What We're Reading
Gold Cup games under game-fixing scrutiny
- SI.com, Friday, December 9, 2011 1:23 PM
Grant Wahl reports that last summer's Gold Cup, which was hosted by the USA and drew a record attendance of 601,702, has attracted allegations of
game-fixing.
"There has been information that some matches in the Gold Cup were manipulated," FIFA head of security Chris Eaton confirmed to SI.com. "We worked with
Concacaf at the time, and Concacaf have been very interested in following up any information that can be revealed in the future on that."
While Eaton said FIFA had no investigative
confirmation of Gold Cup game-fixing, he cited irregular betting patterns during the tournament. A leading betting-industry insider told SI he was highly suspicious of every Gold Cup game involving
Cuba and Grenada and also had questions about El Salvador's 5-0 loss to Mexico. The games involving Grenada (which lost three matches by a combined 15-1) and Cuba (which was outscored 16-1), the
insider said, stood out: "It was the sort of thing where we sat around and said, 'Yeah, this looks like it's a 99 percent chance that it's bent.'"
The betting-industry insider explained
that the irregularities were in what is called "in-running betting" (in which bets are placed during a game on what will happen from that point on) as opposed to "dead-ball betting" that takes place
before the game. In-game betting on world soccer is dominated by the Asian market, which he said was producing belief-defying odds swings during several Gold Cup games. The suspicious games weren't
just the result of Cuba and Grenada being poor teams, he said.
