Albania’s football club is No 1 at match-fixing

TIRANA: Two months ago Albania’s top football club, Skenderbeu, was raising a trophy to the sky as confetti rained down on the team, gleeful after clinching their seventh national title in eight seasons.

But that joy is now a distant memory after the side was suspended from all European competitions for a decade — the heaviest ever sanction imposed by UEFA. The European sports body also slapped the team with a one million euro ($1.1 million) fine for what it claims was some of the most rampant match-rigging in football history. “This club has been fixing football matches like nobody has ever done before in the history of the game,” UEFA’s ethics and disciplinary committee wrote in a damning report leaked in March.

Any lingering hope of a reprieve was dashed in June after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne confirmed that the suspension would go into force without waiting for an appeal, whose date has not yet been set.

For Skenderbeu, the ruling is nothing short of a “death sentence,” said the club’s president Ardian Takaj, who had hoped to bring the team to the preliminary rounds of the Europa League in July. The team, named after the 15th century military commander Skanderbeg, is the only Albanian club to make it to the league’s group stage.

Their blacklist from a future in European football has crushed a fervent fan base who gathered by the thousands in the team’s home base in southeastern Korce in February pleading: “Do not kill our dream!”

Relying on its Betting Fraud Detection System (BFDS), which tracks irregular betting movements around games, UEFA estimated that 53 Skenderbeu matches had been fixed since 2010. Those include national, European and “even in friendly matches”, the sports body said, describing the practice as “persistent and recurrent”. Skenderbeu officials and players continue to insist on their innocence, but more than a few matches have raised suspicions over the years. For example, in July 2015, Skenderbeu was leading Northern Ireland’s Crusaders 2-1 at the end of regular time in Belfast before their fortunes suddenly turned. At the end of the match “hundreds of thousands of dollars” were put on the bet that at least four goals will be scored, according to UEFA. The Northern Ireland side then scored twice in a minute during the added time, thanks to slip-ups by Skenderbeu’s defence and goalkeeper (3-2).

“If there is not a UEFA investigation into our game tonight, then there is something wrong,” the Crusaders’ goalkeeper, Sean O’Neill, tweeted at the time.Club president Ardian Takaj, who owns a seaside hotel and used to run a TV channel, is furious over UEFA’s allegation that he holds an “an influential role in illegal activities of Skenderbeu,” including links with betting companies. The 54-year-old firmly denies any wrongdoing and argues that UEFA is taking advantage of Albania — a “small country, a small club with a small budget” — to “promote its (BFDS) system”.