Soccer Scandals and Moral Costs of Throwing a Game

Europeans are gathering around the launch of a new cup sequence. The first qualifiers are about to be played for the World Cup and the world's eyes slowly turn to soccer. The upcoming Olympics will cross our eyes for awhile, but the focus of several billion human beings will turn to soccer over the next eighteen months. The dominance, power and beauty of soccer reminds us that it is by far the world's favorite sport to play and watch. Yet it has been bedeviled for decades by vast schemes of corruption and thrown games. I would like to discuss the moral costs of throwing a game in soccer or any sport.

A recent article in ESPN The Magazine (5/28/12, pp. 78-84) traces the immense scope of the corruption and game fixing that permeates the sport. The sheer dimensions and sprawl of the sport make it almost impossible to control.  Over 10,000 teams, 280,000 players coupled with referees and officials spawn a complex of almost 400,000 people plus 108 seldom solvent national federations.

Skilled fixers can gain entry to the game at almost any spot. The entire world of fixing games has been turbo-charged by huge Asian gambling syndicates that can target any game in the world and through on line computer gaming place immense numbers of small bets to generate staggering sums of return on isolated or under-regulated games. The new betting sequences resemble the micro-trading techniques of Wall Street with very large numbers of small bets being place in very short time periods of relatively unseen activities. The profits return fast and opaque.

Often these involve bribing players to "throw games," at other times they subvert referees who are paid minimum stipends and, like low level players, cannot make a living at their jobs. It does not take much to throw a game in a small low level league in Uruguay or Belarus.

I want to isolate the moral costs of such fixing and scandals to the core of sports and why players play and people passionately follow and care. The costs not only involve the immediate loss, but a deeper loss of credibility to the beauty and moral core of why humans take sports so seriously.

All this came to the fore two years ago at  huge European soccer scandal. The scandal involved immense and systematic subversion of hundreds of games across Europe by a wide variety of means, but mainly by bribing players to underplay and throw the game to meet a spread. The scandal was supported by a syndicate but now almost seems quaint compared to the web-driven on line gambling operations of the Asian dealers. The scandal involved not just players but coaches and in some accounts, doctors, trainers or hotels who gave sedatives to players to incapacitate them or subvert their skills during a game. Many of the games occurred at the lower levels of European soccer  involving East European teams like the Albanian club in the picture. This focus upon less visible games is not unusual for gambling corruption. The teams are often underpaid and avoid the spotlight of big name events. The entire Chinese soccer system has collapsed under the weight of incessant scandals involving not only corrupt referees but also players who throw the games.

What are the true moral costs of athletics of these scandals and why are they so profoundly wrong?

Sports is a game. We forget this at a our peril. Games depend upon rules. Without rules that define goals, outcomes, correct behavior and success or failure, the activity collapses into anarchy like medieval village "games." The skills, competition and assessment would be meaningless. Because they are games, sports remain incredibly vulnerable to subversion. The whole moral edifice can easily crumble.

The point of the game is to excel and win. The point of any sport is that when it starts, the outcome is uncertain, no one knows what can happen. True sport is unscripted  and that drives the moral vision of committing and excelling in competition. Scripted competition is not competition and not sport; sport thrives on uncertainty and effort and performance in the moment.

Gambling drives to win money on teams that win or lose against the odds or beat point spreads. Gambling involves "games of chance," but cheating at gambling turns the chance into certainty. Gambling motivated sports cheating  turns the uncertainty of active competition into a certainty based upon players deciding not to play up to their full potential in order to make money from the gamblers who have far more to make or lose on the game than any one player. Players can underplay or referees can call phantom fouls that disqualify players or set up high probability scoring situations. Either way, the competition is rigged and no longer becomes competition because uncertainty has gone. Skill, work and luck no longer determine the outcome; gamblers setting spreads five thousand miles away do.

The corruption of referees destroys the games logic and structure. The rules mean nothing unless they are interpreted fairly and transparently. This depends upon the referees. Players contribute to play because they believe they have a fair chance to compete under the rules. Once the rules are twisted by referees who have determined who they want to win and how, the game becomes meaningless. It has no meaning because it has lost its moral structure which depends upon rules and the rules depend upon transparent and consistent interpretation. The corruption of referees means the games need not even be played. The ESPN article actually documents phantom games that are set up, bet upon and never played--the logical conclusion of fixed games.

Throwing a game involves a more complex moral phenomenon for the athlete. Throwing a game violates the core integrity of athletic competition. The moral algorithm of integrity in sports might look something like this:

integrity=skill+effort+judgment.

Gamblers persuading players to throw a game attack all three dimensions of athletic integrity. The insidious aspect of throwing a game arises not when a player must change the win/lose outcome but rather has to act to keep in the point spread. A player can rationalize this by saying "I'm not losing the game, we're still going to win, I'm just keeping the score close or within the spread." This hides the true moral cost from the player because the team still wins.

First the player must rein in or distort their skill. They must miss passes they normally would make or miss a header they would normally connect with. Second, they give less then what is required or a situation. A true athlete exists as totally present to the situation and commits their mind, perception and body to what is called forth. But holding back effort might mean a player gets by a defender or a player loses a scrum for a ball. Either way, they pull back from what is required of their effort. Third, in the most torturous situation, a player must subvert their judgment to make bad decisions. This is actually harder than it seems because it assumes the player knows what to do and all their training, pattern recognition and primed behavior push them in that direction. The player must instead make a bad decision, knowing what a good one is, and yet make it seem as if this was their natural primed decision.

In throwing a game a player betrays him or herself and violates their relation to their identity as an athlete. The athlete chooses to not play up to their maximum skill during a competition. The athlete chooses to sacrifice her or his exquisite judgment in a complex instant and decide badly, knowing it is a bad decision--this is not a mistake, it is sabotage.

The most difficult to ferret out is when the athlete "dogs" it and does not give their full effort or concentration. Even if skilled and judging well, they mar their actions with less effort bringing down their level of expected excellence. The athlete violates their promises to their teammates to give all their energy and focus to achieve a common goal. The athlete violates their relation to their fans by not providing the fullest commitment to perform before them or to achieve on their behalf when they have paid money or invested time and attention to the team and player. At the end the athlete is no longer the same person they were before they cheat, they cheapen their personhood.

Throwing a game also violates their relation to the integrity of the game to which they have devoted their lives and breaches their relation to their teammates. Each teammate depends upon the focused and energetic skill of their fellow members. If one player fails, even in minute ways, this ripples out and distorts the play of everyone else. Players bond as a team committed to a common goal of excellent performance and winning. They implicitly rely upon finely tuned responses to each others skill and rhythm. These goals enable players to overcome their egos and differences to cooperate and sacrifice together. Maximum team play hinges on mutual trust; once gone or even eroded by suspicion, effective performance corrodes.

Finally throwing a game disregards faith with the spectators and fans who invest money, time and emotional loyalty in following the team. These persons (for good or ill) commit to the team and follow its members and stake emotional and intellectual energy on them. I'm not even talking about how players throw over their promises to owners when they accept the owner's pay to act with  skill, effort and judgment. Ironically gamblers sever any relation to teams because they only care about the spread or win/loss, not the quality of play or their own loyalties.

Gambling seeks certainty for gain using  money to distort the play and change the odds of an outcome. Sport competitions are not games of chance. They are athletic competitions decided by human beings exercising skill, effort and judgment under intense competitive conditions against players and environments. Skill, force, effort, coordination, judgment and, yes, chance all play roles in the outcomes. Gamblers can figure out probabilities based upon differential information, but their probabilities of chance fundamentally differ fundamentally from the real life probabilities players deploy.

Throwing a game corrupts the moral core of sports integrity. This moral perversion eliminates the point of the game.

Quebec, the Canadiens and Sports Nationalism

When President Pierre Gauthier of the Montreal Candiens promoted non-French speaking Randy Cunneyworth to be interim head coach last month, he did not anticpate the firestorm of criticism from Canadien fans and Francophile anger. A mere week later he apologized to the fans all but guaranteeing that Cunneyworth’s tenure would be brief, “I'm sorry if we upset people (by not hiring a bilingual coach). Because that certainly wasn't our intention ... Having a bilingual coach is very, very important and will be part of the decision process going forward." Owned by a Molson with historic Montreal roots, this incident excavated the deep and sometimes dark roots of sport’s connection to politics and communal identity.

Forty years ago people died in Quebec as Front de libération du Québec carried out a decade-long bombing campaign to support Quebec separatism. The uniqueness of Quebec’s French heritage and language inspired massive political resistance against th dominance of English Canada and especially the Ontario/Toronto axis. The artful statesmanship of Pierre Trudeau saved Canada and reached an uneasy but workable compromise for Canada and Quebec. Canada exists as a bilingual country, but especially in Quebec the enforcement of French as the “mother tongue” and primary language remains a critical policy and article of faith among Francophile Quebecers. While support for secession has temporarily abated, the ley lines of French—English Canadian tensions are never far from the surface. Montreal, the cultural and industrial capital of Quebec, embodies all these tensions.

Canadian nationalism always feels like an oxymoron to many Canadians, although the French are involved in a tangle over whether a beaver or polar bear should be their national emblem. To the French  Quebecois, however, nationalism matters as a defense against perceived English assimilation of them. To the extent a sport or team contributes to affiliation, hockey and Canada had always been linked. The NHL originated as a Canadian league sprawled across Canada with small and medium, cities joined together with a common passion and pride. In Quebec, the Habs assumed a deeper identity as the avatar of French Canadian pride and aspiration. Their 24 Stanley cup championships resounded across Canada as reminders of the French identity that resolutely would not fade away to an English hegemony.

The Montreal Candiens exist as a source and beneficiary of Quebec nationalism. Certainly, the team does not represent the direct or manipulated investments that an East Germany or modern China make to deploy athletics as an instrument of national pride (this is Canada after all). But history has joined Quebecois pride with Montreal hockey. Even as modern Canada evolves its very uneasy co-existence with Quebec, the team itself epitomizes modern global professional teams. The modern roster has three French speaking Quebecers, five Americans, 2 Russians and a Czech among others. 

So last month when the team promoted assistant Cunneyworth as its interim coach, he became the first non-French speaking coach of the Canadians. Non French Canadians had coached the team but always as bi-lingual and aware of the city and state’s sensitivity to the alignment of the team, language and Quebec’s exceptional status in the federation. The appointment of Cunneyworth represented a remarkable tin ear for the emotional and collective role of the team.

The interim internal promotion aroused a firestorm of protest from the press. Quebec sovereignists, always looking for a reason to agitate about what they perceive as English domination in Quebec, jumped all over the symbolic implications of the choice. Follow up polls revealed that French speaking Canadians also wish the team would hire more French speaking players.

It also reminds us how ley lines of communal identity attach to sport and teams, even in a place that seems as placid as Canada (at least to uninformed Americans). I also think it highlights how situational this can be. The Quebec situation still simmers, and some still wish to leave Canada. The last plebiscite on sovereignty for Canada was in 1995, and only 51% voted to stay in the federal union. Teams, even one owned by a beer company, still stand as surrogates for deeper emotional attachments and agendas where identities remain contested and politics remains unresolved.

This nationalist incident highlights a parallel but very different phenomena in the world of soccer. Like hockey the sport has become global with multi-national teams common. But all over the world, the national teams are coached by non-nationals. This often occurs with imports into countries developing their own teams. Recentlythe United States appointed German national Jurgen Klinsmann our national coach for his skill and success. More interestingly he is recruiting and grooming dual citizenship Americans from all over the world. Many of them are products of sports academies and not college soccer. To his mind this gives them thousands more hours of practice and success. For younger players, he farms them out to European or English teams for seasoning and training. 

Klinsmann’s approach and appointment reflect the natural evolution of an internationally integrated soccer world. Players sprawl across the globe playing for different teams at various salary scales. Playing for a national team involves giving up salary and a true act of commitment for the players. Badly done, this approach can resemble pick up games of all stars, but I think everyone learned from the total failure of the American basketball approach that relied upon talent and press clippings hanging around together.

Professional hockey parallels the integration of soccer, but with a much smaller cast and much more closed world. Canada is small country with a disproportionate interest in hockey, and Quebec is as an even smaller state with a profound interest in hockey and its team. While modern professional players may come from all over as well as coaches, the Montreal Habs contretemps reminds us that the community affiliation runs strong and sometimes shallow, and sport is seldom just sport.

The World Cup Demonstrates the Importance of Referees

As I watched the women’s soccer world cup final unfold, I noticed that I had not noticed the refereeing for the game. The sheer pacing and beauty and power of the game unfolded with remarkable fluidity. No major mistakes, no second-guessing, a fair number of no calls on both sides and a remarkably degree of sportsmanship from both teams.

Both teams smiled and laughed with the referee Bibiana Steinhaus, a professional referee and police officer from Saxony.  She ran a taut game with constant reminders, clear looks and clear hand signals, but within that game she kept it loose and flowing. This game was not dominated by the referee nor determined by the ref, nor marred by the referee.

She made two calls, one yellow and a red,on an obvious denial of shot at the very end. But what struck me the most was how vital and central a good referee is to the skill, beauty and fairness of athletic competition.

Ms Steinhaus earned the players respect, and her demeanor and calls discouraged Brazil-like faking and play-acting. The game proceeded with very little wasted time or effort. The play unfolded clean, hard and precise, much like the tone of the referee. The game was decided by players, their mistakes and successes, not the referee.

I have pointed out how fundamental rules and good referees are to the “game” of sports. If the referees are bad or corrupted, the entire moral and athletic purpose of the game gets subverted. European soccer, like American basketball, has had its recent experience of dishonest referees destroying the integrity of the game.

Athletic competition depends upon rules to define its excellence and to create the predictable domain of action. That predictability permits individuals to practice and perfect their skills and play, not focus upon cheating and faking. Good referees legitimize the outcome and a commitment to high quality play; they make sports real with unpredictable, not ordained outcomes.

The attitude and commitment of the players takes their cues from good referees who provide consistent and transparent calls as well as hold the emotional tone and respect of the game in hand. This helps athletes stay focused upon the game and devote their energy to the game and play.

The women’s soccer world cup demonstrated many fine aspects, one of them was the moral centrality of good referees.