“978-88-3324-087-9”
Passi di: “MATCH FIXING”. iBooks. Who is behind match fixing? How is it done, and to which aim? In 2015 we wrote for Minerva Edizioni Game Over: a report targeted at practitioners, and more specifically at investigators. Since we did not want the book to be too ponderous, we provided a succinct description of a few topics that might have been interesting reading material even to “non-professionals”.
These topics are dealt in depth in this volume: the history of match fixing, odd anecdotes and current state of affairs, the profile of its main characters and the explanation of the mechanisms (and complex motives) behind the swindle as well as the role played by the mafia.
You will not find any footnote: instead, the bibliography, at the end of the book, will provide you with book references as well as internet links, all relevant and interesting, although some of them, in our opinion, are a “must” for those who really wish to acquire a deep knowledge of the topic. This is why we highly recommend them to you.
The Fix by Declan Hill (2007) is a comprehensive book on the birth of modern match fixing and its close ties to the mafia. In 2014 Brett Forrest published The Big Fix where he recounts the never-ending fight between law enforcement and match fixers.
But the real masterpieces on the subject are a book and... a very long judicial document. The book is the autobiography of one of the most notorious match fixers in the world: Wilson Raj Perumal, Kelong Kings, written by two Italian scholars, Alessandro Righi and Emanuele Piano. The judicial document is the ordinance issued by Cremona judge, Guido Salvini, in the maxi investigation on Scommessopoli that took place a few years ago (no doubt a less casual reading, yet dramatically concrete): hundreds of pages packed with wiretaps, explanatory notes of criminal mechanisms and charges that brought to its knees, at least for a while, match fixing in the Italian peninsula.
The only sources that we left in complete anonimity are those players, who over time have become our friends: they described to us the insider’s point of view, the existing dynamics in the dressing rooms, the problems and weaknesses of the athletes themselves, the ongoing match fixing techniques. At the beginning of this long journey we took their stories with a grain of salt, “perceiving” them as the fruit of their imagination...but this is not the case anymore!
In reality football is not the only sport (nor was it the first) where match fixing took place: actually, in recent years other sport disciplines were targeted by match fixers. In this book we only hint at the story and trends of the swindle outside of football pitches, and yet it is in the world of football that the mafia invests massively its own resources, and where match fixing is not the sole objective of this criminal enterprise.
One last remark: this is not a diatribe of a book, and where it was possible to report an event without mentioning the name of players who were disqualified or investigated, we did so: the only difference between them and many others (just as guilty as they were) lies in the simple fact that they got caught.
