The New York Times writes: “More than 100 people in Turkey, South Korea and Greece have been charged in recent weeks in inquiries into players and officials throwing soccer games. Similar scandals in Hungary, Italy, Germany, El Salvador, Israel, China, Thailand, Zimbabwe, Vietnam and Finland have shaken fans and sponsors worldwide. This crisis of confidence comes just as FIFA, which oversees international football, is facing its own internal ethics inquiry over allegations of bribery.”
I think some groups are more susceptible to corruption than to others. If a country is having a lot of fixing going on with its soccer games, that probably says more about that society than it does about the sport.
You can’t have economic and political progress in a society rife with corruption. The English-speaking world has its problems but it also has the least significant corruption and the most freedom and economic and political and judicial progress.
