Special unit to tackle corruption

UEFA's efforts to help protect the integrity of football have been strengthened by a keynote decision by the UEFA Executive Committee taken at its meeting in Bordeaux, France, on Thursday and Friday.

Improving early-warning system
The committee agreed to reinforce UEFA's disciplinary services by improving the UEFA early-warning system on issues involving possible corruption or betting irregularities. Two additional full-time staff and four additional disciplinary inspectors, with specific experience in criminal investigation and good police contacts, will be recruited to work full time for UEFA.

Serious danger
"The integrity of football is fundamental to the success of the sport. Uncertainty of outcome is what makes sport interesting. If matches are manipulated, it is the biggest and most serious danger to our game," said UEFA General Secretary David Taylor.

Special unit
"In order to do more to protect the integrity of football, we believe we need to set up a special investigations unit to assist us in looking more deeply into cases of betting or corruption," he told uefa.com. "We have not had an explosion of cases, but there have been instances recently with new forms of betting which have led us to a position where we don't really have the resources to undertake these investigations in an in-depth manner. [The unit] will be capable of doing just that for UEFA competitions.

European discussions
"Thereafter, we will be examining with the 53 national associations what arrangements they have in their countries, to see if we can set up a Europe-wide network covering not just UEFA matches, but also national league matches."

Coefficient system
The Executive Committee also approved the amendment of the club coefficient system, from the 2009/10 season onwards, to take into account results obtained in the qualifying rounds, re-balance the distribution of points to better reflect the higher level of difficulty of the UEFA Champions League and reduce the weighting of the association coefficient contribution to the club coefficient from 33% to 20%.

Moldova help
The Executive Committee approved a request for aid by the Football Association of Moldova totalling €600,000, to set up a fund to help repair football structures damaged by heavy floods in July and August. The 3rd UEFA European Women's Under-17 Championship in 2010 will be in Nyon, Switzerland, and entrusted to the UEFA administration.