The worst thing about farcical officiating

[SebastianBlue]

“Not interfering with play” this is even more damning ffs.

It’s absolute insanity the goal was given. Rashford couldn’t have impacted play more if he had actually touched the ball. He even dummies a shot *right* before Fernandes runs in to actually hit the ball. Eddie is completely setup for a shot by Rashford and Akanji would have been able to clear the ball easily if Rashford wasn’t literally running directly over it for 20 yards. I am even wondering if Walker couldn’t have come and cleared it before Fernandes got there.

If that is a valid goal, the offside rule is now completely useless, and running over the ball from an offside position will become a tactic used by every team to wreak havoc in defences and gain even further advantage (which is what the offside rule is meant to prevent).

But we all know such a goal will never be given again, even before any official changes to the way the rule is written are made. Because similar incidents have been ruled as offside nearly every other time they have ever occurred in the modern era. Not to mention Phil being flagged immediately offside numerous times yesterday, stopping play dead, a couple before he even touched the ball.

It was cheating—whatever the reason, home crowd/team intimidation, match manipulation, incompetence, etc—pure and simple.

And, once more, not only does the decision to allow such a farcical goal bring the integrity of the competition in to question, the attempt of governing bodies and many media outlets to legitimise it (or act as if there is nothing that can be done about it) makes a mockery of football in general.

Can’t say I am any less disgusted with the decision this morning than I was yesterday and, if anything, I am less enamoured with football a day later because of the football industrial complex being mobilised to bury the farce. It is just more proof of how the narrative of a fair and equitably officiated competition is controlled and protected at all costs.

 

[SebastianBlue]

There are plenty of Pro punters across Europe with access to UK betting sites but there’s little illegal activity that gets past bookmakers. There is probably some minor infringements at lower level but have a look at this and the amounts involved and how easily the “culprits” were caught.

Courtsiding - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

This doesn’t answer my question, though.

Are you arguing there is no match fixing or manipulation across the UK top flight? Or that betting companies are not a part of it?

The former would be a dubious claim at best, whilst the latter is more believable, for reasons you have outlined.

 

[Allnightlong]

It’s just the realities of finance and the Premier League and as previously mentioned there’s very little either way, (punters and Bookmakers). If a bookmaker had a certain piece of inside knowledge that would naturally lead them to offering false odds on an event, the shrewd pro punters would pick up on this and bet against it with another bookmaker who would in turn become aware of suspicious activity and alarm bells would ring. It’s not huge money that triggers these alerts. I know the Far East is shady regarding betting but could you imagine a Premier League player on big wages taking a bribe to even give away a throw or a corner to trouser a few quid with the knowledge it could cost him his career? It happened (allegedly) with John Higgins the snooker player who was caught on camera admitting his guilt in a betting scandal, the amount involved was about KDB’s wages for a couple of days, he’s under constant scrutiny and lucky to be still plying his trade.

didnt le tissier admit to spot fixing by just kicking the ball out of play?

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

The worst thing?

Knowing they’d find a way to overrule the flag and not being surprised.

 

[Edghill OG]

TwAtwell didn't give us anything all game.

The 'goal' was just the cherry on the cake. He was only too keen to disallow that and you could literally see the assistant crumble in front of our eyes from the abuse off serial offender Roland the Rat.

Just watched MOTD and they didn't even show the penalty incident either (not the Foden or the Haaland one).. Think it was on Cancelo?! There were two or three points of contact and couldn't believe TwAtwell didn't get asked to look at it.

Blatant freekick on the fringes of the box on Mahrez by another Casemiro assault ignored.

Shocking officiating performance all round. Almost as bad as the Scouser Mike Riley disallowing a perfectly legitimate Wolves goal last week against........ erm.... Liverpool. Hmm.

 

[hammocity]

This doesn’t answer my question, though.

Are you arguing there is no match fixing or manipulation across the UK top flight? Or that betting companies are not a part of it?

The former would be a dubious claim at best, whilst the latter is more believable, for reasons you have outlined.

Most betting companies are owned by large holding companies, it wouldn’t take long for a former disgruntled Director to spill the beans, imagine a Board meeting where the Directors say “right today, we are going to get Ederson to boot the ball out of play for the first corner”. It ain’t happening, besides there’s no financial incentives for multi millionaires to cheat.

 

[RiversideBlue]

The decision was bad. I'd have a lot more respect if they just came out and admitted they'd got it wrong rather than non-sensical excuses. We're all football fans, we all know that its a nailed on offside. How thick do they take us for?

 

[Bantamgaz]

I had originally thought you indicated European top flight (presumably the top five leagues), which is why I asked. I misread.

But perhaps I also misunderstood your greater point: are you saying there is no match fixing or manipulation across UK top flight football? Or that betting syndicates are not part of it?

It won’t have nothing to do with betting it’s all about money and having United and Liverpool at the top will make the PL loads of money as both clubs have gloryhunters here and abroad :(

 

[SebastianBlue]

Most betting companies are owned by large holding companies, it wouldn’t take long for a former disgruntled Director to spill the beans, imagine a Board meeting where the Directors say “right today, we are going to get Ederson to boot the ball out of play for the first corner”. It ain’t happening, besides there’s no financial incentives for multi millionaires to cheat.

I think you and I are talking about very different types of match manipulation, incentives for such manipulation (i.e. protection and enhancement of the “product”, which leads to revenue generation), and who is orchestrating the manipulation.

And you are being incredibly naive if you think the UK top flight are the only top tier leagues in the world (and, more broadly, the only enterprises in the world) to be free of match manipulation. It has been proven to exist everywhere else where it is largely fractionally as lucrative to manipulate outcomes. This is a very exceptionalism view of football in the UK and one that I am sure the likes of the PL and FA would be very happy to hear you hold.

As far as the wiki entry you linked to and whilst it is very interesting, I would strongly argue that the sort of match manipulation I and others (including former officials and players) argue occurs the UK top flight—and, indeed, elsewhere—is at a completely different level to what is described there, protected by many, many layers of obfuscation, built up over decades, and incentivised via vast sums of money and power.

That’s the irony of corruption at higher levels: it does get more difficult to pull off due to much more stringent scrutiny, but it also becomes much easier to cover up for longer periods of time (though, not indefinitely) because of the more robust mechanisms that enable and hide it, often including the regulatory bodies meant to prevent it in the first place.

You have spoken about multi-millionaires being difficult to pay off to manipulate outcomes but that is based on a false premise that more money is used to coerce compliance and/or complicity, rather than the threat of less money or the use of blackmail (which can include threat of exposure of past misdeeds).

That is the case across industries and something I have quite a bit of professional experience with. Multi-millionaires are regularly coerced in to taking certain ethically dubious and/or illegal actions based on the threat of loss of wealth, reputation, life, or all of the above.

Some would argue blackmail is actually easier with the wealthy because of the nature of their lives and the complexity inherent in the structure of their wealth (I.e. more often than not, there are many more people threatened by one person’s dubious history being exposed than would be the case with a less wealthy person, which strengthens the power of coercion). These are not simple, discrete manipulation schemes. Many people stand to lose quite a lot, from the top to the bottom, by having them exposed.

But the truth usually comes out eventually, as we have seen before in England, Italy, Spain, Portugal, America, China, and elsewhere.

All of this is to say: from a professional perspective, after years of working in the financial data analytics and fraud prevention sector, I think you are being exceedingly naive with your assessment.

 

[Bluearmy]

didnt le tissier admit to spot fixing by just kicking the ball out of play?

He did try and admit it but cocked it up from memory, dont think the ball went out