Soccer's biggest match-fixing scandals

Happy Friday, folks.

On Monday, we poured the scandals from the top: FIFA, the Super League, Rubiales and Big Sam. Today it’s the worst crime in sport: fixing the result itself. And since everyone keeps asking what happens to a giant club that gets caught, the last one on the list answers it.

Here’s what’s on tap today:

• ⚖️ Soccer’s biggest scandals, part two: fixing the result

• 🏆 78 goals in two days and your Premier League preview

• 🍺 A beer with Mbappe

Let’s tap in.

🥃 TOP SHELF

Soccer’s biggest scandals, part two: fixing the result

A bar can survive a lot. A rude owner, a bad bouncer, the time someone set the kitchen on fire. What it can’t survive is a crooked game of cards. Once the regulars think the deck is stacked, they stop sitting down.

Soccer works the same way. Every scandal I poured on Monday was about the people around the game. These three went after the game itself.

The most dramatic one: Totonero, Italy, 1980

In 1979, Italy had a huge illegal betting market, known as Totonero. Some players, and at least one club president, decided they could get in on it by fixing the games they were playing in.

On March 23, 1980, Italian police walked into stadiums after the final whistle and arrested players still in their uniforms. Picture the cops waiting in the tunnel at a Sunday NFL game.

The punishment was brutal. AC Milan and Lazio were relegated. Milan’s president was banned from soccer. Milan’s goalkeeper was banned for life, later cut to four years.

And Paolo Rossi, one of Italy’s brightest young strikers, was banned for three years, later reduced to two. He always denied any involvement. His ban ended weeks before the 1982 World Cup. He went to Spain, scored six goals, won the Golden Boot and the Golden Ball, lifted the trophy and won the Ballon d’Or. Not a bad comeback.

The most expensive one: Marseille, 1993

May 26, 1993. Marseille beat AC Milan 1-0 in Munich to win the first-ever Champions League. A French club had never won Europe’s biggest trophy.

Within days, news broke that Marseille’s league game against Valenciennes six days earlier had been fixed. Three Valenciennes players had been approached to go easy on them, so Marseille could wrap up the French title and rest their stars for the final. Two took the money. One of them was Jorge Burruchaga, who scored the winning goal in the 1986 World Cup final. Some of the cash was found buried in a garden. The third, Jacques Glassmann, said no and told his coach. He’s the reason anyone found out.

Marseille were stripped of the French title, relegated to the second division and banned from defending the Champions League. Their president, Bernard Tapie, went to jail.

The strange part: they kept the European trophy, because that game wasn’t fixed. They’re still the first French club ever to win it. The second took 32 years: PSG, their bitter rivals.

The biggest one: Juventus, 2006

In May 2006, Italian police released wiretapped phone calls. They showed Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi in regular contact with the officials who chose referees, steering which ones Juventus got. Italy called it Calciopoli.

Juventus were the biggest club in the country, and they’d just won back-to-back league titles. They were stripped of both. The 2006 title was handed to Inter, and Juventus were sent down to Serie B, Italy’s second division, with points docked on top. Moggi was banned from soccer for life. AC Milan, Lazio, Fiorentina and Reggina were all docked points too.

Then came the exodus. Some of the world’s best players: Zlatan Ibrahimović, Patrick Vieira, Lilian Thuram and Gianluca Zambrotta all left. But Gianluigi Buffon, Alessandro Del Piero, Pavel Nedvěd and David Trezeguet stayed and played in the second division. Del Piero said a gentleman never leaves his lady.

They won Serie B at the first attempt and came straight back up.

"So that’s what could happen to City?"

It’s the closest thing to a precedent. Different crime, though. Juventus bent the referees. City, the commission found, bent the books. And years later, more wiretaps suggested Inter had also been in contact with referee officials, but too much time had passed to punish anyone. Some Juventus fans still call it Farsopoli.

Three scandals, three different bills. Milan and Lazio went down. Marseille went down and kept their trophy. Juventus went down and came straight back.

🗣️ SOUND LIKE A REGULAR

"a sitter"

/ə ˈsɪtə/ 🔊

noun · soccer

1. Definition: A chance so easy that scoring should be automatic. The goal is open, the keeper is beaten, and all the striker has to do is not think about it too hard.

2. Origin: In the 19th century, hunters called a stationary bird or animal a “sitter.” Because it was easy to shoot, the term gave rise to the related idiom “sitting duck”.

USED IN A SENTENCE

"Six yards out with nobody near him, and he put it over the bar. That is a sitter, and he will see it in his sleep."

🗞️ THE WEEKLY TAP-IN…

Champions League recap

Europe's 36 best clubs, one big table, eight games each. This was game two, and it produced 78 goals, the most in a single round in the competition's history.

• Man City 2-4 PSG. City's first home game since the guilty verdict, and PSG, the reigning champions, were 3-0 up inside half an hour. Erling Haaland dragged it back to 4-2 and became City's all-time leading scorer in the competition along the way. Pep Guardiola, who stepped down as manager last summer, watched from the stands.

• Atlético Madrid 2-0 Man United. Scored on in 47 seconds, down to ten men by the 74th minute, now five games without a win. Afterward, defender Lisandro Martínez skipped the usual "we have to look at ourselves" and aimed at the people upstairs, naming the club's technical director. He has since clarified. He has not apologized.

• Roma 3-4 Real Madrid. The best game of the week and a strange night for the away dressing room. Madrid's manager José Mourinho used to manage Roma. His center back Antonio Rüdiger used to play for Roma. With seven minutes left Roma led 3-1, and then Madrid scored three times, Rüdiger finishing it in the 90th minute against his old crowd. Nobody left that stadium happy except the people in white.

The rest of the English clubs: Arsenal 3-0 Lille, LASK 3-6 Liverpool, Aston Villa 6-0 Fenerbahçe.

Elsewhere: Barcelona won 4-1 in Istanbul and have won every game they've played this season. Vamos.

Premier League preview

Matchweek 7/38. City sit top with six wins from six, Arsenal three points back. All times ET.

• Everton v Chelsea (Saturday, 7:30am, USA Network): Everton are one of three teams yet to lose this season with one of the best defenses in the League. Chelsea just put five past Bournemouth with one of the best attacks in the League. An unstoppable force meets an immovable object.

• Man City v Ipswich (Saturday, 10am, USA Network): The perfect start meets the promoted side that have already surprised a few teams. An upset on the cards?

• Brentford v Liverpool (Saturday, 10am, Peacock): Brentford haven’t lost yet either. Liverpool have two wins in six and are coming off Anfield’s worst afternoon in years.

• Leeds v Man United (Sunday, 9am, USA Network): Leeds pushed the champions all the way last week. United threw away a lead to winless Tottenham last week. These teams famously do not like each other. This one is worth getting up early for.

The rest: Saturday at 10am: Fulham v Hull (Peacock). Saturday at 12:30pm: Newcastle v Aston Villa (NBC). Sunday at 9am: Bournemouth v Sunderland and Brighton v Crystal Palace (both Peacock). Sunday at 11am (Peacock): Nottingham Forest v Arsenal. Monday at 3pm: Tottenham v Coventry (USA Network).

🍻 HAVE A BEER WITH…

Kylian Mbappe

Club and country: Real Madrid and France

This week: Scored Real Madrid's equalizer in the 4-3 comeback win at Roma, in his 100th Champions League game.

Fact: His childhood bedroom in Bondy, just outside Paris, was papered wall to wall with Cristiano Ronaldo posters. He now plays for Ronaldo's old club, wears a Real Madrid shirt his bedroom walls would not have believed, and this week moved past Raúl into fifth on the Champions League's all-time scoring list. Ronaldo is still first, with 140.

Toast: A bottle of Mahou, the beer they drink in Madrid. He celebrates goals with his arms folded, a pose his younger brother Ethan invented while beating him on the PlayStation. Kylian then went and tried to trademark it. Ethan, now at Lille, still uses it anyway.

Instagram: @k.mbappe

🔥 HOUSE SPECIALS

⚽ Goal of the week: Look away now, goalkeepers. Maghnes Akliouche scored one of the most peculiar goals you’ll ever see in PSG’s 4-2 win at Man City.

🎉 Fanzone: Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk have not played in their own city since 2014, eight years before the full Russian invasion. They’ll play their home Champions League games this year at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge. They beat AEK Athens there 3-1 on Wednesday.

📅 On this day: October 16, 2004. A 17-year-old Lionel Messi made his Barcelona debut, coming on for the last eight minutes of a derby at Espanyol.

🐶 Underdog corner: Bodø/Glimt, a Norwegian club north of the Arctic Circle playing on artificial turf in front of 7,885 people, beat Borussia Dortmund 1-0.

👕 Wardrobe watch: Barcelona will swap their Spotify sponsor for Tyler, The Creator's GOLF logo against Real Madrid on October 25, the ninth musician to take over the shirt.

🔗 Most clicked from Monday: A brand called Icarus Football has reimagined Tottenham’s 1991-94 away shirt for the Philadelphia Eagles. I’m not a Spurs or Eagles fan but I might order one for myself.

That’s all, folks. Sláinte.