First division Dutch football club FC Eindhoven is under police investigation for possible involvement in a Chinese match-fixing scam.
The club, not to be confused with PSV Eindhoven, says on its website that it alerted police and the Dutch national football association KNVB when a number of Chinese were observed on the terraces, incessantly using their cellphones. The club suspects the callers of having passed on match-related information to gambling offices in China.
Online gamblers are supposed to have been able to place bets on the number of corner kicks for instance, or the number of yellow card bookings. Suspicions were also raised by unusual scores, such as FC Eindhoven's home 8-0 loss to FC Dordrecht, earlier this season.
The FC Eindhoven squad, 2008-2009 (fc-eindhoven.nl)
The FC Eindhoven selection, 2008-2009 (fc-eindhoven.nl)
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Match-fixing on this scale is largely driven by attempts to make a quick dollar from the multi-billion dollar Sports Betting industry. In many of the cases now before UEFA, it is reported that bookmakers alerted UEFA to suspicious betting patterns, and it is thought that most of the cases involved sides where players did not earn high wages, and so were tempted by a large pay-off. There are not believed to be either English sides, or any major European clubs involved.
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