Cheating normally benefits from conditions of extreme secrecy. The fewer people who know about your dirty dealing, the better your chances of success. So when you’re out there in the middle of the field with the whistle between your lips and 60 000 fanatical fans ruthlessly scrutinising your every move, surely it can’t be easy to pull a fast one?
On the contrary. Here is how it is done.
Bookings
The simple way of ensuring that a match tilts in favour of a particular team is by creating a numerical imbalance on the field.
By this method, the referee appears to take a no-nonsense approach; he is strict on high tackles and illegitimate ways of gaining possession, such as pushing and shoving. The mistake the targeted team’s players usually make is to play right into the hands of the middle man, arguing with him and continuing to tackle their opponents hard.
Provocation
Here the referee tries to stir the feelings of key players by reprimanding them for no apparent reason. The aim is to drive the targeted player to ”dissent” and then book him for talking back. If a referee has two or three players on yellow cards before half time he knows that one of them will be gone because of a second yellow card before long into the second stanza. If the opponents are strong he makes sure that he reduces them to nine players.
Obstructions
Anything that looks like an infringement around the penalty area is blown. That gives the chosen team extra opportunities to score. Any hindrance inside the box is definitely a penalty.
Offside
The referee ignores all calls for offsides and allows illegitimate goals to stand.
Corner kicks
If the chosen team fails to score the referee will make sure that all 50/50 decisions favour them. Where there is a doubt about who last touched the ball on calls for corner kicks and throw-ins, the advantage is given to the preferred team.
Coach
If, despite these efforts, the preferred team fails to score the officials will target the technical staff, particularly the coach. Because coaches love talking back and raising points that they think are unfair to their team, it is easy to banish them, thus depriving their team of guidance from the touchline.
According to Moses Soko, a former first division referee, there is no way then that a preferred team will not win. He went on to say that it takes a practised eye less than 20 minutes into a match to tell whether the ref has been bribed.