BBC Newsnight understands a member of Uefa’s Disciplinary Services Unit – which is responsible for investigating match-fixing – first became suspicious during qualifying rounds of the World Cup.

It is alleged that certain Nigerian players came forward and said their team was vulnerable to manipulation.

On the morning of Nigeria’s first match, he alerted Fifa’s new Early Warning System, set up to look for signs of match-rigging, of his concerns.
German journalist Christian Bergmann also had a call just before the first Nigerian game of the tournament from a Uefa contact who said there were suggestions that “some players from the Nigerian team are actually involved in some form of manipulation”.

In their second game of the tournament, Nigeria were strong favourites to beat Greece and took an early 1-0 lead.

But after just 33 minutes Nigeria had a man sent off and Greece subsequently scored their first ever World Cup goals to win 2-1.

As ever, we turn to Declan Hill for the informed commentary, and he follows up on his earlier concern about the laxness of FIFA’s “early warning system” to look out for match-fixing by commenting that it does little to protect players who come forward:

FIFA’ early warning system is practically useless. They don’t investigate. They don’t protect the players. If you are a whistle-blower and you come forward to expose your fears, don’t expect protection and don’t expect the situation to improve.

And again, as he did earlier in the tournament, Hill makes clear that the root of the problem remains the fact that players performing at a multi-billion dollar sporting event, elite professionals in the world’s richest sport at its apex, aren’t guaranteed to be paid the money due to them because FIFA refuses to pay players directly:

The Nigerian Football Association has been so utterly incompetent for so long that many Nigerians have been desperate to close it down and start again. The Nigerian government got involved. Perhaps more tellingly, the great star Jay-Jay Ochoa pleaded with FIFA not to pay the World Cup bonus to the Nigerian FA. His fear was that the money would disappear before it could reach the players.

The basic scenario that leads to corruption at World Cup tournaments is that many of the national football association are so incompetent they cannot guarantee their players will receive any salary or bonuses for playing in the world’s biggest tournament. Until FIFA stops this exploitation, pays the players directly and establishes a proper investigative unit (as UEFA has) they expect lots of these types of stories.

FIFA’s glitz and riches will be on display this weekend in its showcase pair of final World Cup games. But we should not forget its hesitation in tackling this issue. If we think the failure to deal with the need for technological aid for referees in key decisions until it’s too late is bad, it pales in comparison to the unwillingness to deal with a threat that may well eventually allow a major scandal at a World Cup to unfold due to the failure to take enough preventative action on the threat of match-fixing.

The World Cup, because of the scale of the gambling on it, is the easiest event to hide unusual betting patterns on. And evidence continues to grow that until FIFA takes the action urged by Hill — “pays the players directly and establishes a proper investigative unit” — the World Cup will remain vulnerable to being undermined in a far darker way than just by innocent officiating errors.

The bizarre alternate scenario of Germany stepping-in and co-hosting Euro 2012 with Poland can finally be laid to rest. UEFA’s Executive Committee has been meeting this week (more below on their other deliberations), and came to the following conclusion on Ukraine’s readiness to host the tournament:

After careful consideration of the documents and guarantees submitted to UEFA by the Ukrainian Government and the cities of Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv and Lviv during the last couple of months, the infrastructure report prepared by the UEFA administration and after consultation with the host associations, the UEFA Executive Committee took the following decisions concerning the selection of host cities for UEFA EURO 2012™:

• to confirm Kyiv as the venue of the final match of UEFA EURO 2012™
• to confirm Donetsk and Lviv, and to appoint Kharkiv as host cities for group matches of UEFA EURO 2012™

UEFA did not give Ukraine an entirely clean bill of health; mitigating their criticism by noting the poor economic climate, they still emphasised Ukraine had “work to do” and that “UEFA will continue to closely monitor the state of infrastructure and operational preparations.”

Ukraine has been under pressure for some time from UEFA to speed-up preparations, but you can finally start planning your trip there for the final now.

UEFA has also been meeting on several other crucial topics, including:

• Financial Control Panel: as part of Platini’s efforts to institute a tighter watch on the wild financial ways of European football, the Financial Control Panel has been strengthened. The panel’s role is to support UEFA’s controversial proposed “Financial Fair Play” strategy announced earlier this year, the key proposal of which (that had the Premier League titans up in arms) was an “obligation for clubs whose turnover is over a certain threshold, over a period of time, to balance their books, or “break even”, (i.e.  clubs cannot repeatedly spend more than the generated revenues)”. A progress report on implementing the Financial Fair Play strategy was presented, still in the draft stage.
• Match-fixing: Unsurprisingly given all the recent press about UEFA and police investigations into match-fixing across Europe, Michel Platini said UEFA was ready for the challenge and praised the UEFA Betting Fraud Detection System, which monitors 29,000 games across Europe in all 53 member associations. No new action was announced; the work of the current system was rightly praised, but it might have been good for UEFA to have considered creating a requirement that all member associations have their own integrity units, as Declan Hill (who has consulted with UEFA in the past on how to tackle match-fixing) has suggested.

Big Story
UEFA yesterday revealed more information about investigations into over 200 individuals alleged to have fixed matches in nine different countries with a press conference. This revealed that the vast majority under suspicion are domestic matches, with the German authorities having requested information from UEFA’s Betting Fraud Detection System in a number of cases, making 17 arrests yesterday. Several early round Champions League games are also under investigation, along with a number of Europa league matches.

According to a Swiss news report,”The group is suspected of trying to bribe players, coaches, referees and other officials and of running an international gambling ring that took bets from clients in Europe and Asia.”

Peter Limacher, Uefa’s head of disciplinary services, expressed the depth of concern. “We’re facing the biggest scandal in soccer,” he said at the press conference. “We’re content this is cleared up now, but we’re also devastated by the extent of the manipulation.”

The nine countries involved were revealed to be Germany (32 games), Turkey (29), Switzerland (28), Belgium (17), Croatia (14), Hungary (13), Austria (11) and Bosnia (8) and Slovenia (7).

On the heels of last month’s news that the Premier League was pressuring bookmakers to stop live betting on academy games, the deep-rooted tentacles of gambling and the potential for match-fixing to follow in European football is becoming an increasingly public concern of the authorities.  The two may not be connected, but the massive investment into football by legal gambling companies now splashed across the shirts of so many teams (not too mention newspaper and blog websites) hardly sends out a pure message to begin with.

Worldwide News

• I know you’re expecting me to to write about Thierry Henry — PR-backtracking with his call for a replay he knows won’t happen, Henry Winter losing the plot entirely like a kid who just found out Santa Claus doesn’t exist — but I have little to add to the shit-storm. Still, the Henry incident has sparked a further debate on the use of video evidence, supported in the British press by Andy Townsend, Patrick Barclay, and even an editorial in the Independent (is this really a matter of national concern now?). It’s curious, though, that none have noted additional assistant referees on the goaline surely would have spotted the infringement — perhaps because it has been Michel Platini who has led that experiment in the Europa League, a bit of the narrative that doesn’t fit grandiose gallic conspiracy theories.
• Like him or loathe him, Fake Sigi has a few posts of note you should take a look like: an interesting and insightful commentary on an interview with Columbus Crew GM Mark McCullers, addressing the worthiness of the Crew’s calls for public financing of further stadium infrastructure; calling out the pathetic Bud Light sponsored Kasey Keller signed scarf treasure hunt in Seattle (are they trying to give Portland fans more ammunition?); and a fairly unsuccessful take-down of Grant Wahl’s interview with MLS Commissioner Don Garber, given Wahl did get some interesting answers out of him, surely the point of an interview (albeit he’s right that the final question about Wahl’s own book was pretty cringe-worthy).
• Anyone good at interpreting dreams? Last night, Tottenham Hotspur were playing MK Dons (aka Franchise FC) in the Carling Cup final, and I was desperately trying to find a pub to watch it in America. I finally found one, got to to the top floor, only to my great surprise to find an entire roomful of screaming, belligerent MK Dons fans, who had unbeknownst to me become a phenomenon in American fandom.  I had to fight to stay in the room to watch the rest of the game, which went to to penalties.  Then I woke up.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.