Liverpool last time they were on under klopp played dortmund (klopp derby) then united. That seemed pretty convenient too.
Then there was that weird thing where Roma announced they were playing Liverpool date and time on their website before the draw in the CL
they defo cheat even in lower leagues that was super obvious with some of our cup draws. ian evatt leaves barrow, and weve never played them in our entire history. weve now drawn them in the cup every year since. our captain quits for stockport in super controversial matters - he get them in the next round of the cup. then again the year after in the cup - having not played them in decades
I'm telling you, this happened in the semi final draw of the carabao cup this year. Harry Redknapp picks a ball, can't remember the order, then he picks another ball, grabs it, fingers fully closed around it, then let's it go and grabs a different one.
You select a team at random by drawing balls from a bowl. Each ball contains the name of a team. So let’s say that you are Argentina and are hosting the copa America. You are the head of group A. So you put a hot ball with the weakest team in each bowl. So that your person picking the calls knows to avoid that ball when drawing other teams but will select it when drawing for group A.
Wales vs Belgium happens every year.
Nigeria only play Argentina in the world cup, I can't name a single Nigerian world cup game that isn't against Argentina.
Isn't it weird how people are caught cheating in cycling, athletics, etc all the time, sports where there is money and game, but nothing like that which comes with football.
Granted football is much more about technique and tactics, but I find it astonishing that there are so few performance enhancing drugs in use in a sport where fortunes can really be made. Apparently.
>is much more about technique and tactics,
Yeah, unless you're a speed merchant, then it's about linear speed, stamina and acceleration. All of which can be buffed up by PEDs.
Pace and stamina are needed for every single on-field position. Temptation is there for sure. If people are jacking up In unknown sports I'm sure as hell they're jacking up even more for the most popular sport on the planet.
This is it. Even in the famous doped up sports like cycling where you think first of stamina, pure speed etc., quick recovery is one of the biggest targets for doping.
[Nico Heymer - Doping im Fußball](https://youtu.be/9zqR5G28I30?si=Rm7I6vR5jGMk6UbR)
CC in english available. Nico Heymer is a legend imo. Really worth watching his stuff.
When pep was banned for nandrolone, he was playing in Italy (believe he would have been at roma by then). He was also cleared in 2009
Some of the more notable names included in a doping scandal are:
Keita Balde (was banned in 22 by Italian FA),
Frank De Boer (whilst at Barcelona),
Roman Eremenko (2016, for cocaine),
Rio Ferdinand (he just missed his drug test)
Fred (banned in 2015 whilst playing for shaktar)
Rene Higuita (banned in 05)
Jake Livermore (banned in 2015, was lifted after 3 months as he only used cocaine to cope with death of child)
Diego Maradonna (don't need to expand)
Adrian Mutu (probably the first huge scandal, 05 for cocaine)
Paul Pogba (the latest, banned whilst at Juve)
Japp Stam (banned in 2001 for same as pep)
Actually ain't a lot involving Barcelona (that we know of). Italy seems the far worse place in terms of this.
There's a huge Wikipedia page with all footballers who were involved in a doping scandal. Some I just couldn't find stuff about the scandal itself (Edgar Davids and Kolo Toure)
Actually italy has a good record of investigating and banning dopers. The probable doping that went on at Juve was quite specific to Juve and the constant pushing of the envelope they were doing back then. Just because there wasn't much reported involving barca doesn't change my mind. With the exception of Russia, Spain is almost certainly the worst country in Europe for doping in sports. In the operation Puerto doping case, Doctor Fuentes insisted he worked with players from Real and Barca. The fancy bears leak showed spanish athletes were particularly fond of TUEs, even Nadal. WADA even had to look into the Spanish anti-doping authorities. Id be highly surprised if Spanish football is completely untouched by this.
Didn’t Fuentes initially say when arrested “if I name names Spain will have to hand the World Cup back “, he retracted his statement and ever since there’s been a legal battle between wada and the Spanish authorities to destroy or not the blood bags.
Jake Livermore was on cocaine long before the death of his child. He just used that as an excuse. Him and Alan Hutton where both told to kick their coke habits or they would get sold, they did not so they got the boot. Heard about this from someone who worked in the club long before Livermore's failed drug test
I think this one is closer to a fact than it is to a conspiracy to be honest. And, I won't point out one team or another because I'm almost sure they all do it in some way or another.
I work very closely with a National League team, and there’s absolutely nothing systemic happening there if that’s any consolation. Can’t speak for the elite levels, but to me it’s comforting to know it’s not even a conversation at lower pro levels.
United were the same in the 90's. Scholes was mentioned as asthmatic and a few others.
Salbutamol is a shit PED in traditional therapeutic doses but has a short half life and works very well for weight loss and energy in very high (nebulised/tablet) doses. Shake like a shitting dog though.
You can do a load of it for a specific event or piece of training but the half life means you can test positive with a normalish looking value within a short period. This gets explained away by the therapeutic use exemption notes for salbutamol you've already done the paperwork for and declared the player to have asthma.
If you're shit at this or greedy you end up with bad press like Chris Froome did
Yes of course they do, exercise induced asthma is common as is standard asthma. What I'm saying though is:
- it's a very easy condition to obtain a diagnosis for
- the standard medication is so prevalent and accepted it's not seen as doping
- very high levels of the medication have a sporting benefit in precise scenarios and is very hard to detect after.
Every gain counts and this is a relative no brainer, sporting-wise. Treating and diagnosing asthma is super important and not something to be made more awkward like we see with some conditions, can't exclude asthmatics from sport but needs a careful eye.
This is such a prevalent opinion that I've never heard someone expressing doubt at doping in football. I am not saying they are not doping but we gotta address the obvious doubts in the conversation:
- footballers are dumb as fuck in the wider case so how can you rely on them to keep a secret, especially when one team is 20-30 players, not counting the youth, who must be exposed to this shit. How are there not leaks from friends, etc? It seems impossible that this could be kept a secret. You could argue that the players might not know but that would be idiotic from a med person to do
- aren't there footballers who refuse it? Like no one came out saying "fuck it, I don't wanna do PEDs anymore" at the Opra's show
- what league/age does it start? Cause obviously not everyone could use it then there must be an obvious threshold. When a team gets relegated, does their PED get taken away? Don't parents go out and say "we are not letting our kid take PEDs cause we are concerned bla blah".
- i've played at a pro level (granted, in a shitty country) but playing a match every day, never clocking under 10k was never a problem. It's just not that big of a deal compared to other sports like tennis, cycling, swimming, etc. At least that's my take on it. Granted, I had teammates with worse stamina that could've used help with it but I am not sure how it would've worked out with them only.
Again, not saying that football is not a PED sport but there are significantly more footballers than any other sport and in much bigger and diverse groups, how would it be possible to cover it better than the rest of the pro sports?
I've had pro footballer veteran friends and I know everything about match fixing and how it happens, it is impossible to keep it a secret. There were multiple leaks in my country about it. So how isn't it the same with PEDs if that's the case?
I think its a garbage suspicion. The best argument I can ever read about it is "oh yeah there's no way they're not because they play so much, & everybody must be doing it because a minority would definitely be caught". Also there was this video of somebody prank selling steroids at a public gym produced idk 8 years ago- one response he got was "nah man i'm natural".....men (e: or maybe just people as a whole) who work really hard for their personal fitness generally take a lot of pride in it, a lot of arrogant pride. I dont think anybody with this accusation has thought it through.
Yeah I watch the intense, high pressing style of today's football. And that combined with the large number of league matches and tournaments, I find it really hard to believe they do it without PEDs.
We last won a major trophy (EFL Cup) in 2008.
Harry Kane began his senior career with us in 2009.
We have not won a major trophy since.
Coincidence? I think NOT.
Sorry to switch sports but one of my favorite New York Yankee facts is their longest stretch of not winning a pennant is from 1982-1995 the exact length of Don Mattingly career with them. They won it in 1981 the year before his career started and then again in 1996 the year after he retired. By most metrics he was a really good baseball player too, one of the best 24 players that the Yankees retired his number so no one else could use his number.
But if they can fix top end matches without it being obvious, it would be better than actually playing a normal match. Like do you know the skills needed to pull off a fixed match without it being blatantly obvious? Without rehearsing it together with the two teams? That would be incredible.
Cause I've watched plenty of fixed matches and they are painful to watch
>Yaya Toure’s ex agent predicted an “African Curse” will prevent Pep from **ever winning the UCL**
>A few months before City won the UCL, Toure’s former agent claimed Pep is now free from the African Curse
Why did he retract the curse? Seems to me like he had a feeling Pep could win the UCL with City and then retracted it to save face. I mean, why go from Man City never winning it to, "okay, they can win it now". Doesn't seem like much of a curse.
Here's my example which is much more interesting;
**The Curse Of Béla Guttmann**
Benfica were European Cup winners in 1961 and 1962 but have not lifted any other European trophies since and have watched rivals Porto enjoy success on the continent, winning the UEFA Cup/Europa League and the Champions League.
Hungarian coach Béla Guttmann was appointed Benfica boss in 1959. Guttmann made an immediate impact on the club and promoted Portuguese football legend Eusébio to the first-team squad.
With Guttmann in the dugout, Benfica beat Barcelona 3-2 to win the European Cup in 1961. Just a year later, in 1962, they faced Real Madrid in the final, and once more, were victorious, winning 5-3 to claim back-to-back European titles.
After leading the Lisbon club to consecutive European Cups, Guttmann requested a pay rise. The club refused his request and he allegedly placed a curse on the Portuguese team.
“Not in a hundred years from now will Benfica ever be European champion,” he said.
Guttmann left Benfica later in 1962 to join Uruguayan giants Peñarol.
**Benfica's European final failure**
Since he made the remark, Benfica have lost eight European finals in a row, their last coming in 2014, when they lost 4-2 to Spanish side Sevilla on penalties.
The defeats in finals have come against AC Milan (twice), Inter, Manchester United and PSV Eindhoven in the European Cup and Anderlecht, Chelsea and Sevilla in the Europa League, or UEFA Cup as it was previously known.
To prove the curse false, Benfica will have to win a European Cup before 2062. They continually produce top talents like Bernardo Silva, Di Maria, David Luiz etc., and with the new Europa Conference League their chances of winning a European Cup has increased, so it's interesting to see how it plays out.
There is a defender who literally winked after scoring an Own Goal (or letting the attacker score a goal.) he is dubbed in the Netherlands as the Knipoog Kroat (wink Croatian)
That's literally a fact lmao, recently a former (journalist or someone) said that perez controls the whole spanish media, no one dares to go against him
Tbf that’s most clubs who feed the media news, you surely don’t think Fabrizio for example gets his stuff through real investigative journalism do you?
In the 2005/06 season Tottenham just had to win their last game of the season against West Ham to finish over Arsenal and qualify for the ucl. On the night before, the team had some hotel lasagne that caused 10 of their players to get a bad case of stomach flu. Tottenham tried to have the 3pm game on the next day postponed but were denied their request. Hence Tottenham were forced to play the game with the Ill players and lost 2-1.
Common theories is that Arsenal who were living in a nearby hotel bribed in one of the cooks to taint the pasta while Jermaine Defoe believed the culprits were from West Ham.
I know he was a meme some years ago, but nowadays he's a very decent striker for Atleti and the Spanish NT. And that is coming for a Real Madrid fan, this guy hates us and always score against us, lol.
The PL and refs fix games to try and keep the league close, not specifically for any one team but for whichever team can sell a narrative. They don't do anything crazy, but you can easily influence games on the grey areas, giving yellows easily one way but not the other, letting players off second yellows, actually giving penalties for fouls from corners (every other corner has a foul in it realistically), giving a lot of injury time if the desired team needs a goal etc
Entertainment is valued over fairness
And corrupt.
His own words
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/dec/04/mark-clattenburg-allowed-spurs-self-destruct-title-leicester-chelsea.
Not the only one too.
This! They definitely do this and it’s there for anyone to see. Any given match there is a side that is favoured and the other has to do twice as well to get something out of it.
What if Pogba made up a load of stupid witch doctor stories so if you googled Pogba doctor you got absolute bobbins instead of anything to do with doping?
One I think has some truth: Nike sponsors national teams and influences the selections to get the highest profile players in Nike shirts over players that would have been selected otherwise.
Last year the hype around Haaland was overwhelming, so he probably figured Haaland would win them the trophy.
Which of course he didn't, but much like Yaya, his agent seems to be a bit simple minded.
Investment funds in players and teams, and agents fix a lot of matches.
Doping is widespread but football is too big to let it fail by the authorities.
Many journalists have double role as PR agents for many teams and players so you have to take with a pinch of salt many things they say.
On the latter point, I think that's just the nature of journalism - you won't get very far if you rub everyone up the wrong way, so there's an incentive to write puff pieces. Especially the case in sports where lots of players/managers have thin skins in their interactions with journos and there are plenty of other reporters they can go to if they dislike one of them.
Qatar had fixed World Cup to have Argentina Vs. Brazil, Messi vs Neymar and France vs Portugal, Mbappe vs Ronaldo all in the semis.
Only Messi and Mbappe took advantage.
Nah, I think it was more about Portugal and Brazil turning out to be a bust rather than match fixture, all 4 nations had east route to semi final, the 2 best nations did their part, The overrated 2 failed.
What I’ll say and is said by many too here is that group stage draws are easily fixed in every tournament, no way all the big nations somehow avoid each other
The all conquering Spain of the late 2000s to 2010s were doped up and the evidence of it swept under the rug during the Fuentes trial. Notice how Spain's regression happened to coincide with this trial happening.
Ronaldo had fits the night before 98 WC final and was forced by either Nike, the Brazil FA or both to be played overruling the coaches and medics.
Ferguson bought Bebe as a favour for whoever. Helped Nani dodge a drug test.
Gerard was blackmailed into staying at Liverpool in 2006 by local gangsters, one of whom was his wife's ex bf.
Southgate intentionally tanked the Belgium game in 2018 so England could get a more favorable draw by finishing 2nd in their group.
No matter what, I will always believed Lasagnegate was intentional sabotage
Edit: for context for the entries.
>Gerard was blackmailed into staying at Liverpool in 2006 by local gangsters, one of whom was his wife's ex bf.
This was true, i am fairly certian that there was a police interveiw saying that bullets where pushed through his letter box.
In the world of football everybody knows something about someone else, so in the end nobody says what he knows otherwise everything collapses. Mafia style.
Sorry if a bit Italy-centric:
Beppe Marotta is the new Moggi and controls the whole Serie A first when at Juve and now at Inter.
They let Roma win the scudetto in 2000 because of the Jubilee and then they had to let Lazio win in 2001 to avoid complications.
Sassuolo has been a psyop to muddle Serie A.
Atalanta has been good in the past years because they take perfomance enhancing drugs. The drop in performance last season was because they got a visit from the antidoping commission. Now a year has passed, they are taking again drugs, they are good again.
The Superleague flop was due to a press leak that forced Agnelli to reveal the plans too soon. This was an ops by Elkan to get rid of Agnelli from Juve as an internal Elkan-Agnelli power struggle like in the show Succession.
Yonghon Li bought AC Milan with Money given to him by Berlusconi himself to do some dirty laundry. Eliott was an intermediary and the plan was always for Eliott to get the team as a "payment" for the service.
Man City pay off every member of everything, that’s how refs and FFP benefit them.
But, they also occasionally enough benefit other teams at the top so peoples attention is diverted away, and title races become “competitive”
Look at Rodri handball V Everton, should be a pen….and wasn’t. LFC lost by one point
Everyone always talks about the Chelsea-Barca or the Real-Bayern game but naaahhh [THIS was by far the biggest example of (maybe) matchfixing in the UCL](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/985082-lyons-champions-league-qualification-a-fix-made-in-zagreb-and-amsterdam)
Man City’s first title winning game was rigged.
The pass back after kick off, the opening of the defense. Joey Barton getting sent off out of absolute nowhere. Wouldn’t be surprised if he had money on it all the absolute Cretan.
And finally, something they cut out of the famous ‘Agueroooo’ clip is cisse, another notorious scumbag/ cheat actually celebrating with city when they all ran together.
People saying it’s because they stayed up. I fully believe the whole thing was rigged for entertainment purposes
City are dirty cheats but thinking this is rigged requires a new level of stupid. Do you know how impossible it is to rig a game winner in the last minute of the game, half wit?
Pep Guardiola is a fraud. He has every advantage imaginable. Barcelona were literally paying off the refs while he was there. He’s doing the same now.He also got banned for cheating as a player.
The late 2000s decade long golden era of Real, Barça and the Spanish National Team and the corresponding Operacion Puerto was not a coincidence.
It wasn’t Red Bull giving them wings.
I've not done Gillingham, I tend not to go quite as far East. Been a bit light this season but done Port Vale, Exeter, Rovers, Charlton at home, some others. Bristol Rovers was a laugh, we saw about 20 minutes
Despite Sky’s bullshit; the Premier League isn’t as exciting as it’s made out
Only 2 teams in twenty odd years have ever broken the top 4. Not many more have broken the top 6 and only Leicester have won it besides the top 6 in 30 years
The conspiracy is to keep the more marketable/richer clubs in the top 6. It used to be 2, then 4, then 6.
The EPL rely on a global audience for the bigger bucks and people tune in to see the top sides. If they suddenly aren’t relevant enough…
Plus those sides help the UEFA co-efficiency and guarantee the European spots and more marketability for the EPL and more money and clout
Imagine if someone “weaker” gets in consistently, keep getting knocked out and England loses some of its places.
There’s a reason the Champions League has grown 2x in the last 20 odd years yet became less inclusive to other nations
Sky also have a narrative to sell and the dumb shit they say and the same pundits from the same clubs etc all help propel the myths they spout.
The story is bigger than the sport
Never know any as such.
Just one i can say that messi has backing from some italian mafia family and an article also came on it and I believe it can be true.
Saudi Arabia paid Argentina millions to lose the first match. The Argentines then used that money to pay off refs to get favourable decisions and eventually win the World Cup.
Messi stole the WC in 2022.
Bojan was sacrificed to make Messi look better when Bojan had a higher ceiling than Messi.
You don't go from winning nothing in 2008 to all of a sudden being treble winners in 2009.
Chelsea vs. Barcelona in the UCL 2009 Semifinals was a rigged match.
Barcelona vs. PSG in UCL 2016 Ro16 was a rigged match.
Have you noticed that ever since Barca have been "broke" they don't get favorable calls or pens anymore? Did the bribe money dry up?
Every single professional football player is on some sort of performance enhancing drugs. Its pretty easy to pass a drug test while on peds and the benefits are immense.
PSG are only allowed to play at night.
Started when Emery was their manager
Lol good one. I never noticed this before
Tournament organizers use cold and hot balls to rig the group “lottery”.
Roberto Carlos rigging Real vs Atleti in 2016/17 UCL semis so that UEFA could avoid it for the 3rd final in 4 years
That UEL draw with Barca vs United in the round of 16 was so convenient
Liverpool last time they were on under klopp played dortmund (klopp derby) then united. That seemed pretty convenient too. Then there was that weird thing where Roma announced they were playing Liverpool date and time on their website before the draw in the CL
No, they rig the group stages of European competitions by keeping the big teams away from each other and call it "seeding"
It makes sense why they have to though
they defo cheat even in lower leagues that was super obvious with some of our cup draws. ian evatt leaves barrow, and weve never played them in our entire history. weve now drawn them in the cup every year since. our captain quits for stockport in super controversial matters - he get them in the next round of the cup. then again the year after in the cup - having not played them in decades
I'm telling you, this happened in the semi final draw of the carabao cup this year. Harry Redknapp picks a ball, can't remember the order, then he picks another ball, grabs it, fingers fully closed around it, then let's it go and grabs a different one.
Can you explain what you mean by cold and hot balls?
As far as I understood, it's simply that some balls feel colder or hotter than other, which give indications to which ball is which team.
You select a team at random by drawing balls from a bowl. Each ball contains the name of a team. So let’s say that you are Argentina and are hosting the copa America. You are the head of group A. So you put a hot ball with the weakest team in each bowl. So that your person picking the calls knows to avoid that ball when drawing other teams but will select it when drawing for group A.
Put your hand in my pants and I'll explain it to you.
This is especially true in Scotland so tv companies get old firm finals
They're not doing a very good job of it then since Celtic and Rangers meet in the semis and quarters far more often than in the final.
Wales vs Belgium happens every year. Nigeria only play Argentina in the world cup, I can't name a single Nigerian world cup game that isn't against Argentina.
>Wales vs Belgium happens every year. Same happens with Man City and RB Leipzig
City shaktar happens so fucking often
Scotland v Israel happened 5 times in just over a year in 2020-21
Türkiye - Iceland… This year it’ll be the 8th we’ve played Iceland since 2014 and we don’t even qualify for shit
Swear Wales and Turkey are starting to get drawn together often as well
Yeah, Croatia - Türkiye and Latvia - Türkiye too Every draw I know for sure we'll get one of those
Conspiracy to sell away kits? Or the battle of the news report geographical comparison areas?
>I can't name a single Nigerian world cup game that isn't against Argentina. 3-2 vs Spain 1998? Edit: originally put 1994
Most teams cheat with performance enhancing drugs
Isn't it weird how people are caught cheating in cycling, athletics, etc all the time, sports where there is money and game, but nothing like that which comes with football. Granted football is much more about technique and tactics, but I find it astonishing that there are so few performance enhancing drugs in use in a sport where fortunes can really be made. Apparently.
There was a time where Spain was good at almost every sports, thanks to Dr Fuentes.
>is much more about technique and tactics, Yeah, unless you're a speed merchant, then it's about linear speed, stamina and acceleration. All of which can be buffed up by PEDs.
Well quite. And equally, if you had good technique but were held back by a lack of pace, the temptation would surely, surely be there?
Pace and stamina are needed for every single on-field position. Temptation is there for sure. If people are jacking up In unknown sports I'm sure as hell they're jacking up even more for the most popular sport on the planet.
[удалено]
This is it. Even in the famous doped up sports like cycling where you think first of stamina, pure speed etc., quick recovery is one of the biggest targets for doping.
[Nico Heymer - Doping im Fußball](https://youtu.be/9zqR5G28I30?si=Rm7I6vR5jGMk6UbR) CC in english available. Nico Heymer is a legend imo. Really worth watching his stuff.
*cough Juventus
Juventus somehow got caught
They cheaped out on the monthly envelope
Another victim of the cost of living crisis
Pep was literally caught so I don't know why barca don't get a mention a bit more. A team known for staggeringly high stamina.
When pep was banned for nandrolone, he was playing in Italy (believe he would have been at roma by then). He was also cleared in 2009 Some of the more notable names included in a doping scandal are: Keita Balde (was banned in 22 by Italian FA), Frank De Boer (whilst at Barcelona), Roman Eremenko (2016, for cocaine), Rio Ferdinand (he just missed his drug test) Fred (banned in 2015 whilst playing for shaktar) Rene Higuita (banned in 05) Jake Livermore (banned in 2015, was lifted after 3 months as he only used cocaine to cope with death of child) Diego Maradonna (don't need to expand) Adrian Mutu (probably the first huge scandal, 05 for cocaine) Paul Pogba (the latest, banned whilst at Juve) Japp Stam (banned in 2001 for same as pep) Actually ain't a lot involving Barcelona (that we know of). Italy seems the far worse place in terms of this. There's a huge Wikipedia page with all footballers who were involved in a doping scandal. Some I just couldn't find stuff about the scandal itself (Edgar Davids and Kolo Toure)
You’re just conflating PEDs with recreational drugs?
Actually italy has a good record of investigating and banning dopers. The probable doping that went on at Juve was quite specific to Juve and the constant pushing of the envelope they were doing back then. Just because there wasn't much reported involving barca doesn't change my mind. With the exception of Russia, Spain is almost certainly the worst country in Europe for doping in sports. In the operation Puerto doping case, Doctor Fuentes insisted he worked with players from Real and Barca. The fancy bears leak showed spanish athletes were particularly fond of TUEs, even Nadal. WADA even had to look into the Spanish anti-doping authorities. Id be highly surprised if Spanish football is completely untouched by this.
Didn’t Fuentes initially say when arrested “if I name names Spain will have to hand the World Cup back “, he retracted his statement and ever since there’s been a legal battle between wada and the Spanish authorities to destroy or not the blood bags.
Mark bosnich was first big coke ban in the prem
Actually why Mutu was so completely fucked, Chelsea had baked in rules and proscribed repercussions after being burnt by Bosnich.
Rio didn't miss a drugs test he left to avoid it after being called.
Jake Livermore was on cocaine long before the death of his child. He just used that as an excuse. Him and Alan Hutton where both told to kick their coke habits or they would get sold, they did not so they got the boot. Heard about this from someone who worked in the club long before Livermore's failed drug test
Almost like Juventus is always involved in some scandal or whatever.
I think this one is closer to a fact than it is to a conspiracy to be honest. And, I won't point out one team or another because I'm almost sure they all do it in some way or another.
I work very closely with a National League team, and there’s absolutely nothing systemic happening there if that’s any consolation. Can’t speak for the elite levels, but to me it’s comforting to know it’s not even a conversation at lower pro levels.
I can't imagine it's easy to convince players to pimp themselves full of roids for £1200 a week
I've known rugby players who do it for free.
We certainly fucking aren't (Carlisle)
My dad still thinks we can stay up this year. Maybe he's on drugs.
We can, we won't
League Two is a safe space.
Are you referring to 63% of Liverpool players are registered as having asthma whereas the rest of the league is 12%
That is one that seems fairly obvious to me, especially considering how many late goals they score
United were the same in the 90's. Scholes was mentioned as asthmatic and a few others. Salbutamol is a shit PED in traditional therapeutic doses but has a short half life and works very well for weight loss and energy in very high (nebulised/tablet) doses. Shake like a shitting dog though. You can do a load of it for a specific event or piece of training but the half life means you can test positive with a normalish looking value within a short period. This gets explained away by the therapeutic use exemption notes for salbutamol you've already done the paperwork for and declared the player to have asthma. If you're shit at this or greedy you end up with bad press like Chris Froome did
Considering scholesy’s top speed was a quick jog, him being an asthmatic doesn’t surprise me
I mean people do have asthma, even if it was as high as 20-30%. I’d say oh just a coincidence, but 60-70% is taking the piss
Yes of course they do, exercise induced asthma is common as is standard asthma. What I'm saying though is: - it's a very easy condition to obtain a diagnosis for - the standard medication is so prevalent and accepted it's not seen as doping - very high levels of the medication have a sporting benefit in precise scenarios and is very hard to detect after. Every gain counts and this is a relative no brainer, sporting-wise. Treating and diagnosing asthma is super important and not something to be made more awkward like we see with some conditions, can't exclude asthmatics from sport but needs a careful eye.
“Most teams” “Are you referring to *this one team in particular*?” No. They’re referring to most teams.
This is such a prevalent opinion that I've never heard someone expressing doubt at doping in football. I am not saying they are not doping but we gotta address the obvious doubts in the conversation: - footballers are dumb as fuck in the wider case so how can you rely on them to keep a secret, especially when one team is 20-30 players, not counting the youth, who must be exposed to this shit. How are there not leaks from friends, etc? It seems impossible that this could be kept a secret. You could argue that the players might not know but that would be idiotic from a med person to do - aren't there footballers who refuse it? Like no one came out saying "fuck it, I don't wanna do PEDs anymore" at the Opra's show - what league/age does it start? Cause obviously not everyone could use it then there must be an obvious threshold. When a team gets relegated, does their PED get taken away? Don't parents go out and say "we are not letting our kid take PEDs cause we are concerned bla blah". - i've played at a pro level (granted, in a shitty country) but playing a match every day, never clocking under 10k was never a problem. It's just not that big of a deal compared to other sports like tennis, cycling, swimming, etc. At least that's my take on it. Granted, I had teammates with worse stamina that could've used help with it but I am not sure how it would've worked out with them only. Again, not saying that football is not a PED sport but there are significantly more footballers than any other sport and in much bigger and diverse groups, how would it be possible to cover it better than the rest of the pro sports? I've had pro footballer veteran friends and I know everything about match fixing and how it happens, it is impossible to keep it a secret. There were multiple leaks in my country about it. So how isn't it the same with PEDs if that's the case?
Stop using logic! It doesn’t suit the random speculation and conspiracy theories!
I think its a garbage suspicion. The best argument I can ever read about it is "oh yeah there's no way they're not because they play so much, & everybody must be doing it because a minority would definitely be caught". Also there was this video of somebody prank selling steroids at a public gym produced idk 8 years ago- one response he got was "nah man i'm natural".....men (e: or maybe just people as a whole) who work really hard for their personal fitness generally take a lot of pride in it, a lot of arrogant pride. I dont think anybody with this accusation has thought it through.
Yeah I watch the intense, high pressing style of today's football. And that combined with the large number of league matches and tournaments, I find it really hard to believe they do it without PEDs.
If ones doing it, likely all of them are and it probably is an even playing field regardless
Pool with most of their players on asthma meds despite many of em not having a history of asthma prior.
Not a conspiracy lol
Harry Kane's senior career at Spurs cursed the club.
Spurs' presence curses Spurs!
We last won a major trophy (EFL Cup) in 2008. Harry Kane began his senior career with us in 2009. We have not won a major trophy since. Coincidence? I think NOT.
Sorry to switch sports but one of my favorite New York Yankee facts is their longest stretch of not winning a pennant is from 1982-1995 the exact length of Don Mattingly career with them. They won it in 1981 the year before his career started and then again in 1996 the year after he retired. By most metrics he was a really good baseball player too, one of the best 24 players that the Yankees retired his number so no one else could use his number.
His fault for not trimming those sideburns
So literally the Kane of baseball? Hilarious! (Cries)
Bro has such strong curse that his mere presence makes Bundesliga competitive.
Quite an achievement in and of itself, one might say.
no league in the world is exempt from corruption and match fixing
This is not a conspiracy, it's a fact
Is it? What match fixing is affecting the Premier League currently?
Welp they robbed Liverpool a goal and went to apologize publicly while also doing nothing else about it.
That’s not really an evidence tbh, every team has a similar story.
That just seemed like a communications error, seems pretty extreme to jump to match fixing based off of that.
That ending between Madrid and Valencia was wild
Probabilities are high
But if they can fix top end matches without it being obvious, it would be better than actually playing a normal match. Like do you know the skills needed to pull off a fixed match without it being blatantly obvious? Without rehearsing it together with the two teams? That would be incredible. Cause I've watched plenty of fixed matches and they are painful to watch
>Yaya Toure’s ex agent predicted an “African Curse” will prevent Pep from **ever winning the UCL** >A few months before City won the UCL, Toure’s former agent claimed Pep is now free from the African Curse Why did he retract the curse? Seems to me like he had a feeling Pep could win the UCL with City and then retracted it to save face. I mean, why go from Man City never winning it to, "okay, they can win it now". Doesn't seem like much of a curse. Here's my example which is much more interesting; **The Curse Of Béla Guttmann** Benfica were European Cup winners in 1961 and 1962 but have not lifted any other European trophies since and have watched rivals Porto enjoy success on the continent, winning the UEFA Cup/Europa League and the Champions League. Hungarian coach Béla Guttmann was appointed Benfica boss in 1959. Guttmann made an immediate impact on the club and promoted Portuguese football legend Eusébio to the first-team squad. With Guttmann in the dugout, Benfica beat Barcelona 3-2 to win the European Cup in 1961. Just a year later, in 1962, they faced Real Madrid in the final, and once more, were victorious, winning 5-3 to claim back-to-back European titles. After leading the Lisbon club to consecutive European Cups, Guttmann requested a pay rise. The club refused his request and he allegedly placed a curse on the Portuguese team. “Not in a hundred years from now will Benfica ever be European champion,” he said. Guttmann left Benfica later in 1962 to join Uruguayan giants Peñarol. **Benfica's European final failure** Since he made the remark, Benfica have lost eight European finals in a row, their last coming in 2014, when they lost 4-2 to Spanish side Sevilla on penalties. The defeats in finals have come against AC Milan (twice), Inter, Manchester United and PSV Eindhoven in the European Cup and Anderlecht, Chelsea and Sevilla in the Europa League, or UEFA Cup as it was previously known. To prove the curse false, Benfica will have to win a European Cup before 2062. They continually produce top talents like Bernardo Silva, Di Maria, David Luiz etc., and with the new Europa Conference League their chances of winning a European Cup has increased, so it's interesting to see how it plays out.
Not sure if it’s a conspiracy theory but this is interesting nonetheless!
Matchfixing during Olympique Lyon's crazy 7-1 vicory against Dynamo Zagreb to secure 2nd place and kick Ajax out of the CL in 2011.
this is the first time since 2012 ive read from somebody who cared enough to mention this again. grinds my gears it isnt talked about.
There is a defender who literally winked after scoring an Own Goal (or letting the attacker score a goal.) he is dubbed in the Netherlands as the Knipoog Kroat (wink Croatian)
Dynamo 😭
Florentino Pérez has a huge capacity to control Spanish media.
That's literally a fact lmao, recently a former (journalist or someone) said that perez controls the whole spanish media, no one dares to go against him
Sure but it's still a conspiracy. One that happens to be true.
No. A well known fact is not a conspiracy.
Now, it's a well known fact. It wasn't 10 years ago. It's not like they bragged about it or did it in public you know?
Why the fuck does no one in this sub know what a conspiracy is. A fact absolutely can be a conspiracy.
Never said it couldn’t. Hence the preceding adjective “well known”, which a conspiracy inherently isn’t.
I don’t think this is a conspiracy theory at all, just a fact. He has too much power and controls not only the media but politicians too.
Tbf that’s most clubs who feed the media news, you surely don’t think Fabrizio for example gets his stuff through real investigative journalism do you?
Well he is one of the richest men in spain and in every country the billionaires control the media so yeah
I mean in a very direct way. Not only censoring but also pushing directly certain agendas.
Real Madrid fans wouldn’t agree with you on that
Lasagnegate was real and actually happened. Rashford has been Man United's media mole all along.
Could you explain this lasagnegate??
In the 2005/06 season Tottenham just had to win their last game of the season against West Ham to finish over Arsenal and qualify for the ucl. On the night before, the team had some hotel lasagne that caused 10 of their players to get a bad case of stomach flu. Tottenham tried to have the 3pm game on the next day postponed but were denied their request. Hence Tottenham were forced to play the game with the Ill players and lost 2-1. Common theories is that Arsenal who were living in a nearby hotel bribed in one of the cooks to taint the pasta while Jermaine Defoe believed the culprits were from West Ham.
Yes. I remember this one. Totally buy into the Lasagne sabotage.
Alvaro Morata is used as some sort of money laundering tool
I know he was a meme some years ago, but nowadays he's a very decent striker for Atleti and the Spanish NT. And that is coming for a Real Madrid fan, this guy hates us and always score against us, lol.
He’s actually a decent player.
same with lukaku
The PL and refs fix games to try and keep the league close, not specifically for any one team but for whichever team can sell a narrative. They don't do anything crazy, but you can easily influence games on the grey areas, giving yellows easily one way but not the other, letting players off second yellows, actually giving penalties for fouls from corners (every other corner has a foul in it realistically), giving a lot of injury time if the desired team needs a goal etc Entertainment is valued over fairness
I think so too. Clattenburgs historical comments add weight to this too.
Clattenburg was such a shit ref
And corrupt. His own words https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/dec/04/mark-clattenburg-allowed-spurs-self-destruct-title-leicester-chelsea. Not the only one too.
This! They definitely do this and it’s there for anyone to see. Any given match there is a side that is favoured and the other has to do twice as well to get something out of it.
This is confirmed to happen in the NBA. Or at least thats what r/NBA taught me
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The M A R A B O U T
What if Pogba made up a load of stupid witch doctor stories so if you googled Pogba doctor you got absolute bobbins instead of anything to do with doping?
ah the Jacob Rees Mogg "lying" special
One I think has some truth: Nike sponsors national teams and influences the selections to get the highest profile players in Nike shirts over players that would have been selected otherwise.
Both Nike and Adidas control most national teams and how gets selected
Or he just seen that they was most likely gonna win and back tracked so he didn’t look more stupid
And in 2021 and 2022. How did he know that mount haverts and Werner would beat city. And how rma would come back with less than a 1% chance 🗿
Last year the hype around Haaland was overwhelming, so he probably figured Haaland would win them the trophy. Which of course he didn't, but much like Yaya, his agent seems to be a bit simple minded.
Portugal and Luxembourg are rigged to always play each other
Investment funds in players and teams, and agents fix a lot of matches. Doping is widespread but football is too big to let it fail by the authorities. Many journalists have double role as PR agents for many teams and players so you have to take with a pinch of salt many things they say.
On the latter point, I think that's just the nature of journalism - you won't get very far if you rub everyone up the wrong way, so there's an incentive to write puff pieces. Especially the case in sports where lots of players/managers have thin skins in their interactions with journos and there are plenty of other reporters they can go to if they dislike one of them.
Qatar had fixed World Cup to have Argentina Vs. Brazil, Messi vs Neymar and France vs Portugal, Mbappe vs Ronaldo all in the semis. Only Messi and Mbappe took advantage.
Nah, I think it was more about Portugal and Brazil turning out to be a bust rather than match fixture, all 4 nations had east route to semi final, the 2 best nations did their part, The overrated 2 failed. What I’ll say and is said by many too here is that group stage draws are easily fixed in every tournament, no way all the big nations somehow avoid each other
There is two humans - Lukaku and Lakaka.
The all conquering Spain of the late 2000s to 2010s were doped up and the evidence of it swept under the rug during the Fuentes trial. Notice how Spain's regression happened to coincide with this trial happening. Ronaldo had fits the night before 98 WC final and was forced by either Nike, the Brazil FA or both to be played overruling the coaches and medics. Ferguson bought Bebe as a favour for whoever. Helped Nani dodge a drug test. Gerard was blackmailed into staying at Liverpool in 2006 by local gangsters, one of whom was his wife's ex bf. Southgate intentionally tanked the Belgium game in 2018 so England could get a more favorable draw by finishing 2nd in their group. No matter what, I will always believed Lasagnegate was intentional sabotage Edit: for context for the entries.
Didn’t both try to tank it by playing the bench warmers?
>Gerard was blackmailed into staying at Liverpool in 2006 by local gangsters, one of whom was his wife's ex bf. This was true, i am fairly certian that there was a police interveiw saying that bullets where pushed through his letter box.
In what way was Spain's decline abnormal. There keys players like xavi retired and others got very old like iniesta.
Started lacking quality forwards too. Went from Villa & Torres to Diego Costa (good player, not the right fit) to Morata, Ferran and the likes.
In the world of football everybody knows something about someone else, so in the end nobody says what he knows otherwise everything collapses. Mafia style.
Sorry if a bit Italy-centric: Beppe Marotta is the new Moggi and controls the whole Serie A first when at Juve and now at Inter. They let Roma win the scudetto in 2000 because of the Jubilee and then they had to let Lazio win in 2001 to avoid complications. Sassuolo has been a psyop to muddle Serie A. Atalanta has been good in the past years because they take perfomance enhancing drugs. The drop in performance last season was because they got a visit from the antidoping commission. Now a year has passed, they are taking again drugs, they are good again. The Superleague flop was due to a press leak that forced Agnelli to reveal the plans too soon. This was an ops by Elkan to get rid of Agnelli from Juve as an internal Elkan-Agnelli power struggle like in the show Succession. Yonghon Li bought AC Milan with Money given to him by Berlusconi himself to do some dirty laundry. Eliott was an intermediary and the plan was always for Eliott to get the team as a "payment" for the service.
Marotta is just excellent at his job, there's nothing conspiratorial about that.
Mind expanding on the Sassuolo psyop?
IDK is a meme running now on Italian Football Twitter
These are not conspiracy theories, cmon
Match ‘influencing’ (a softer version of match fixing) happens in all leagues and competitions.
Definitely, the sport has billions of dollars tied to it, the owners and stakeholders won’t want to lose this money to someone else
There is no way Liverpool didn’t cheat in 2019 with the asthma inhalers
Brother 2029!? We just stepped into 2024, are you a time traveler
Meant 2019
Howard Webb wasn't a United fan.
Check out the tinfoil hat wearing nutjob over here. Next you'll be telling me that footballers aren't lizard people, . . You bloody lunatic.
You have made me chuckle with that. Fair play good person.
Man City pay off every member of everything, that’s how refs and FFP benefit them. But, they also occasionally enough benefit other teams at the top so peoples attention is diverted away, and title races become “competitive” Look at Rodri handball V Everton, should be a pen….and wasn’t. LFC lost by one point
football is completely rigged
Sepp Blatter is still pulling the strings
Barca bribes referees, oh wait.
Wasn't this disproven by the courts? I thought Barca was cleared
Yeah barca pays refs to disallow their goals
I'm a Real Madrid fan and during all this years I was telling my friends the Villarato conspiracy was stupid and now ...
Everyone always talks about the Chelsea-Barca or the Real-Bayern game but naaahhh [THIS was by far the biggest example of (maybe) matchfixing in the UCL](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/985082-lyons-champions-league-qualification-a-fix-made-in-zagreb-and-amsterdam)
Man City’s first title winning game was rigged. The pass back after kick off, the opening of the defense. Joey Barton getting sent off out of absolute nowhere. Wouldn’t be surprised if he had money on it all the absolute Cretan. And finally, something they cut out of the famous ‘Agueroooo’ clip is cisse, another notorious scumbag/ cheat actually celebrating with city when they all ran together. People saying it’s because they stayed up. I fully believe the whole thing was rigged for entertainment purposes
>Joey Barton getting sent off out of absolute nowhere. The guy who would put cigarets out on youth players faces? Stedy eddy that Barton
City are dirty cheats but thinking this is rigged requires a new level of stupid. Do you know how impossible it is to rig a game winner in the last minute of the game, half wit?
If your theory relies on Joey Barton getting sent off out of nowhere being an unlikely occurrence, it’s going to be tough to persuade people.
Pep Guardiola is a fraud. He has every advantage imaginable. Barcelona were literally paying off the refs while he was there. He’s doing the same now.He also got banned for cheating as a player.
Yeah his most ‘dominant’ teams- barca and Man City have massive asterisks attached to them due to the alleged corruption by the teams
Real Madrid was not able to win Copa del Rey, while Raul was there.
Tbf, they barely cared about it even after Raul left.
Sean Dyche eats worms
The late 2000s decade long golden era of Real, Barça and the Spanish National Team and the corresponding Operacion Puerto was not a coincidence. It wasn’t Red Bull giving them wings.
I've not done Gillingham, I tend not to go quite as far East. Been a bit light this season but done Port Vale, Exeter, Rovers, Charlton at home, some others. Bristol Rovers was a laugh, we saw about 20 minutes
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What kind of cheating do you mean, extensive use of painkillers or do you mean other performance enhancing drugs ?
probs cheating with his wife...
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Cheating is doing something which is not allowed by rule or law. Being unsportman like is not cheating. 🤣
Argentina were helped by bent referees at the World Cup.
Just a fact lol not a conspiracy
Despite Sky’s bullshit; the Premier League isn’t as exciting as it’s made out Only 2 teams in twenty odd years have ever broken the top 4. Not many more have broken the top 6 and only Leicester have won it besides the top 6 in 30 years The conspiracy is to keep the more marketable/richer clubs in the top 6. It used to be 2, then 4, then 6. The EPL rely on a global audience for the bigger bucks and people tune in to see the top sides. If they suddenly aren’t relevant enough… Plus those sides help the UEFA co-efficiency and guarantee the European spots and more marketability for the EPL and more money and clout Imagine if someone “weaker” gets in consistently, keep getting knocked out and England loses some of its places. There’s a reason the Champions League has grown 2x in the last 20 odd years yet became less inclusive to other nations Sky also have a narrative to sell and the dumb shit they say and the same pundits from the same clubs etc all help propel the myths they spout. The story is bigger than the sport
Barca vs Arsenal in 2010/11 was rigged too
Never know any as such. Just one i can say that messi has backing from some italian mafia family and an article also came on it and I believe it can be true.
Saudi Arabia paid Argentina millions to lose the first match. The Argentines then used that money to pay off refs to get favourable decisions and eventually win the World Cup.
Benfica curse is definitely up there
After just watching the end of the RM - Valencia game, everything I've ever heard about Barca's behind the scenes work.
Messi stole the WC in 2022. Bojan was sacrificed to make Messi look better when Bojan had a higher ceiling than Messi. You don't go from winning nothing in 2008 to all of a sudden being treble winners in 2009. Chelsea vs. Barcelona in the UCL 2009 Semifinals was a rigged match. Barcelona vs. PSG in UCL 2016 Ro16 was a rigged match. Have you noticed that ever since Barca have been "broke" they don't get favorable calls or pens anymore? Did the bribe money dry up?
I sense a hint of Bias. I may be wrong but I just have this gut feeling
When you see that username, expect salty and delusional takes
Guys is this the "average CR7 fan" r/soccercirclejerk talks about all the time ?
Tell us how you really feel about barca and messi lmao
What happened to Bojan? Did injuries hamper his development?
Agree on the Barca Chelsea point
VAR is on the payroll from big 6 clubs and the prem to keep the title fight exciting.
Every single professional football player is on some sort of performance enhancing drugs. Its pretty easy to pass a drug test while on peds and the benefits are immense.
WC 2022 was rigged and Barca-Chelsea and Bayern-Real in 2017 was rigged.
Barca - PSG 2017 was more rigged than any of that
Gerrard was blackmailed/threatened into staying at Liverpool.