European Diary: The nil-nil draw played out by Lierse and La Louvière on Saturday - two soccer teams languishing at the bottom of the Belgian first division - was a rather dull affair, writes Jamie Smyth
The action on the pitch certainly didn't live up to the drama that has engulfed both clubs in recent weeks over a series of allegations about match-fixing and bribery.
La Louvière, a small town less than 100km southwest of Brussels, is at the centre of a scandal in soccer that stretches from London to Shanghai.
Belgian prosecutors are also probing links with suspect matches in Germany and Finland as they begin to follow a money trail left by unusual betting trends in several countries.
"We are reviewing information received from contacts in Finland and Germany," says Lieve Pellens, a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor in Belgium, which recently took over the inquiry from regional police as the soccer probe widened.
"Belgian police also visited the British betting firm Betfair about 10 days ago in London," she says.
The investigation began last year when irregular betting patterns were spotted in a match where La Louvière beat fellow first division team Sint- Truiden 3-1 on October 29th.
Bets totalling up to €400,000 - about 20 times the norm - were placed on the match, causing the betting exchange Betfair to notify the authorities.
Coincidentally, a few days after the match a Chinese businessman called Zheyun Ye was among several men questioned about a disturbance in a hotel room in Brussels.
He was later released, but his computer was seized and is likely to form part of the investigation that has already seen four men charged and an international arrest warrant put out for Ye, who is thought to have fled Belgium for his native China.
Three of the four men charged with fraud so far are the chairman and lawyer of La Louvière soccer club, Filippo Gaone and Laurent Denis, and a well-known players' agent in Belgium Pietro Alatta.
Meanwhile, the trainer of La Louvière, Gilbert Bodart, has confessed to playing a role in the fraud and alleged in testimony to the federal prosecutor that he helped to fix several matches after being threatened by Ye.
The media has also got involved. A national television station, VRT, broadcast a documentary on the scandal naming 14 players and coaches from Belgian clubs allegedly linked to a Shanghai gambling cartel. This precipitated more arrests and the extension of the inquiry to Finland, where Ye owns a stake in a team.
According to media reports, the gambling cartel worked by pinpointing soccer club officials and players that were willing or susceptible to pressure to fix the results of matches.
The former coach of La Lierse, Paul Put, who was sacked last month by his new club Excelsior Mouscron for admitting to match-fixing, gave an insight into the methods used by the syndicate to recruit players and officials.
He said he was forced to act to protect his family. A gun was held to his head and he was told his daughter would be hurt.
He added that those involved in the betting scam had also taken part in sex parties and "orgies". Those who took part and were married were threatened that their wives would be told if they did not comply.
The betting scam is now a major headache for the national soccer authorities in Belgium and the international governing body Uefa ahead of the World Cup.
Uefa said yesterday it was reviewing the situation.
"We are carrying out our own investigation into the allegations," says Nicolas Cornu, press officer for the Royal Belgium FA.
"The first part of this investigation concerns the club La Lierse and should be concluded in the next few day . . . The sanctions for players involved in match-fixing range from a minimum one-year ban to a lifetime ban.
"For clubs it could mean demotion from their division or, if a majority of the board of a club are involved, they could be banned altogether."
Match-fixing scandals are not new in Belgian soccer. In the mid-1980s the Belgian sides Standard Liège and Anderlecht were sanctioned for interfering with matches in the national league and the Uefa Cup.
But the huge sums of money involved in the current investigations and the extension of the inquiry to Germany - where yesterday prosecutors in Cologne arrested a former managing director of German club Bayer Leverkusen - mean that as much action will take place off the pitch as on it over the next few months in Europe.