An AFC statement insisted that “collaboration” with the Australian Government and law enforcement, Football Federation of Australia, Local Organising Committee and betting monitoring service provider Sportradar was pivotal in “proactively integrating an action plan to uphold the integrity of the tournament.”

AFC general secretary Alex Soosay said: “Like any global football event, the AFC Asian Cup attracts a vast global betting turnover and therefore the need to have measures in place to successfully prevent, detect and respond to the threat of match-fixing is the main objective of the integrity action plan.

“The effective implementation of this plan has been evident thus far as all the monitored pre-tournament friendly matches have identified no evidence of match-fixing, which is an encouraging sign. The Asian Cup itself has started positively and we are quite confident that it will remain so throughout the competition.”

The AFC Integrity Action Plan is made up of several core elements; awareness raising and educational training of players, team officials and match officials; detailed and technologically advanced monitoring of global betting markets through Sportradar’s Fraud Detection System; suspicious activity reporting through AFC’s confidential reporting mechanism and utilization of the Crime Stoppers program; and the establishment and testing of collaborative incident response procedures between AFC and Australian law enforcement with unprecedented levels of cooperation and mutual support.