In an exclusive interview with Insider Sport, FIFA’s compliance team has revealed how world football’s governing body plans to improve the safeguarding of football matches and athletes utilising its new ‘integrity toolkit’.
FIFA’s new toolkit is designed to improve the overall quality of the sport by educating players, coaches and member associations in order to prevent issues such as match manipulation.
Speaking to IS Oliver Jaberg, FIFA’s deputy chief legal & compliance officer stated: “The message is that we at FIFA are extremely serious about the integrity of football and protecting our competitions because it’s very simple; if integrity is jeopardised and the result of a sporting competition is no longer unpredictable then you will not have any stakeholders attending the sport.”
The two-part feature discussed topics such as the importance of integrity is in football and how vital integrity programme’s is to combat ever-growing match-fixing occurrences.
FIFA’s new integrity system was trailed throughout the 2018 World Cup and 2019’s Women’s World Cup, ensuring that no suspicious activity was expected on various betting markets. The trail was considered a resounding success according to the representatives, leading to the previously mentioned Integrity Toolkit, which includes a dedicated handbook.
Vincent Ven FIFA’s head of integrity added: “Besides the onsite integrity hub that we set up in order to monitor and analyse both the betting markets and in-game action of every match for integrity purposes, we also established a FIFA Women’s World Cup Integrity Task Force where all integrity stakeholders worked successfully together.”
________________
For more information about how FIFA’s Toolkit is regulated, along with added insight from Ven and Jaberg over the organisation’s stance on match manipulation, then read the interview on Insider Sport’s website here.