The Swedish football association has postponed a first division game after a player revealed that he had been asked to take part in an attempt at match-fixing. The match has not yet been rescheduled.A statement posted on the official website of the Swedish football association (SvFF) on Thursday said that it had decided to cancel the match scheduled for the same evening between IFK Goteborg and AIK after an unnamed AIK player said someone had tried to convince him to help throw the match. The player said he had been invited to a meeting Tuesday where he received a veiled threat and was urged to play poorly to ensure that the Stockholm-based club lost in return for a “sizeable sum of money.”
“This is a serious attack and attempted coup against Swedish football. We will never, ever accept this,” Hakan Sjostrand, the secretary general of the SvFF said.
IFK Goteborg President Frank Andersson told Swedish Radio that he had previously thought it was “unthinkable” that an attenpt would be made to rig a match in the Allsvenskan, the country’s top league. He said he had thought the problem was limited to Sweden’s lower leagues, where there have been convictions related to match fixing or attempts to fix matches in the past.
Police have launched an investigation into the incident. Both clubs said they supported the SvFF’s decision to postpone the match. The match has not yet been rescheduled.
