Spanish team president says players bet against their own team

Paco Gomez, the president of the Cartagena team, claims that his team was dismissed from Spain’s Segunda Division in the last season because 6 players from his own team were betting against the team. Cartagena ended 20th out of 22 teams with 40 points from 22 games and were later moved down to the Spanish football’s regionally-based third tier in June.

Gomez was well aware of the fact that his team would be expelled. The authorities did not bother to believe him when he told them about his doubts. Gomez told Spanish radio station Onda Regional.

“I knew with ten games to go that Cartagena would go down, because some footballers were concentrating on betting,” Gomez said. “I reported it to the Liga de Futbol Profesional. But here [in Spain] those who do these kind of things get away unnoticed.”

Gomez claimed that he did not make a big issue of it as such things are very common in Spanish football.

He also added,“If I had spoken about Cartagena last year they would have had to put half the footballers in Spain in prison,” he said. “There are players earning between €40,000 and €50,000 per game and we had six of them last year, all starters. You cannot control that.”

Spanish league vice president Javier Tebas also claimed that even the La Liga games were fixed but he did not publicize it as he did not have much information to prove it.

Gomez also said that, “The Spanish footballing authorities had not followed the example of federations elsewhere in Europe that were acting to clean up the game.

“In Italy they throw them out, but here in Spain at the moment things have not been sorted out. There is as much shit here as in Italy, France, Germany and the others. I know who they are, but I cannot denounce them as I cannot show it.”

Sources: ESPN FC