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NEW DELHI/ PANJIM: In another twist to the Goa Professional League match-fixing saga, that has threatened to engulf Goan football, it has now come to light that the Goa Football Association has signed a contract with the very same agency that it has accused of match-fixing and corrupt practices.
It may be recalled that on March 9, 2020- after being asked by the All India Football Federation to investigate suspicious betting patterns in six Goa Professional League matches held in October and November 2019- the GFA through their secretary Jovito Lopes, wrote to AIFF that one Gabriel Fernandes, who is employed with Genius Group, was relaying the proceedings of the match, a sort of commentary type, on the phone.
Further, Lopes in his letter to the AIFF said that Gabriel Fernandes, regularly attended Goa League matches and provided commentary of match proceedings. The GFA Secretary also wrote in his letter- which formed a part of an “investigation” conducted by the GFA, that the Genius Group was allegedly linked to Bet 365 and asked the AIFF to “seriously look into the accreditation provided to Genius Group”.
In what will now cause immense embarrassment to the GFA, it has now come to light that the Goa Football Association themselves, through their secretary Jovito Lopes, signed an Agreement with Genius Sports represented by their Authorised Signatory Steven Burton, to provide “technology and integrity services” with Genius Sports in July 2019- the very same organisation that they have now accused of shady dealings.
Gabriel Fernandes whose name featured in the GFA’s investigation letter to the AIFF mentioned that the football governing body in Goa and the Genius Group have an agreement in place.
“We are partners with GFA,” Fernandes informed Herald who works as a match statistician for the Group.
“I have submitted my contract letter to GFA and on the basis of that they issued me a press card for the Goa Professional League. I started working from December-end onwards. The matches which the AFC has red-flagged for alleged fixing were played between October and November.”
Gabriel further lashed out at the GFA General Secretary for making him a ‘scapegoat’ by mentioning his name in the GFA’s letter to AIFF and said, “Jovito hasn’t done any investigation and if he had done any actual investigation the first thing he would have found out was when they had issued me the card. Jovito is using me as a scapegoat and trying to escape from the main issue by putting the blame on me,” Gabriel further clarified.
“I am footballer myself and I don’t need to worry about this, as I was doing my job ethically,” he said.
In such a scenario, it is baffling how the GFA have accused the very same agency that they have hired for cheating.
As per the terms and conditions of the agreement, a copy of which is in possession with the Herald, the GFA has granted Genius Sports the exclusive right to collect data and statistics (including live scoring data and historical scoring data) in respect of the Competitions listed in Clause 3 (GFA Pro League and GFA First Division).
The Agreement also gave the rights to Genius Group to be called as GFA’s “Official Technology and Integrity Partner”.
This probably indicates why representative of the Genius Group (Gabriel Fernandes) was present for several matches of the Goa Professional League, relaying information on live scores etc.
As part of the terms and conditions of the Agreement, Genius Sports would also provide at least one statistician in each match of the Goa Professional League and the First Division League to collect the core Official Data. The GFA were to provide Genius Sports with 2 seats in the Media Box for each match and access to internet connection at the venue.
As part of the integrity services provided to GFA, the Genius Group would monitor any unusual betting activity and would immediately report the same to GFA.
When Herald contacted GFA Secretary Jovito Lopes for further clarity on the deal he unsurprisingly claimed that there wasn’t any deal in place between the two-parties and said, “As of now we don’t have any programme with them, but they were supposed to help us from the upcoming season on integrity matters. We don’t have any deal as such with them (Genius).”
“They work with AIFF, Karnataka Football Association, IMG, Maharashtra and they do lot of training in integrity matters and they are a qualified firm. We had put them on trial basis and I believe their job is to give ball-by-ball commentary and they are not part of betting or anything,” said Lopes who had earlier allegedly linked the data-collecting agency to a betting company in the investigation letter to the Indian football governing body.
“There is no deal as such. We wanted to test them and we had allowed them to have two people to monitor our matches and we don’t have any other tie-ups with them,” contradicted Jovito, who actually signed the agreement with Genius Sports (see pic)
“We had told them that whatever they had to do, they would only start from upcoming season.” added Jovito, while the agreement which was signed in mid 2019 states that the agreement is valid from the date of signing the agreement by both the parties. The term of this agreement was till the end of the 2022 season.
When asked why Gabriel’s name was mentioned in the GFA’s letter to AIFF, Jovito said, “It’s because everybody was saying he was part of match-fixing, which wasn’t correct, as it’s his job to give ball-to-ball commentary. But he never told us that it was part of his job, and we never accused him of anything,” concluded Jovito.
When Herald sought to know when was the decision taken to get the Genius group on board, Jovito revealed, “We had agreed it at our last Executive Committee meeting”.
However, a section of GFA Executive Committee members earlier claimed that they were always kept in the dark by GFA of any sensitive matters.
They also informed Herald that they were not aware of any agreement being signed by the GFA with Genius Sports. “No approval of the GFA Executive Committee was taken before the GFA signed this agreement, nor was the Executive Committee informed that such an agreement exists,” said one Executive Committee member speaking on condition of anonymity.
“I am not aware of any agreement signed by GFA in July 2019. We had two Executive Committee Meetings since July and nothing was mentioned to us,” said another Executive Committee Member.
The agreement exposes the double standards of the GFA. It is absolutely comical that the Secretary has accused a “Technology and Integrity Partner of GFA- whom he himself has signed an agreement with, on behalf of GFA- as having links with match-fixing.
With this volte-face, there are plenty of questions that the GFA now has to answer to its stakeholders, clubs and fans. Perhaps a Police or a Crime Branch investigation will unearth the truth.
