Apparently the 6-1 drubbing the US Men’s National Team gave Belize in Portland, Oregon this week could have been a lot worse if an unnamed match fixer had his way. Two players from the Belize national team reported to media and CONCACAF officials that an unknown man offered them ten thousand euros to fix the match against the United States. Belizian defender Ian Gaynar described the situation.
He started talking that we don’t really stand a chance to beat the U.S so he wanted us to promise him that we would lose the game and that he would give us a large amount of money to change our lives in Belize and to help our families.
The players refused the offer to fix the match at which point the fixer tried to buy their silence according to goalie Woodrow West.
He got frightened and we walked – Yolo walked away and I followed him because I didn’t want to stay back there so when we went he chased us and grabbed us and told us not to tell anyone; and that if we didn’t tell anyone – that when we got to Belize he would give us $10,000 euros.
But for the players national pride went ahead of the chance for a quick buck according to Ganair.
Like I told him, ‘we can’t take that money’ because at the end of the day our entire country is behind us and we just made history for these big games so we can’t just sell out our country for a little bit of money. At the end of the day we might not be making a lot of money in Belize but still we have to look at our career and our future.
CONCACAF have announced they are investigating the incident.
H/T 7 News Belize
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