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wat like 67p scrip? ;)

a profitable 90 mins, now a bonus 30 mins ;-)

what a stunning goal

Yep, it certainly was. Shame though, I was rather hoping Mexico could pull it off

Backed Italy heavily and then some more..then the red card.

Layed it al off now so stand to lose a fortune if Italy win and all square if they wont.

The draw = full time and not the final result after extra time?

Incredible.

Ouch, sorry to hear that.

Cheating diving Iti cost me a few quid too :-(

PS congrats on 10000 posts on the thread!!!

diving my arse !!! definate penalty , beautifully put away.

lol Bos, you keep lurking with those patriotic blinkers on ;-)

Mr Euro

Italy 1 - Australia 0 (Italy scored with a penalty in the last minute of extra time)

"...Layed it al off now so stand to lose a fortune if Italy win ..."

Ouch, too! I'm truly sorry about that for you.

Scrip, can't you help this guy on a 'one to one' or something? Take a 5k fee off him and let him spend a full day with you? Something like that?

(Actually, I do believe 5k wouldn't be enough and it would actually cost you money - but 'Hey! This guy needs serious help before he ##### up completely!)

fundie, he made the most of it, yes, but if a defender is going to lie down infront of someone who is running in the penalty area then he is asking for trouble.

Should have done another "bakko" and lumped on Italy, lol

Got shafted by Italian diver here as well. Gave back all the profit built up during the game and some more.

Switz/Ukraine was a good trading match though. Scalping the time decay markets throughout proving to be a steady earner. It got better in Extra Time as the draw odds seemed to start very high at 1.76 and thus collapsed very quickly. Seeing the fear of losing undermining both teams chances of scoring made this relatively easy money.

Wimbledon - have laid Federer against Gasquet average 1.05ish. Watched Gasquet win the final of the Nottingham Open and reckon he has every chance of taking a set off Federer. Intending to trade out of this and hoping Federer can be pushed out to around 1.2+ Don't really think Gasquet will prevail.

Mr EURO

I would look at Legal action ;) against SCRIP for such an untrue claim in his top post in this thread.


- All winnings are tax free
- No rejected bets, All bets are matched at the market price, guaranteed.
- Very tight spreads
- No underlying knowledge of the event necessary
- You only pay commission on your winnings
- Large and regular swings in prices
- You can go long or short on the underlying event
- Betting exchanges are relativity new and underutilised as a trading platform
- No "shock" warnings, takeovers and external events to wipe out your position


I suggest anyone who wants to bet on the world cup reads this book.
A stunning insite into how FIFA worked back then and of course now.

Blatter and mates own shares in media companies.
The world cup is massive advertising billboard the bigger the name stars they get to play the bigger the audiences. The more controvosy they create the bigger the audiences. The bigger the audiences the bigger the advertising revenue etc etc...

http://www.yallop.co.uk/read_more.htm

PROLOGUE.

During the first week of December 1997 the court of the Sun King came to Marseilles.

The court acolytes, the secretaries, assistants, press attach, security officers, scurried everywhere. There was always among members of the court an underlying anxiety when "Le Grand Monarque" was near, particularly when he was giving a public audience. On this occasion the worlds Press media who had gathered were even more deferential than usual. None of them wanted to risk being denied access to the tournament the Sun King had planned for the following summer.

He saw himself as the most powerful man in the world. He was in charge of the worlds greatest religion and the coming summers ceremonies would be watched on television by a cumulative audience of forty billion people. More than six times the population of the world.

An aide hurried forward and muttered in the ear of His Majesty. The aide had to reach on tiptoe to reach the royal ear. In his eighty-second year, the Sun King still stood six feet tall. The athletic muscle tone of his youth had softened slightly but though his weight was now some ten kilos more than in his prime, he remained an imposing figure. His face, which usually resembled a well-kept grave, hovered on a smile, then reverted to a baleful stare, but it was still obvious that he was savouring the moment.

"Do excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. I have to take a phone call from President Chirac."

Presidents. Kings and Queens. Heads of State. Prime Ministers. He has met every world leader. His Holiness the Pope has been granted a number of audiences. The Sun King has a very clear view of his place in the world order.

"Do you consider yourself the most powerful man in the world?"

Most men asked such a question would demur. Would dismiss it with a laugh. Dr Jo Havelange, President of Fation Internationale de Football Association FIFA did not demur and he certainly did not laugh.

"Ive been to Russia twice, invited by President Yeltsin. Ive been to Poland with their President. In the 1990 World Cup in Italy I saw Pope John Paul II three times. When I go to Saudi Arabia, King Fahd welcomes me in splendid fashion. In Belgium I had a one and a half hour meeting with King Albert. Do you think a Head of State will spare that much time to just anyone? Thats respect. Thats the strength of FIFA. I can talk to any President, but theyll be talking to a President too on an equal basis. Theyve got their power, and Ive got mine: the power of football, which is the greatest power there is."

Thats the Havelange version of "yes".

On face value it is an outrageous claim, but the latter day Sun King offers an array of facts and figures to justify his opinion of himself. The Pope may well preside over one of the worlds major faiths, but Havelange rules over a religion that is devoutly followed by more than one fifth of the planet.

"The World Cup 94 in the United States was watched by a cumulative audience of thirty-one billion people. More than five times the population of Earth. The annual turnover of football is $255 billion. It offers direct and indirect employment to more than four hundred and fifty million people. There are national associations affiliated to FIFA in one hundred and ninety-eight countries. More countries are affiliated to my organisation than are members of the United Nations."

Not so much a case of "I am the State" as "I am the world". Jo Havelange, like many a ruler throughout history, has strengthened his grasp on his throne by relentlessly increasingly his empire. On July 11th, 1974 when he came to power after plotting and conspiring over the previous three years, the number of affiliates was one hundred and thirty-eight. That same year in Germany only sixteen countries contested the final stages of the World Cup. This year in France there were thirty-two countries. This may or may not be for the "good of the game". It most certainly was for the good of Dr Havelange, ensuring as it had six continuous terms of office. The increase in the number of international competitions from two to eight has also been a vote winner among the delegates. The FIFA Coca-Cola Cup. The FIFA Futsal World Championship. The FIFA World Championship for women. The Under-17 World Championship for the FIFA/JVC Cup. As British sports writer Brian Glanville remarked to me:

"Havelange has only two ambitions left to fulfil. The first is to become the first posthumous President of FIFA. The second to organise a World Cup tournament for embryos."

In less than three minutes, hardly time to boil an egg, the Sun King had returned from his conversation with the President of France. Cordial regrets from Chirac that he would not be able to attend the junketing in Marseilles. The relationship had not always been so cordial.

In 1985 during an International Olympic Committee meeting in Berlin Chirac, who was then leading the bid from Paris, became enraged as he watched Havelange wheeling and dealing to ensure that the Olympic Games for 1992 went to Barcelona.

The French team had gone to Berlin prepared to rest their case on the merits and virtues of Paris. Havelange, wearing his Olympic Committee member hat, was busily organising the Spanish-speaking members of the Committee behind the Barcelona campaign. The Havelange style of organising such an exercise involves lavish receptions, all expenses paid trips for committee members, gifts that began with Rolexes and ended with whatever value the committee member puts on his or her vote. Just to make sure the vote stayed committed to Barcelonas cause, members were wined and dined by Prime Minister Gonzalez and key members of his Cabinet and then entertained by the King and Queen of Spain. Chirac exploded.

"If you dont stop this bribery Dr Havelange, Ill start using my influence in Africa. Not to get the Olympic Games but to stop you getting re-elected as President of FIFA."

It made no difference. Barcelona got the Games and Havelange has continued unopposed, presiding over the worlds most popular religion.

During his brief absence from the Press Conference, Sepp Blatter, the General Secretary of FIFA, had unwisely allowed questions from the Press. The Sun King does not like the Press, even less does he like questions from reporters. He turned a basilisk glance in the direction of one questioner.

"Why hasnt Pelbeen invited to take part in the draw?"

Mute messages passed between the two men. Blatter, small, rotund, one half of a very curious double act. Havelange, tall and even now in his eighties, still exhibiting the physique of an Olympic swimmer. Blatter responded.

"We do not have a problem with Mr Pel"

There was muffled laughter. Everyone in the room knew that they did indeed have a problem with Pel

"So why has he not been invited to take part in the draw along with the other great footballers?"

"We have no problem with Mr Pel" Blatter responded.

"But"

"We have no problem with Mr Pel" Blatter said yet again but this time with a note of finality. The General Secretary had been very well trained over the years by the latter day Sun King and the modern Cardinal Richelieu Horst Dassler of adidas. The ladies and gentlemen of the Press came a great deal cheaper than an Olympic Committee member. If their potential accreditation to World Cup 98 did not fully concentrate their collective minds, there were always the freebies. The one thousand one hundred and eight-one journalists milled around for their handouts. Chocolate bars from Snickers, razors from Gillette, filofaxes from Canon. They collected their caps, badges and watches. They slipped on a jacket, put a free football in a bag, took handfuls of stickers, key rings and pens and notebooks, put out their hands for free calculators that obligingly converted a range of foreign currencies automatically.

Small wonder that the tickets to attend this affair were every bit as hot as the tickets for the actual football matches. The scene for the main festivities was the massively and expensively refurbished Stade Velodrome. It was quite a party.

There were the thirty-eight thousand ordinary guests. There were the one thousand five hundred special guests. If the former contained many children and teenagers, the latter represented the really major players of the game. Not the football stars, though they too were in attendance, but the power brokers, the wheelers and dealers, FIFA delegates who might carry many a vote in their back pockets. Sponsors whose millions paid for much more than the five days of junketing at Marseilles. At a cost of five millions that represented just a little petty cash. The financial commitment of the sponsors since the mid-1970s had dramatically contributed to the financial feeding frenzy that football has become.

The location might be Marseilles, but a stranger would have been excused for thinking that they had wandered into a rehearsal for a modern dress play about Louis the Fourteenth. The subjects being discussed by small groups huddling conspiratorially had such timeless themes. Money, power, possessions.

One group was preoccupied with the coming struggle for the throne. Would Blatter announce that he was going to run? Would Beckenbauer make a late challenge? What of Platini? Or Grondona or?

Another group was deep in discussion on marketing and television rights for 2002 and 2006. Talking telephone numbers had been updated. These people talked "one point four" or "two point six". Billions, of course.

In one corner Graham Kelly and Sir Bert Millichip were arguing the merits of pay-TV. "Just move all the games to Saturday night or Sunday. Revenues in the first year? Oh, on top of the one hundred and sixty million already being paid by Sky, got to be an additional forty million. Growth potential is Sky High!" They exploded into laughter.

Moving like patrolling barracudas through the room are the players agents. Not many have managed to get in, just a favoured few with good connections in Zurich. They want a piece of the action. They lust after a share of the wealth that is washing through the game in the last years of the century. Eighteen-year-old Michael Owen on ten thousand a week currently sets the bench mark for teenage footballers. Half a million pounds a year. Some of the lads in their twenties and thirties are pulling in a bit more. David Beckham on 8.1 million this year just edges out Alan Shearer, but is still a long way below the top earner, Luiz Nazario de Lima of Brazil, better known as Ronaldo. He has a contract with Internazionale of Milan that brings in 100,000 per week, then there is his share of the two hundred million dollar sponsor deal with Nike that is paid to the Brazilian national squad for World Cup endorsements. Ronaldos earnings this year will be 20.5 million. Just under four hundred thousand pounds per week. Ronaldo is twenty-one years of age.

Looking after the needs of the guests were one thousand staff, a further five hundred security officers and two squadrons of gendarmes. Ensuring that the festivities ran smoothly were a further one thousand four hundred and fifty stage and television technicians. Fourteen articulated lorries had brought in various items of equipment.

But above all there were the sponsors. World Cup 98 is not primarily about football. It is first and foremost about product. The product varies depending who is making the pitch.

At Marseilles in early December 1997 there was so much to do. Always assuming you had the right accreditation, the right labels, the proper badges and four different kinds of ID.

One could breakfast with McDonalds and chat to Ronaldo or Beckenbauer or Carlos Alberto Parreira. Lunch with the incomparable Pel courtesy of MasterCard, take afternoon tea with foreign ambassadors who were being paid to be pleasant by adidas; have a glass of champagne with Newcastles Alan Shearer thanks to Umbro who produced the England captain as if he were an extremely large rabbit and had him sign a fifteen-year deal worth depending on his performance on the pitch rather than the cocktail bar between ten and twenty million pounds. Shearers health is market-sensitive. Five months before the gathering in Marseilles Shearer had sustained a serious injury to ankle ligaments. Overnight 11 million was knocked off Newcastles shares. If the Umbro campaign had given the guest the taste for more, one could move on to canap and more champagne, this time from Hewlett Packard. Finally, courtesy of FIFA there was a nine-course dinner with the Mayors of the ten cities where the various football matches would be played and of course yet more champagne, while five thousand children marched past the window of the restaurant in torch-light procession. All this and not one football kicked in earnest during the entire five days, the match between a Europe team versus the Rest of the World providing a perfect example of the great difficulty that trained athletes experience when attempting to run on a full wallet.

All of this to celebrate the draw for the first round of the World Cup 98. Picking thirty-two slips of paper from a glass bowl. God only knows what the Sun King had up his sleeve for when the going got serious and we actually had the matches in June. Resplendent throughout the entire proceedings was Dr Jo Havelange. Never less than immaculately attired. Heaven help any FIFA official who ever comes within his area of vision with a top shirt button undone or a tie loosened. An enduring image of the opening ceremony for the World Cup Finals in the United States in 1994 was the Sun King. On an afternoon in Chicago when the temperature was in the high eighties, with President Clinton perspiring freely, Havelange sat wearing his dark double-breasted suit buttoned up throughout the game. He never betrayed a moments distress, but then he never betrayed any other emotion either. Marseilles was the same. By comparison with the Sun King the Sphinx suffers from chronic hyperactivity.

There were moments, however, that gave possible indications that FIFAs President was perhaps reflecting on things past, on times remembered. A glance into middle distance, a failure to respond to a companions conversation, an aide telling him where to stand, moments where it seemed that perhaps for the first time he was accepting that his long reign was indeed drawing to a close. On June 8th 1998 in Paris the twenty-four-year reign of President Havelange would come to an end and the crown would pass to one of the pretenders for the throne.

If Havelange was indeed indulging in some nostalgic reflections during the events in Marseilles, there was much for him to meditate upon.

Dr Jo Havelange has swum a very long way since competing in the Olympic Pool in Berlin in 1936 and the water has not always been clean. This man who is very much the master of all he surveys within the world of football has had honours showered upon him.

Those honours include the Cavalier of the Legion dHonneur (France), the Order of Special Merit in Sports (Brazil), the Commander of the Orden Infante Dome Henrique (Portugal), the Cavalier of Vasa Orden (Sweden) and the Grand Cross of Elizabeth the Catholic (Spain). The full list of the honours awarded to the man totals over three hundred. In 1989 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

All of this and a great deal more besides reflects a man who should be held in the very highest esteem in any country where football is played. He told me that when he took over the FIFA presidency in 1974 the coffers were empty. Officials were at that time forced to live a hand-to-mouth existence, this at least is the view of Havelange. He bowed out in the summer of 1998 leaving FIFA with property assets worth in excess of one hundred million dollars and a guaranteed income over the next ten years of more than four billion dollars.

During his twenty-four-year reign football has been transformed. Spectators now sit in all-seater modern stadiums and in many countries have the opportunity to applaud twenty-two multimillionaires onto the pitch. Many leading clubs now have fewer paying spectators than investing shareholders. Performance on the pitch now matched by movement on the Stock Exchange. Promotion to the Premier from the First Division in England is worth a minimum of an extra five million pounds revenue to a club. The price of relegation? Financial oblivion. During those twenty-four years, despite the excess of commercialism that engulfs football, the game has strengthened its grip on mans imagination. A recent survey established that in Britain ninety-five per cent of men aged between twenty and thirty-four years of age would rather watch World Cup soccer than make love to the woman of their dreams. Michelle Pfeiffer, Claudia Schiffer and the others relegated to a waiting room until after the penalty shoot-out.

So go out and get your twelve-pack, a crate of Cloudy Bay and your World Cup baseball cap, your World Cup key ring and notepad plus your World Cup sunglasses, your World Cup adidas clothes and footwear, your World Cup 98 Coca-Cola, your World Cup Canon fax machine, pay for it all with your World Cup 98 MasterCard and settle down in front of your television set. Dont try to get a ticket for any of the matches, with a twenty per cent allocation to sponsors and corporate guests in contrast to eight per cent per team for their fans you will be unlucky, unless of course you happen to know one of the FIFA executives who are peddling them on the black market. Settle down and raise a can or a glass to the Sun King. More than any other person he is the one individual responsible for the happy state of affairs described above. Even more, he has promised each of the nearly two hundred federations a million dollar gift per year for the next four years. To each of the six International Confederations he has promised a massive annual gift of ten million dollars for the same period. All of this to "improve the sport in their regions."

According to the man himself, the world of football owes Havelange much. Why then is he so despised and reviled by so many people, both in and out of the game? Is there any truth in the allegations of corruption? Of illicit arms dealing? Of bribes given and received? Any validity in the allegations that among his friends are numbered some of the worst dregs of society, certainly people that no self-respecting Cavalier of the Legion dHonneur should be consorting with?

FIFA has as its motto the slogan "For the Good of the Game". What follows is an attempt to establish exactly how good for the game has been the life and times of Jo Havelange.

http://www.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31200-dutchfans_p15534,00.html

New day new start! It's not as if I lost money, well I did but it was from winnings.

I must refund my account as it all went on the match yesterday. I try to cash out frequently and keep a minimum there to avoid situations like yesterday. Fortuantley it doesn't happen that often!

Brasil look interesting today but I think they will drift and certainly wont have it all there own way.

Mr Euro.....Really sorry to hear of your trading mishaps especially on the Italy game yesterday. From your recent posts it seems that you may not have fully grasped the concept of laying off. The big problem with laying off at highish odds is that the potential loss will be monumentous if the trade goes against you.

If you're still unsure, please post up as there are a few of us on here who have had a few years trading experience and are more than willing to give you a helping hand. Nobody likes to see losers especially on this thread.

Go easy on lumping on short odds too, especially in knockout matches as such games rarely go according to your trading plan.

LOL Bak advising someone to go easy lumping on short odds on shots - theres firsat hand experience talking lol

ps Bak turn messenger on

Annoyed myself last night.
I made Ukraine favs so laid the Swiss at 2.46 a hour before kickoff, they were then backed in so though i must have missed some team news, so i closed my bet an small all round red.
Managed to scalp bits to make the draw green and the other even but should have made so much more!

Cant see Ghana givign brazil too many probs todays with Essien missing, but Ghana will start brightly so will lay brazil for 10 mins.

France v Spain is a game to watch, anythign could happen Im more interested in the Henry v Puyol and Fab vs Vieira battles!!