Posted this in another thread...just wanted it to be seen to get other opinions.Originally Posted by Teh One Who Knocks
Posted this in another thread...just wanted it to be seen to get other opinions.
Congratulations Rokr/Meur/Arkady.
Last edited by DemonGeminiX; 07-13-2014 at 10:02 PM.
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Music was better when ugly people were allowed to make it.
they have apparently the best goatse
I think its got twice the action of the entire fuggin game, packed into about 30 seconds.
I think they should have handed an emmy award to Schwieszidjejryjbyyeruer or whatever the fug his name was, fuggin actor extraordinaire.
I think next time I see soccer on TV, I'll know better.
Wilson Raj Perumal: The man who fixed football
By Don Riddell and Matthew Knight, CNN
(CNN) -- He rose from humble beginnings, worked his way through the local leagues before graduating to become a major player on the international stage, netting him millions of dollars along the way.
But this isn't a tale about a footballing hero. This is a story about one of modern sport's greatest villains -- the man dubbed the most notorious match-fixer in the world.
You may not be familiar with the name Wilson Raj Perumal but given how prolific he was, you might have watched one of the games he's fixed.
"I never really counted, but I think it should be between 80-100 football matches," Perumal told CNN's Don Riddell in his first-ever television interview.
Few doors seemed to be closed to Perumal.
"I was on the bench at times, and telling players what to do, giving orders to the coach. It was that easy. There was no policing whatsoever."
Officials were just as easy to target, he boasts, with "no barriers" when approaching select referees, while certain football associations would "welcome you with open arms," he added.
It was only after his arrest and subsequent conviction in 2011 -- his fourth for football-related crimes - - that Perumal started coming clean on his former life, with the poacher-turned-gamekeeper now helping European police combat match-fixing.
In all, Perumal claims to have pocketed around $5 million himself from match-fixing.
However, he lost it all gambling, perhaps explaining why the 49-year-old recently published an autobiography, "Kelong Kings," recounting his journey from rural Singapore to football's globetrotting Mr Fix-it.
"I had my boyhood dreams. I wanted to be a soldier but during my school days I got a criminal record and couldn't really pursue what I wanted to. And then I got attracted to betting when I was about 19-20 years old," he said.
"I kind of got hooked and I didn't want to lose ... so I started fixing local matches," he says.
Perumal plied his trade in Singapore's local football leagues in the late 1980s before joining what international crime-fighting organization INTERPOL recently described as "the world's most notorious match-fixing syndicate" allegedly headed by Tan Seet Eng -- better known as "Dan Tan," who is now reportedly in detention in Singapore.
As the Internet age dawned in the mid-1990s, so Perumal's match-fixing horizons expanded.
"We could see all these matches around the world ... I had the opportunity to target vulnerable countries ... people who were prone to accept bribes," he said.
"So I registered a company and started e-mailing associations and building relationships."
'Like two hands prepared to clap'
The 49-year-old's first foray into international match-fixing -- a 1997 friendly match between Zimbabwe and Bosnia Herzegovina -- failed, he says.
Perumal alleges up to six players from the Zimbabwe team had agreed to lose the match 4-0 in return for a share of $100,000. But the game played in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia finished in a 2-2 draw.
"We gave them a result that was difficult to accomplish and what happened during the game was that one player accidentally kicked the ball into the net."
A decade later, Perumal targeted Zimbabwe again in what became known as the "Asiagate" scandal with both players and officials receiving bribes to fix a string of matches between 2007 and 2009.
"We were like two hands prepared to clap," Perumal says.
Former FIFA match-fixing investigator, Terry Steans was shocked when he was handed a FIFA case file on match-fixing in Zimbabwe in 2009.
Match-fixing suspect turns himself in
"I read that file and thought: 'No. It can't be. It can't be this easy and it can't be this prevalent,'" Steans told CNN.
"Five years later, I know yes it was and yes it is. But that file opened our eyes and it was to set FIFA Security, at that time, on a path to try and discover as much as we could about the fixers and how prevalent and widespread they were."
Zimbabwe's game was destroyed by the fixing scandal, Steans says.
Dozens of players and officials were sanctioned, some receiving life bans while others were barred from playing for several years.
The Footballers Union of Zimbabwe has been critical of the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) investigation but Steans says ZIFA deserves credit for taking action.
"They appointed an investigation committee and they took the investigation as far as they possibly could do."
CNN invited ZIFA to comment on match-fixing in the country but they hadn't responded by the time of publication.
Hat trick of jail terms
Perumal says he achieved around a 70-80% success rate and claims to have rigged games at the Olympics, World Cup qualifiers, the women's World Cup, the CONCACAF Gold Cup and the African Cup of Nations.
But his attempts to corrupt didn't always go undetected by the authorities, notably in Singapore where he was imprisoned three times for football-related offences.
In 1995, he was jailed for 12 months for trying to bribe a football player. Four years later he was imprisoned for 26 months for introducing a referee to a match-fixer and in 2000 he attacked a footballer with a hockey stick prior to a game -- an offense he says he deeply regrets.
In 2011, the football authorities eventually caught up with Perumal again, this time in Finland where he was arrested and subsequently jailed for fixing matches in the Veikkausliiga, the country's premier football division.
Perumal served one year of a two-year sentence before being extradited to Hungary where he has been helping police there with match-fixing investigations in the Balkans.
Steans was shocked when police showed him Perumal's list of contacts.
"Perumal had 38 countries in one phone book contacts list -- he had officials and players from those 38 countries," Steans told CNN.
"If you then go to his laptop address book, there were over 50. FIFA has 209 associations ... so we are talking a quarter of FIFA associations for one fixer," he added.
"As we now know, he used most of these people and used them for his own ends and his syndicate's ends and made a lot of money out of it."
He might have lost all his ill-gotten gains but Perumal looks back fondly on that period of his life.
"I have no regrets. It was like, it was a phase of my life and I enjoyed it and I traveled around the world. I had a good time."
There are glimmers of remorse. Perumal says he feels sorry for fixing some matches but then says there are "no regrets" for others.
"Football is no longer a sport. It is more like a business now. So I think we're just trying to make money out of this business. People want to win and they will do anything just to get a result."
Pitch battle
FIFA says preserving the game's integrity is "a top priority" and in 2011 announced it was giving INTERPOL €20 million ($26.5 million) to fight match-fixing.
"We take any allegations of match manipulation very seriously and are looking into those," FIFA's media department told CNN via email.
"Obviously we are aware of publications such as 'Kelong Kings.' We do not further comment on our activities and we do not share investigative reports.
"FIFA continues to work closely with law enforcement agencies as well as the respective public authorities and other sports organizations on a national regional and global level to tackle the issue of match manipulation."
But Perumal thinks they could be doing more.
"FIFA has not come up with enough strategies or methods or publicity or marketing or whatever you can call it, to combat match-fixing," Perumal says.
"FIFA are doing a lot of things to combat racism but I think match-fixing is more of a problem than racism. I'm not saying FIFA shouldn't pump in so much money (to tackle racism) but what I'm saying is that match-fixing is a more pressing issue."
Steans says Perumal has been "value for money" for investigators helping them understand how match-fixers operate.
"Wilson is a bit of an enigma," he says. "But you know what, every piece of information that he gave out of Finland and Hungary that came our way was right."
The former FIFA man is still fighting match fixing, working as a consultant for a sports corruption company.
But given the recent past, he fears for football's future if match fixing continues to carry on virtually unchecked.
"We end up with a game that lacks integrity, with the game's reputation in tatters and with fans not really knowing what they're watching," Steans says.
"Will fans watch? We'd probably end up with something similar to Zimbabwe where fans walked away, sponsors walked away ... You will end up with a game that means nothing. Just means nothing.
"And when it means nothing, sponsors don't want it and fans don't want it either. So teams would be playing in empty stadiums. It'd be a desert."
Andy Edwards - MLSsoccer.com
Right now, levels of punishment doled out by soccer referees to players are pretty basic.
Commit a reckless challenge or persistent infringement, it's a yellow card for you; make a violent challenge that endangers the safety of those around you, it's a red and you're gone.
There is little to no way for referees to properly punish players for an "orange card" offense.
As things stand, simulation — in other words, diving or flopping — should be treated as a yellow card offense. But what happens when a player, who's already received a yellow card in the game, dives in an attempt to con the referee?
Often times, referees are hesitant to issue a player his second yellow card — and thus, an ejection — for simulation.
But as legendary Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson has revealed (above video), a solution, which would give referees far more wiggle room in punishing players for simulation, might be coming down the pipeline.
Ferguson, speaking at UEFA's annual managers' meeting in Nyon, Switzerland, said that the introdution of a hockey-style "sin bin" has been, and is being, discussed by Europe's governing body.
Are you in favor of "sin bins" in soccer?
"We couldn't get to an agreement about it because it's such a controversial decision to change from what we know to a sin bin, but there was a good discussion about it," the 72-year-old Scot said.
"From UEFA's point of view, it's something that they're looking at. It has some merits — in particular, simulation by a player, which has become a disease within the game."
Would giving referees a third option with which to punish players not be a good thing? As the modern game has evolved, players are significantly bigger, faster and stronger than they were when the current Laws of the Game were laid out.
As refereeing matches becomes more difficult — thanks to not only the evolution of players, but also technology which allows slow-motion instant replays of every controversial moment — referees should be afforded every additional aid to better do their job.
DemonGeminiX (09-07-2014), Goofy (09-06-2014)
The diving is one of the most annoying aspects regarding soccer. They need the "sin bin".
Warning: The posts of this forum member may contain trigger language which may be considered offensive to some.
Music was better when ugly people were allowed to make it.
Why do they name everything as though they only own the faggetry dictionary?!?
The sin bin... The golden goal.
I wanted to be a Monk, but I never got the chants.
You do know that there are plenty of NHL commentators, both Canadian and American that refer to the penalty box as the 'sin bin', don't you?Why do they name everything as though they only own the faggetry dictionary?!?
The sin bin... The golden goal.
Germany's referee had a cracker of a game against us last night
Typical really, big team/home advantage means we have to suffer as usual.......... never mind, at least we didn't get pumped like Brazil did
David Luiz may have thought he was in contention for the best goal-line clearance of all time with his Confederations Cup effort against Spain back in 2013, but this latest piece of defending just takes the biscuit.
And until someone else produces a gravity defying overhead kick out of the top corner, we’re just not interested in any other contenders.
So there you have it….the challenge has been set, who’s up to the task?
A bicycle kick? Pele used to pull those all of the time... as did a ton of other players.
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Music was better when ugly people were allowed to make it.
On the goal line?
A bicycle kick? Pele used to pull those all of the time... as did a ton of other players.To prevent a goal from scorning?
All the time? Slight exaggeration
A bicycle kick? Pele used to pull those all of the time... as did a ton of other players.
All the time... all over the place. In fact, that's all he ever did. Never kicked the ball any other way.
And I was expecting to see some extreme break dancing/free running moves to get the ball out.
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Music was better when ugly people were allowed to make it.
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