Juventus, Marseilles, or Genoa are involved than, hypothetically, the champions Belarus, but the fact that match fixing is allegedly occurring in Europe’s biggest competitions should balance out the difference in name recognition.

Hopefully the recent reorganizations of the qualifying process will remedy this atmosphere. We probably remain a long way off from a return to the days of seeing the super rich clubs in danger of being knocked out by a relatively unknown Eastern European opponent, but the new format has certainly made reaching the group stages a plausible goal again, which should remove any modicum of an excuse for engaging in match fixing.