OT: Nigerian Soccer: Plateau United wins promotion over Police Machine FC
With promotion to the lowest tier of the Nigerian Nationwide League Division on the line, two soccer clubs — Plateau United Feeders and Police Machine FC — needed to win their respective games by the largest possible goal difference. By halftime, each game was close: Plateau United led its game 7-0 against Akurba FC, while Police Machine led 6-0 over Bubayaro FC, according to the BBC. With officials keeping an eye on the scores around the league, the second half devolved into a farce. Police Machine scored 61 times in the second half to win 67-0, but Plateau United scored 72 goals in the 45-minute second half to earn promotion.
The astronomic scorelines prompted an immediate investigation by the Nigerian Football Federation, and a severe punishment was levied Monday. All players and coaches from each of the four clubs have been banned from the game for life, and each club faces a 10-year ban from playing in a domestic league. The NFF also recommended banning each of the match referees involved.
This is really too bad, because Police Machine FC is the best soccer team name ever.
I laid the $1,000,000 I am getting from the Nigerian Prince who was emailing me on Police Machine FC at minus 65 and they covered.
What a day! Whatta country
Are they saying they induced the other team to take a dive or was it just participating in the farce?
Well, according to article 6 section 15C of the FIFA rules book, "The team scoring the greater number of goals during a match is the winner. If both teams score an equal number of goals, or if no goals are scored, the match is drawn. If any team scores more than 2 goals in a half, both teams will be disqualified and suspended for scoring too many goals"
And if you're down 2-0 at the half you're just out of luck and can't win? That's a very strange rule, to say the least, and the bit of soccer I've been watching this summer seems to end with one team scoring more than two goals in a half more often than not.
Yep, you're screwed. 1-0 is all you get, otherwise 2-0 only if each goal where ceded in seperate halves. You must be watching soccer, and FIFA governs football, so this is probably like an English / American thing. Tomato Tomato, you know.
Excuse the ignorance that led to my reply, but I was actually asking a question originally.
I'm guess the scoring irregularity was not random, and so all teams involved participated in the match fixing. Good to see the Nigerian FA not falling for this.
I just didn't know what they said happened with the winning teams. The referees and the losing teams should be much easier to implicate in match fixing than the ones doing the scoring.
I guess in Nigeria you are guilty until proven innocent...
I think is obvious that the winning teams paid perhaps both referees and rival tams, one thing is to score say 20 goals on a game, but 70 in half a game? that's one every 40 seconds, some celebrations take more time than that....
but I didn't see what they actually got banned for, and it's not mentioned in the article or two I read about this.
Your cheque was dishonoured, eh...
... could learn something from Nigeria about how to dole out punishments for cheaters.
Clearly the weaker teams knew what they were getting into in the second half. Unless there is proof of bribery or some other disincentive to competition I cannot support a lifetime ban for all four teams and coaches.