AFC steps up efforts to tackle match-fixing

KUALA LUMPUR - The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has set up an internal task force in its latest efforts against match-fixing, which had plagued several of its member associations.

The objectives of the task force are "to collaborate with relevant stakeholders to achieve the objectives, to educate the Member Associations on ways and measures to combat this menace and monitor and coordinate with everyone involved to fight match-fixing in AFC competitions," AFC General Secretary Alex Soosay said in a statement on Friday.

The task force will introduce and implement mechanisms to fight match manipulation, he said.

"By setting up this task force, we would like to coordinate the education, training and implementation of measures through one platform,"he added.

When addressing a conference on match-fixing earlier this week, AFC Acting President Zhang Jilong warned that match-fixing was "a real danger to football's ethical values and needs to be eliminated to preserve the sanctity of the sport."

Alex Soosay said the two-day conference - "Match fixing - The ugly side of the beautiful game', co-hosted by Interpol and FIFA, had raised awareness on the seriousness of the threat that match-fixing poses to the game.

"Some of our Member Associations, who have been facing this threat for long, have come up with novel ideas to combat match-fixing and have succeeded in controlling the threat,"he said, referring to recent actions taken by Chinese Football Association (CFA), Football Association of Singapore (FAS), Korea Football Association (KFA) and Football Association of Malaysia (FAM).

CFA on Monday stripped Shanghai Shenhua of the 2003 league champion for fixing a game against Shanxi Guoli en route to winning the title. Thirty-three people, including former soccer chiefs Nan Yong and Xie Yalong, who are both serving a 10 1/2 years jail sentence for taking bribes, were banned for life from the football-related activities.

Alex Soosay urged all AFC's Member Associations to step up efforts against match-fixing and corruption.

"I would like all our MAs to follow the examples of these Member Associations and join this fight to strengthen the fair play in this game." he said.