How would you describe the behaviour of thinking it would be detrimental to your career if you made a mistake that impacted United at home.
You have a new boss & he & the match commander have explained the spirit the game should be played & they are contrary to the LOTG.
You know that you can be given higher or lower profile games (higher earning potential) depending on the view of your performance.
It’s not all secret bank accounts & bulging envelopes of cash.
I would go further and say that at this level—and this applies to coercion and manipulation at higher levels across every type of industry (of which I have a decent amount of experience)—bank accounts and bulging envelopes are actually an infrequent method. They’re messy, too easily traced, and often the least effective means due to the wealth already held by most people involved.
And, anyway, most corruption is far more mundane and obtuse than is depicted in films and novels (from which most people form their concept of it). A lot of it starts with well-intentioned but ethically question decisions that escalate in to much more problematic (and unintentionally complex) schemes, capturing more and more people at various levels as it goes.
We all make “brown envelope jokes”—I certainly do—but I think most of us know it doesn’t actually work that way in the modern iteration of the game. Not even with the fairly obvious example of corruption with Qatar being awarded the World Cup. It is far more complex and opaque, which is one of the reasons it takes much longer (and requires more effort) to expose the schemes now.
If you ever want a good example of how something can go from a poor choice based on fear of fairly minor consequences by a few to a full on, freakishly complex, international fraud scandal with massive implications involving literally thousands upon thousands of people, look up the recent Wells Fargo accounts and services scandal.
The sort of corruption I believe is occurring is the kind that develops over many decades, through many disparate and unconnected (at least at first) decisions made to develop an enterprise and then maintained and enhance it. Often the people behind the most egregious examples of such schemes genuinely don’t even think what they were/are doing is wrong, such is the fragmented nature of the network of support for most corruption that exists at the level we are discussing (especially in well developed nations when the majority of it is not clear bribes and obviously illicit deals).
It’s also a bit of a myth that corruption is relatively non-existent in western nations compared to elsewhere. That is only true when when comparisons are based on:
1) only straightforward types of corruption (again, bribes, embezzlement, etc.) being considered, rather than more complex forms like regulatory, market, and general financial fraud and improper influence/intervention
2) corruption undertaken by western entities outside of their own borders is ignored (a large part of the corruption that occurs outside of western nations is initiated (and sustained) by western entities, governments and industry alike.
I think those that believe English football is somehow different from not only all other major football leagues, but also every other industry on earth, are being exceedingly naive.
Then again, I think one would need to have that belief to actually enjoy football, so I suppose there is a real purpose and benefit to that naïveté.
In some ways, I wish I could believe it, especially as I become less and less enamoured with football by the month.
