Just over two of every ten football players in Malta say that they’ve been approached to fix an official match in the country, according to a survey which looked into match fixing in club football.
27 out of a total of 114 football players from Malta’s footballing pyramid (23.9%) reported that they had been approached to fix an official game, while 11 (9.6%) said that they had been approached to fix a friendly match.
However, a staggering 93 out of the 114 respondents (81.6%) said that they had suspected that an official match they played in was fixed.
Match fixing is the act of trying to manipulate the outcome of a match, or a particular part of a match, and is wholly illegal.
It can be done with a range of intentions, although the most common would be for a club to secure a particular, generally favourable, result or for a person to make money off a bet placed on a particular aspect of the game.
Fixing a match can include anything from playing out the game with a pre-determined outcome or exact scoreline, or even ensuring that a certain number of yellow cards would have been received throughout the match.
The survey, titled ‘Combating Match Fixing in Club Football Non-Competitive Matches’ and published by the University of Nicosia in Cyprus looked at both friendlies and official matches, with its subject matter actually being focused on match fixing during friendly matches.
A total of 114 football players from Malta’s top three divisions filled in the survey, which also analysed the situation in football in Cyprus and Greece.
The number of players who said that they had played in a friendly match that they knew was fixed was quite low in Malta: only 6 players replied in the affirmative to this (5.2% of respondents). This compares favourably to the situation in Cyprus (13.9%) and Greece (19.8%).
Interestingly, three players who play in Greece responded that the game they knew to be fixed was actually played in Malta.
25 of the respondents who play in Malta (21.9%) also replied that they had suspected that a friendly match they played in was fixed. That’s still the lowest rate when compared to the other two countries in the study – Cyprus’ rate was 25.3%, while Greece’s was 35.5%.
The story changes however when taking official matches into consideration. Here, 31 players out of 104 (27.2%) said that they had played in an official match which they knew was fixed – higher than the rates registered in both Cyprus (20.6%) and Greece (18.2%).
The statistics are even starker when players were asked whether they took part in a match which they suspected was fixed.
A staggering 93 out of the 114 respondents (81.6%) said that they had suspected that an official match they played in was fixed.
27 of the 104 respondents (23.9%) reported that they had been approached to fix an official game, while 11 (9.6%) said that they had been approached to fix a friendly match.
Asked who they thought were the main instigators of the fix, the most chosen answers were fellow footballers (33.3%) and club officials (31.6%). Roughly the same amounts stated their belief that club officials (33.9%) and footballers (28.2%) were those who benefitted financially from fixing an official match.
A further 7.3% said that they believed that referees or other match officials were behind a game they thought was fixed.
Match fixing in Malta
Match fixing is not at all unheard of in Malta.
One of the most well-known cases concerned Hamrun Spartans back in 2013, when two players – Roderick Fenech and Massimo Grima – and two committee members were accused of approaching their goalkeeper Andrea Cassar, then 18 years old, to let in a set amount of goals in a match against Hibernians.
Cassar refused and eventually turned whistleblower against the two. Fenech and Grima were both eventually banned from football for life, but it wasn’t before Cassar had faced threats, stalking, and insults for his refusal to take the bribe.
In 2015, Nadur Youngsters were relegated to the Gozo League Second Division after their then secretary had tried to bribe a player from Xewkija Tigers FC in order to fix the match between the two teams.
In 2018, Uchenna Anyanwu was banned from football for life after being found guilty of trying to fix two 2016 Premier League fixtures: Mosta vs Birkirkara and Pembroke vs Mosta. Anyanwu was the team manager of Pembroke at the time, and the result of the Pembroke vs Mosta match (a 5-0 win in Pembroke’s favour) was overturned.
For the 2021/22, Attard FC started the season with a tally of -9 points after one of their committee members – 21-year-old Rudgear Scerri – admitted to trying to fix a match.
In 2018 meanwhile, six players from Malta’s U-21 national team were handed bans connected to a match fixing case. Two of those – Kyle Cesare and Emanuel Briffa – were banned for life from football, while the remaining four – Samir Arab, Ryan Camenzuli, Llwelyn Cremona, and Luke Montebello – were banned for between a year and two years for failing to report a match fixing approach to UEFA.
This case was particularly controversial, as the four who were handed bans for failing to report the match fixing approach felt hard done by, particularly because at the time there was no way of reporting such an approach anonymously.
Arab had later recounted how he had been offered €3,000 and then €5,000 to fix the match but had rejected both offers on the spot, but then had been too scared to voluntarily report the attempt to the authorities.
“We’re not talking about good people here, but about people with criminal backgrounds, gangs and mafia,” he had said. “When I appealed my ban, a UEFA board member asked me why I didn’t make use of an app that would have allowed me to file an anonymous report, but nobody in Maltese football knows this app even exists.”
However, the inspector who interrogated the young player told him it wasn’t possible to report attempted match-fixing anonymously as he would then need to testify against the fixer in court.
“It’s not a great experience to go to court and point your finger at a person who you know could retaliate against you.”
The desire for an online, anonymous way of reporting match fixing – which is not necessarily through the country’s authorities – remains, as reflected in the survey results.
For those football players who play in Malta, the first preference in the survery for reporting an approach for match-fixing is also the Players’ Union, with a percentage of 75.2%. The Police comes second with 25.4%, ahead of the National Association with 13.1% and lastly the Sports Integrity Commission with 11.4%.
Meanwhile 86.8% of the respondents playing in Malta said that they would be more comfortable reporting a fixing approach anonymously, and 84.1% said that they would be comfortable using an online tool such as FIFPRO’s Red Button app which guarantees their anonymity to report a match fixing attempt or suspicion.
Arab’s ban elapsed at the end of 2019, and he has since gone on to play with Balzan Youths and debut with the Maltese national team. The other three who faced bans for the same reason – Camenzuli, Cremona, and Montebello – have also since continued playing football.
Camenzuli and Montebello have become regulars with the Maltese national team, while Cremona plays in the Premier League with Gudja United FC.
Profiling the respondents
36 of the 114 respondents (31.6%) were between the age of 23 and 26, 32 of them (28.1%) were over the age of 30, another 22 (19.3%) were between the ages of 27 and 30 and likewise a further 22 were between the ages of 18 and 22. The remaining two players were under the age of 18.
99 out of the 114 who responded to the survey (86.8%) were semi-professional players, while the remaining 15 were professionals. 104 of the respondents (92%) said that they are Maltese, while the remaining 9 (8%) said that they were foreign.
38 of the respondents (33.3%) reported that they played in the BOV Premier League, while 41 of the respondents (41%) said that they played in the BOV First Division. Another 15 (13.2%) and 20 (17.5%) said that they played in the BOV Second Division and BOV Third Division respectively.
The survey was distributed to players at the beginning of the 2019/20 season – before the MFA changed the local league format by combining the Second and Third Division into one league.