The shadow of the fixing looms over Spanish professional football again. Former Girona player Aday Benítez revealed on the radio show ‘El Bar de Sique’, broadcast on SER Cataluña, that he received a proposal of 50,000 euros in exchange for losing a game when he played for the Catalan club.
The events would have occurred in the final stretch of the 2016-17 season in Second, with Girona already promoted to First, something that happened mathematically on the penultimate day against Zaragoza. Thus, the ex-soccer player points to the last game of that campaign, in which the Catalan team played against Córdoba in El Arcángel without the Andalusian team playing any transcendental objective, since it was in the middle zone of the table and without possibility of promotion or relegation.
“They offered it to me and to a lot of people. It was absurd to accept. That year we were promoted to First Division, we had one league game left. I was not going to stain the entire season for one game », he explained. «Normally they contact a player, who is the link, and he takes his trusted people inside the locker room. They only have to really catch three. As long as you buy a goalkeeper, a central defender and a striker, you have it half done, “he explained later in reference to the procedure to follow in attempts to fix it.
Likewise, the former player also points to another Second Division duel between Sporting and Tenerife on the last day of the 2013-14 academic year without him being present and therefore without evidence. «It was the last game of the season against Sporting de Gijón, and we were going to play the less usual ones. In the end, they played the starters, and the game was lost 3-0 with somewhat strange goals. I cannot corroborate it, I could never do it because I am not among those trusted footballers, but it is suspicious, “said Benítez.
In view of the seriousness of the recognized facts, LaLiga has filed a complaint with the National Police Center for Integrity in Sport and Gambling (Cendipa). «The Integrity and Security area of LaLiga has as one of its objectives the prevention, detection and reporting of any conduct that infringes ‘fair play’ and could adulterate the competition. The predetermination of results is a crime, as well as proving the sole intention of fixing the proposal,” the agency recalled in an informative note.