MARTA APARICIO / AIPS in BAKU: Fighting against match-fixing is one of the main objectives of the football authorities.

Many of the governing bodies have fought against it for several years with mixed success but no-one has found a way to eliminate it from the sport.

Chilean Leandro Shara believes he has come up with a solution to one of the fix possibilities, the bending of match results possible under the traditional mini-group system of tournament organisation.

Shara, chief consultant of International Tournaments Modelling and President of MatchVision, presented his proposal at the 77th AIPS Congress in Baku.

Notorious instances in the past are headed by the Austria v West Germany manipulation at the 1982 World Cup when the Germans secured a 1-0 win which eliminated Algeria from contention for a second-round spot.

Shara said: “FIFA did try really hard to find a new system which finishes with this sort of match fixing and allow a World Cup with eveb 36 or 40 participants. This project, already used in some different competitions like Chile’s and Costa Rica’s cup in 2011, can fill this gap.”

The format entails dividing teams into, for example, three different series of teams with cross-pot fixtures where outcomes in terms of table positions can be impossible to predict – and thus arrange in advance.

Shara said his ideas could be used across all different sports  and he is already in discussions with several international federations and leagues.

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