NOUAKCHOTT — The head of world soccer governing body FIFA said Thursday that cheats would always exist in the sport and it would be impossible to stop them, after revelations of a global match-fixing scandal this week. European police revealed Monday that about 680 suspicious matches, including qualifiers for the World Cup, European championship and the Champions League, had been identified in a match-fixing inquiry. “We are in a game and in a game there are always cheats. The cheats will never be stopped,” Sepp Blatter, the FIFA President, told a news conference in Nouakchott, Mauritania. Blatter is on a four-nation tour of Africa before Sunday's African Nations Cup final in South Africa. He said the allegation of match-fixing and manipulation of soccer results were not new. “We know that there are games that are manipulated and we also know that it is very, very difficult to get the organizations (behind them) and especially the cheats,” Blatter said in French. “This is a serious danger. If games are rigged, there is no more interest in watching football,” he said. However, Blatter added that most of the matches cited in the European investigation had already been uncovered and some of the cases were in court. The allegation is the latest in a series of corruption scandals that have wracked the world soccer body. FIFA said Wednesday it had launched a web page to enable individuals to make anonymous reports of corruption by officials and attempts at match-fixing. But Blatter said even FIFA's “early warning system” was far from effective in curbing the problem and there was no legislation to punish the people behind the scams that are threatening the global game. “There is virtually no legislation that allows countries to condemn these people, because some of this is done electronically using computers,” he said. Singapore wants ‘concrete evidence' Singapore police said Thursday it needed hard evidence to crack down on match-fixing cartels, after coming under pressure to arrest suspected ringleaders of networks which targeted hundreds of football games in Europe and beyond. Police said authorities had supplied information about Dan Tan Seet Eng, a key suspect who is wanted by investigators in Rome, and that they were working with Europol following revelations that Singapore-linked networks rigged or tried to rig 680 games worldwide. In a separate statement, police said they were seeking more information from Europol, which detailed its findings this week after a major investigation, and that they were working with authorities in several countries. Dan Tan is the subject of an Italian arrest warrant and reports say he has been accused in German court documents, and named in investigations in several countries. He is suspected of being one of about five Singaporean ringleaders. Messi extends Barca deal Lionel Messi has signed a new contract that will tie him to Barcelona until 2018, the club announced Thursday. Barca had already signaled Messi's intent to sign a new deal, along with teammates Carles Puyol and Xavi Hernandez, back in December and the four-time World Player of the Year has now put pen to paper. The contract retains the same 250 million euros ($335 million) buy-out clause as his previous deal and Messi will reportedly earn a net salary of 11 million euros ($14.75 million). — Agencies
