Al­le­ga­tions of match-fix­ing in lo­cal foot­ball for the past few years are fi­nal­ly un­der the FI­FA radar.

Word from T&T Pre­mier Foot­ball League’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Yale An­toine, and Gor­don Pierre, the Cale­do­nia AIA ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber, con­firmed yes­ter­day that FI­FA of­fi­cials are in the coun­try and have con­duct­ed in­ter­views with play­ers on the mat­ter. Nei­ther could say who the mem­bers of the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body are but ex­plained that, due to the on­go­ing con­cerns of match-fix­ing here, they (FI­FA mem­bers) would have ar­rived here se­cret­ly to con­duct in­ves­ti­ga­tions with­out any­one know­ing.

Al­le­ga­tions of match-fix­ing have rocked lo­cal foot­ball at the top-flight Tier 1 and Tier 2 lev­els, but de­spite the mat­ter be­ing raised in var­i­ous quar­ters of the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty, the is­sue has been swept un­der the car­pet.

In 2023, Bri­an Lewis, then the chair­man of the Sport In­tegri­ty Glob­al Al­liance (SIGA)-Gen­der, Race, In­clu­sion, and Di­ver­si­ty (GRID) Sports Com­mit­tee, called on the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion to ad­dress al­le­ga­tions of match-fix­ing that were brought to them. That same year, then Guaya Unit­ed coach Travis Mul­raine asked the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion to in­ves­ti­gate con­cerns of match-fix­ing, as he ad­mit­ted that he had to get rid of five play­ers who were con­sid­ered cul­prits.

Mul­raine ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment to Guardian Me­dia Sports then, that while match-fix­ing con­cerns were raised with the par­ent TTFA at both the lev­els of Tier 1 and 2, the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion re­quest­ed ev­i­dence on the con­cerns rather than launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Over the week­end, videos of match­es were cir­cu­lat­ed as proof of match-fix­ing. It al­leged­ly showed play­ers un­der­per­form­ing or dis­play­ing weak at­tempts that cost their team a los­ing out­come.

“Last sea­son, they were talk­ing about match fix­ing, so they would have been look­ing at some of the bet­ting sites. In fact, on some of the match days, our in­for­ma­tion is that they have closed down some of the bet­ting sites. Be­cause of the match ma­nip­u­la­tion, what they were ob­serv­ing was that there was too much ma­nip­u­la­tion. So, they did some in­ter­views, and that is as much as I can say at present,” Pierre ex­plained.

Asked if he knew any­one who was in­ter­viewed, Pierre said, “I wouldn’t want to call names, but there are some play­ers who were in­ter­viewed.”

The scourge of match-fix­ing, which has neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed near­ly every ma­jor pro­fes­sion­al sports league in the world, es­pe­cial­ly foot­ball and crick­et, has reared its ug­ly head again, with Tier 1 of the com­pe­ti­tion fac­ing the end with just one round of match­es to be played next week­end.

Ed­di­son Dean, the Club San­do FC man­ag­er, said they too are hear­ing con­cerns of match-fix­ing in the league, not­ing that while every­body feels that it is hap­pen­ing, it just needs the ev­i­dence to be ex­posed. Based on what has tran­spired in the league to date, how­ev­er, Dean is con­vinced that there is some truth in the al­le­ga­tions.

“I know FI­FA looks in­to all the leagues, so I think they will be look­ing at it too. But judg­ing from some of the videos they’re watch­ing, you would as­sume that match-fix­ing is tak­ing place,” Dean said.

At present, the lead­ers of the De­fence Force Elite are well on course to com­plete a suc­cess­ful de­fence of their ti­tle with a fi­nal clash with AC Port-of-Spain on March 27 at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo. With 49 points, the Army Coast Guard Civil­ian Com­bi­na­tion team needs to win to pre­vent its clos­est ri­val, Club San­do, from clinch­ing the ti­tle.

The South­ern­ers are a point be­low them on 48 points and will tack­le FC Ea­gles in their fi­nal match of the sea­son at 6pm at the same venue.

Ac­cord­ing to Lewis in 2023, “Al­le­ga­tions of match-fix­ing in lo­cal foot­ball are some­thing that the TTFA must ad­dress and take se­ri­ous­ly. It is not the first time that there have been those al­le­ga­tions, and the re­al­i­ty is that it is well es­tab­lished that there is an in­ter­na­tion­al bet­ting syn­di­cate, and SIGA has been speak­ing about it, ad­vo­cat­ing and try­ing to get au­thor­i­ties all over the world to ad­dress the threat and the is­sue.”