Olympique Marseille was the first in 1993 to pay two Valenciennes footballers, Robert and Burruchaga
Skenderbeu from Albania is the club that has received the highest penalty, ten years, for rigging aimed at sports betting
UEFA has decided to open an investigation into the ‘Negreira case’, advancing the possible sanction that Barça may receive if it is found that the payments that the Blaugrana club made to the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), Jose Maria Enriquez Negreirawere aimed at influencing the results of the matches.
It is not the first time that the highest European body has come to analyze and punish cases like this. In fact, in 2007, it modified section 3 of article 50 of its Disciplinary Regulations to be able to exclude from the competitions the clubs that incur in this crime “If any activity intended to occupy or influence the result of a match at a national or international level occurs, UEFA will declare said club ineligible to participate in the competition”.
The sanction contemplates the exclusion from European competitions for a period of at least one year. And the modification came after two cases that escaped UEFA’s sanction. The first was Anderlecht, who were penalized for bribing former Spanish referee Emilio Guruceta during the 1981 UEFA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest. The Belgian club relapsed in 1983, in a tie against Banik Otrava, but the CAS accepted their appeal and the UEFA sanction was annulled.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was the case of Milan in 2007. The Italian club was sanctioned with loss of points for a match-fixing case that involved other clubs such as Fiorentina, Reggina, Lazio and Juventus, which eventually lost the category . The Lombard club, however, qualified for European competitions despite this penalty of points and UEFA could not prevent it from participating in the Champions League and, to make matters worse, end up lifting the trophy.
The regulation change allowed UEFA to intervene beyond the decisions made by the courts and federations of each country. Since then, seven clubs have been penalized for influencing the outcome of matches.
Olympic Marseille (1993)
Prior to this change in its Disciplinary Regulations, UEFA had already taken action against the Olympic Marseilleafter verifying that its president, Bernard Tapie, paid two Valencienns footballers, Christophe Robert and Jorge Burruchaga, to fix a match.
The Marseillaise club was banned from European competitions for one yearalthough the Champions League won that year was maintained, the first and only in its history.
Fenerbahce, Besiktas
The two Turkish teams were sidelined from European competitions for match-fixing related to the 2011 Turkish Cup final. Fenerbahçe was excluded for two seasons, from 2013 to 2015, while Besiktas was punished for the 2013-2014 campaign.
Panathinaikos was excluded for three seasons in 2018, but in their case it was not for trying to influence sports results, but for non-payment of their footballers.
Skenderbeu, Pobeda and Ventspils, the toughest sanctions
Albanian Skenderbeu, Macedonian Pobeda and Latvian Ventspis are the clubs that have received the toughest sanctions to date. The Albanian club was sanctioned in 2018 with ten years after being investigated for possible fixing of up to 53 games. The most striking was a tie against Irish Crusanders in 2017 in which the locals came back from 1-2 at discount, a comeback that could have been linked to sports betting.
The Macedonian team received an eight-year ban for fixing the results of matches, while the Latvian team got seven years.
Steaua, forgiven
Steaua was sanctioned in 2013 with a season without European competitions for influencing the results of the matches, but the sanction was not carried out, because UEFA froze the punishment conditioned to five years of trial.
The precedents are completed with the Greek Olympiakos Volou, who was banned for 3 years.