- Chief Gardare experienced in match fixing
- Claims PL players involved
- Betting apps a key concern
Fredrik Gardare — who unearthed former Manchester City midfielder Dickson Etuhu’s attempted match fixing and led to the Nigerian receiving a five-year ban from football in 2020 — has alleged that several Premier League players are guilty of fixing matches, according to the Mirror.
Etuhu was found to have offered AIK goalkeeper Kyriakos Stamatopoulos £160,000 to underperform, and Gardare claims phone discoveries from a 2021 casino raid showed evidence of multiple Premier League players engaging in similar fixes. The suggestion is that this evidence could lift the lid on a hidden problem in top-level English football.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Gardare said that tackling match fixing “is important for both Swedish football and football in several countries. It’s important for England and international football to stop ongoing match-fixing. There was more than one Premier League player (found on the phone). Betting on yellow cards, corners and other aspects in matches. That phone is either sitting with Stockholm police or the national police force. I have worked on hundreds of match-fixing cases, and this was the clearest case you could have.”
It’s a bold call to action for those in charge of the Swedish police, the Swedish national football association, and the Premier League. Whether any powerful figures have the drive and determination needed to unearth this evidence and tackle the issue of Premier League match-fixing remains to be seen; however, the details of Lucas Paqueta’s recent ordeal, alongside rumours that match fixers have approached players outside training grounds, suggest it’s a pressing issue.
