LUCERNE, Switzerland (AFP) — European foootball is reeling from the weekend revelation that a host of matches may have been fixed as part of a multi-million pound betting scam.
UEFA's top brass left this idyllic lakeside city Monday following the Euro 2008 draw to face what has been described as potentially the most damaging scandal to hit the global game.
The alarm bell was sounded in Germany when Der Spiegel magazine reported that suspicion surrounded 26 matches involving teams from eastern Europe including one Euro 2008 qualifier.
That prompted speculation Croatia might be involved leading to their expulsion and a last minute recall to next year's finals for England.
But UEFA were quick to knock that notion firmly on the head.
"There is nothing at all from the European Championships. It is pure fantasy that it involved Croatia," William Gaillard, UEFA's director of communications, told AFP.
"There is no chance of England or Scotland having a back way into the finals."
He confirmed that 15 matches were under suspicion but that only one - an Intertoto Cup game - was being "officially investigated".
Reports claim the rogue game was the InterToto Cup match between Bulgarians Cherno More and Macedonia's Makedonija on July 7, which Cherno More won 4-0. The Bulgarian club reportedly deny any wrongdoing.
UEFA has handed a 96-page dossier to Europol, the pan-European police organisation, detailing its concerns surrounding the 15 suspect games.
Michel Platini, the UEFA president, described the scale of the problem European football was facing.
"We know that in Hong Kong, Singapore or elsewhere in Asia you might have a single bet of 10 million dollars on a match ending 4-4," he told The Sunday Times.
"It's coming to the end of the match, it's 2-2 and there are four penalties, and it finishes 4-4. We knew about these cases because we do have an early-warning system in place. We do know that some teams were approached by people."
Platini added: "We have known that for a long time and it could become very bad for football, and for all sport, in the future."
Graham Bean, an ex-British police officer and former head of the English Football Association's compliance unit, left no doubt as to the gravity of the problem.
"I can't remember anything happening on this scale before," he told the BBC.
"For something of this magnitude and these type of games then this is clearly very serious and potentially one of the most serious things that has happened in world football."
Bean said UEFA's main problem would be tracing the origin of the bets to produce enough evidence for a conviction.
"Clearly UEFA, for them to pass this report across, do have some evidence of some kind that would suggest has come down the route of betting patterns or individuals rolling over and telling them what they know.
"Nevertheless if that is the case they still need to get corroborative evidence to prove what has supposedly gone on."
Such is the complexity of the investigation, which comes in the wake of last year's corruption scandal in Italy's Serie A, that it could be some time before it reaches a conclusion.
An investigation into a 2004 UEFA Cup tie between Greek club Panionios and Dinamo Tblisi of Georgia for example is still ongoing.
Gaillard meanwhile said only minor games were under the spotlight.
"Nowadays there are people interested in matches involving medium, lower and even amateur leagues. There was a case in the past with a game from the German third division," he told AFP.
"Players from the lower leagues are easier to corrupt. Those in the top leagues are higher profile and richer.
"That's why the headline Chammpions League games haven't been targeted. But that doesn't console us, we want footballl to be clean at every level."
We have an agreement with Betfair (the internet betting exchange firm) who inform us when huge sums are placed on bets concerning matches without importance."
He stressed that the problem of rigging results was not football's alone.
"This threatens everyone in sport, that's why we need coordination between European governments.
"We've set up a meeting in Brussels in November 2008 with decision makers from spport and politics. This is the start of a combined fight against financial corruption."
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