It is, to start with, a fascinating read.
Declan Hill's book The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime, published this week and already stirring up loads of controversy around the world, is part true-crime potboiler, part spy thriller, part academic discourse and part journey of personal discovery.
A knowledge and passion for the world game isn't necessary to appreciate the work of the Canadian investigative journalist, but for those who do love soccer, this one will cut deeply. Like Hill, they will start out as skeptics, doubting that – despite a long history of match fixing and dirty refereeing that he details – big-time, big-money players could be persuaded to influence the outcome of matches on the planet's grandest sports stage, the World Cup.
By the end, the weight of evidence will at least begin to chip away at that disbelief.
There is no arguing with the fact that games have been fixed in relatively minor leagues in which the players are ill paid and vulnerable, or that referees have been influenced with money and sex, as has been documented in Germany, and even in Italy's Serie A.
But by the end of The Fix, a reader will wonder whether it's also possible that a mysterious Chinese gambling figure, whom Hill calls Lee Chin, meeting with associates in a KFC in Bangkok, could have arranged for some Ghanaian players to conspire to dump a World Cup quarter-final match against Brazil in 2006 by at least two goals.
The match, played at the magnificent stadium in Dortmund, was beautiful to behold close up, with both sides playing free-attacking soccer. In the end, the outcome, 3-0 for Brazil, was hardly regarded as a surprise. Just reaching the knockout round against the defending champions was a moral victory for the Ghanaians in their first World Cup.
But in the gambling underworld Hill describes, it's not about arranging the historic upset, it's not about throwing the biggest game, but merely about assuring the desired result, by the desired margin, thus creating certainty for the bettors. Those looking for a Black Sox-scale scandal will miss the fact that a goal or two in an obscure match in which the favourite triumphs with nothing much on the line can be just as valuable to superhigh-stakes gamblers (especially in the Internet age, where laying off enormous bets is a simple and nearly instant process) as a shocking upset.
The possibility that it could happen in the World Cup is something else again. Hill says he cried that day in Dortmund after the match, seeing it all come to pass, as he had been told it would.
He won't come out and say that the game was fixed, and he is careful to say that he doesn't think the entire Ghana team was involved.
“But I'm deeply suspicious of that game,” he says.
Treading on such hallowed ground hasn't won Hill any popularity contests with the world soccer establishment. “The reaction has been mixed,” he said yesterday from Paris, where he was promoting the book. “I'm either the biggest hero in the world or the biggest jerk.”
Lawsuits have been threatened from Ghana, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association has issued the requisite denials, and especially from those who clearly haven't read the book, there is the suggestion that it just couldn't happen the way he describes. Players are too highly paid to be influenced by bribes. The rewards of winning in a major international tournament are too great to be sold away. The spotlight is too bright to allow for under-the-table dealings.
But consider facts that no one disputes: that would-be match fixers have repeatedly approached players, who, unlike most North American professional athletes, aren't insulated by league-hired security forces; that enormous amounts have been wagered on extremely minor matches; that even at the World Cup, players have threatened to strike because they weren't receiving the money promised them, or have rebelled against coaches (as was the case with the Togo side in Germany); and that there are multiple stories of fixes involving Ghanaian teams, both at the national and club level.
So perhaps it didn't happen, but just try to make the case that it couldn't have happened. Perhaps other matches at the 2006 tournament that Hill labels as suspicious (Italy-Ukraine, Italy-Ghana) were actually on the up-and-up, but then ask yourself whether you're absolutely sure. Perhaps, as FIFA head Sepp Blatter would suggest, there may be bad people out there with enormous amounts of money in their pockets trying to fix World Cup matches, but they don't, they can't and they haven't. “The fixers must be the most unlucky tourists in the world,” Hill saids, and you can see the smile right through the transatlantic connection. “They go to all of these tournaments all over the world, and they never, ever succeed.”
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