Once again the Asian football community has been hit by another match fixing scandal, after the owner of the Vietnamese football club Vissai Ninh Binh has admitted to the police that his players conspired to fix the result of a match they were playing, as they had betted against themselves at a local bookmaker.
The game was a Asian Football Confederation Cup game against the Malaysian team Kelantan, which was played in March. Due to the size of the scandal, the team has been withdrawn from their domestic league while the investigations are ongoing. Another major issue for Vietnam is that many of the players on the team are also participating in the national team’s roster.
The same had happened back in 2005, where several of the players on the Vietnamese national team were convicted of match fixing also. This time it was for a relatively small amount of $38,000, equal to around 800 million dong. The team were ahead 2-1 at half time against Kelantan, but lost 2-3 and had all the speculations starting. The police and football association will now look into the case.