Scandals and conflicts in the football world: an overview of the latest events

Football is the most popular sport in the world, so it’s natural to expect to see some controversy on and off the field. But with millions of fans closely watching, it’s hard to keep anything a secret. So, any scandal easily surfaces and gets massive media coverage.

Whatever happens behind closed doors doesn’t stay there for long. There have been plenty of scandals and controversies in football over the years. As Roulette77 states unlike 10p Roulette by Gamevy, football can be a brutal sport. Let’s have a look at some of the latest events which shook the football world.



Canada’s Women Team Drone Incident

The latest scandal in football came from the Paris Olympics in 2024. What’s more surprising is that this event took place even before the Olympics officially started. The Canada women's team was set to have their first match against New Zealand. Well, it seems the coach was pretty concerned about the upcoming match, so she decided to take some offensive action.

Bev Priestman decided to use a drone and spy on the practice sessions of the opposing team. Unfortunately, they were spotted and an official complaint was filled. After the investigation, Bev was banned from the tournament for a year. The Canada team was deducted six points and the Canada football association was fined with $226,000. When you put all of the fines together it hardly seems worth it just for spying on a training session.

Match fixings in Brazil

As of 2023 John Trextor came out with a number of accusations about referee mistakes and results manipulation. He stated that his team was harmed by this, causing him to lose the leadership in the Campeonato Brasileiro. His accusations went as far as hiring a French company which specializes in arbitration and game data. He also came forward with accusations of bribes being given to referees from a number of matches.

All of this resulted in a trial being scheduled for April 15th, 2024. He was given a deadline to bring to light evidence to support his accusations but has yet to do so. But the Brazilian police were asked to interrogate him and present any evidence they could find.

Here are some other match-fixing scandals across the world from each country.

Football Country	Year of Scandal
Italy	1980
Greece	1981
Yugoslavia	1986
Malaysia	1999
United Kingdom	1964

The Qatar World Cup Scandals

The 2022 FIFA World Cup which took place in Qatar was met with a number of scandals and controversies. It all started with Qatar being awarded the World Cup in the first place when there were other competitive bids for it to be hosted in Japan, the USA or even Australia. This brought on a heap of accusations of bribery and selling of votes by the committee. It even resulted in the suspension of two members, which afterwards got temporary bans. The main controversies for the World Cup were:

● Bribes for Committee members
● Using cheap migrant labour
● Manipulation with carbon footprint numbers
● Human rights abuse

The mastermind behind this was believed to be Mohammed bin Hammam. Allegedly he gave out millions in bribes to officials. An interesting fact is that he already has a lifetime ban for earlier corruption scandals back in 2011. This all resulted in an ongoing investigation, leading to the resignation of Sepp Blatter, who was charged but acquitted of criminal fraud in 2022. But in the end, the World Cup stayed to be hosted in Qatar and preparations were on the way.

Exploiting Migrant Labor

It’s no secret that hosting the World Cup can cost billions of dollars. This includes building new football stadiums, making sure the infrastructure is solid and having accommodation for the millions of fans. Well, it seems that Qatar managed to keep the costs down by using migrant workers as cheap labour.

They relied on over 2 million migrant workers under the kafala system. This system was widely criticized by human rights organizations, deeming it as an exploitation of migrant workers. According to some reports, it’s estimated that over 6.500 migrant workers have died in work-related incidents from 2010.

Carbon Footprint Manipulations

Another controversy was the report on the carbon footprint for the World Cup. FIFA came out with a pledge that this will be the first carbon-neutral World Cup. However, the research shows some quite different results. They took into consideration that the Cup is played in six new stadiums, as well as one old stadium and one more as a temporary measure. Calculating the gas emissions for the construction of the stadiums and their lifespan it was calculated that around 2.6 megatonnes of emissions would be released. But the actual numbers show that it’s closer to 5 megatonnes.

Conclusion

It’s expected that the football world will always go hand in hand with scandals and controversies. Whether it’s about fixed matches, not utilizing VAR decisions in crucial matches or simply footballers going on a rampage on night out, scandals will always be there. But since the world is closely watching maybe they’ll learn from previous mistakes and not make them in the future.