Football friendly matches are wide open for match-fixing due to a lack of regulation, with more than 250 friendlies involving European clubs showing signs of suspicious activity from 2016 to 2020, according to a three-year study funded by the European Commission’s Erasmus+ programme and led by the University of Nicosia Research Foundation.
A survey carried out as part of the study found that of 700 players in Cyprus, Greece and Malta, more than a quarter (26.5 per cent) had played in a club friendly they suspected had been manipulated.
Moreover, they revealed that 26.3 per cent of approaches to fix a friendly match were made by club officials and 15 per cent by other players.
