This weekend's previews will be online tomorrow as usual. In the meantime, the following article is essential reading for anybody who follows or bets on Italian football. It is especially relevant at this stage of the season:
Sampdoria and Chievo escape investigation after betting surge
- Paolo Bandini
The Italian football federation said on Monday that a Serie A fixture between Chievo and Sampdoria was not under investigation despite suspicious betting patterns in the build-up to Sunday's game. Concerns were raised last week after large sums of money were staked on the match finishing in a draw, with one Italian senator calling for the game to be suspended. The fixture finished goalless.
"Exactly as predicted," reported Corriere della Sera on Monday. "Zero-zero, zero real chances, zero desire to harm the opponent, zero anything." Not only had the two teams failed to produce a goal but they had managed one shot on goal each in 90 minutes. A number of bookmakers had declined to offer odds on the fixture and others stopped taking bets. More than £715,000 of bets on the draw were matched on the Betfair exchange – a figure many times larger than the average for Serie A fixtures. William Hill withdrew the game from its lists on 29 March after betting on the draw saw it traded in from 2-1 to 4-6.
"There are all sorts of myths and rumours surrounding matches played at the end of the Italian season," said a spokesman for William Hill. "It is not unusual to see big gambles on the draw and the perceived wisdom is that these are draws of convenience. It doesn't say there was a preordained outcome but there were a significant number of people who believed that would be the case."
The Italian newspaper La Repubblica claimed to have spoken to a "well-known Serie A manager" who had said, long before the bookmakers raised concerns, that the game was likely to finish goalless. That assertion was apparently based on an awareness of each team's needs. Chievo, with 35 points, were edging towards safety while Sampdoria were struggling to slow a disastrous slump since the winter break.
The concept of the mutually beneficial result is a familiar one in Italian football, commonly referred to as a "biscotto" (literally "a biscuit") by fans. Whether they are formally prearranged or the result of a tacit understanding between two sets of players is the subject of debate, but most seasons there will be at least a few games which come under suspicion. Most famous in recent years was the May 2005 Rome derby, in which Roma and Lazio played out a particularly uneventful 0-0 draw at a time when both were at risk of relegation. Before the end both sets of fans, usually hostile to each other, had joined together to chant abuse at the players and the following day Gazzetta dello Sport refused to award its usual player ratings, saying: "There was no game."
Sunday's game, however, was always likely to end 0-0. Chievo have a league-leading eight goalless draws this season, and Sampdoria, having lost the strikers Antonio Cassano and Giampaolo Pazzini in January,, rendered toothless by the departures of both their starting strikers – Antonio Cassano and Giampaolo Pazzini – in January, have failed to score in 13 of their last 16 games. Despite noting a "lack of competitive desire", the Italian federation's official observers reported that the game was played with "apparent regularity".
There were similar reports of unusual betting patterns around Genoa's game against Cagliari. On Friday more than £317,000 had been matched on Betfair's draw market; two days later, however, Cagliari won 1-0.
The Italian federation still has its hands full, though, having opened investigations into a Serie B draw between Atalanta and Padova and a Lega Pro fixture between Fondi and Neapolis.
(View article at source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/apr/04/sampdoria-chievo-serie-a-betting)
