RIATH AL-SAMARRAI: Sport is a huge waste of time if we can’t believe what we’re seeing. And that’s why we must have rapid verdict in strange case of Paqueta’s three bookings

Like most places, they love their heroes in Rio de Janeiro. And it can be an intense kind of affection. I witnessed it once when I insulted the people of Niteroi, a suburb on Guanabara Bay and one of the closest tracts of land to Paqueta Island. About 10 km by boat.

If you want to follow the story, it was the fat end of twenty years ago and I found myself traveling with a yacht race, which one day necessitated writing a story about the great Brazilian sailor Torben Grael. He’s a good man and a top athlete: a five-time Olympic medalist, the star of Niteroi, and one of his brothers is now mayor there.

Anyway, the piece was vaguely critical of his response to a pressurized situation and that’s how the emails began. Soon there were several hundred, and finally a message came from a friend who worked for Grael: “Probably don’t go to Niteroi again for the next twenty years.”

With the sentence drawing to a close, and with it this tangent, thoughts drift back to Guanabara Bay and the idea that some of Paqueta Island’s 4,000 residents had a weaker perception of the temperament of their most famous son, Lucas Tolentino Coelho de Lima. Lucas Paqueta from West Ham, for most of us.

But maybe they knew something, namely the mystery at the heart of one of the most shocking stories from the opening weeks of the Premier League season. How much did those gamblers know? Because so far we’ve learned from the Mail Sport coverage that a number of bets have been traced back to that small island, half a square mile in size, and that the people who placed them were able to pinpoint with some accuracy when this midfielder saw a chance . yellow card.

A yellow card Paqueta received for a foul on Aston Villa’s John McGinn in March is one of three bookings under investigation in the FA’s suspicious gambling inquiry

Paqueta plays for a club sponsored by Betway, whose logo appears on West Ham’s shirt and advertising hoardings at the London Stadium

The details are worth summarizing, as is Paqueta’s denial of wrongdoing, because it’s all rather extraordinary. At the heart of the case are the suspicious gambling activities surrounding three West Ham games in the past five months: Aston Villa at home on March 12, Leeds at home on May 21 and then Bournemouth away on the first day of the season.

Going back to those games, Paqueta swung from behind John McGinn as he led a breakaway for Villa, also before a fumble on Leeds’ Crysencio Summerville, and again in the game against Bournemouth when he jumped to meet a goal kick in stoppage time and handled the ball.

We don’t know exactly how much was gambled, but some who made the bets are said to be known to Paqueta and the amounts were enough to attract the attention of the bookies. According to my colleague Kieran Gill, who told the story, the amount placed in one go was enough for a bookmaker to give Paqueta a yellow card before kick-off.

If there’s a well-known irony in all this, it’s that Paqueta plays for a Betway-sponsored club. He wears their name on his shirt. He carried their name in those three games. And, interestingly enough, it was Betway that was responsible for signaling the betting patterns to the International Betting Integrity Association, which in turn took the matter to FIFA and from there made its way to the Football Association.

We’ve been told an FA investigation has been ongoing for five months, dating back to that tackle on McGinn and in the mess Paqueta has seen a move to Manchester City fall through. Crucially, though, he’s still playing and you could get 7-5 with Bet365 if he gets a card in Brighton on Saturday.

We’ve obviously been here with Ivan Toney in the recent past, albeit only in the broadest sense of the word, because even at this early stage, the Paqueta episode has the potential to be much more serious. A compulsive gambler, Toney bet all sorts of ways within his 232 rule violations and 13 bets that his own club would lose. But not in the games he played.

And that’s an essential distinction here: he had no negative impact on the outcome. It was an integrity issue and clearly serious, but not at the root of the problem. The Paqueta case has the potential to go deeper because if he is found to be directly involved in these bets, then it would be a conversation about spot-fixing. That would be the deep end. It would be akin to what we saw when the Pakistan cricket team toured here in 2010 and started throwing no balls.

We are not there with Paqueta. There are no charges, no verdict, and he’s free to play. So for now, all we have is suspicious betting patterns and an investigation into the area football has visited before. In May, Granit Xhaka was finally cleared of involvement in a gambling scam after £52,000 was placed on him being booked in a match. way back in December 2021.

Bettors could still bet on the midfielder to be booked against Brighton, despite the FA’s ongoing investigation

Former Arsenal star Granit Xhaka was cleared of any involvement in a possible betting scam in May, but the investigation took around 17 months to reach a final conclusion.

Ivan Toney scored 10 goals worth 19 points for Brentford in the six months after he was charged

That was about 17 months door to door, so even longer than the more publicized Toney saga, which also ended in May.

The wider investigation into the latter’s circumstances is believed to date back to around April 2022, meaning it took more than a year to hold a hearing and reach a verdict. In the six months between his indictment and his suspension being issued, Toney would score 10 goals worth 19 points for Brentford, and that might raise a question as these are questions of integrity and the inferences they contain: is there no faster way?

It’s a feeling that resonates much louder in today’s topic with Paqueta. It simply cannot become yet another legal glacier that shifts an inch or less every month.

I am conflicted about the wisdom of a temporary suspension pending an outcome, unless there is already evidence beyond our knowledge that tends in that direction. But at the same time, sport is a huge waste of time if you can’t believe what you see. That is what the Anabaptists brought to athletics, boxing and cycling. And that can also entail such cases.

Paqueta will remain under a cloud until resolved and it will be to the detriment of all parties, including the player, if it becomes one of those problems that is allowed to linger indefinitely. Unfortunately, there is a good chance that I will be allowed to return to Niteroi before the full truth becomes known about what happened on a neighboring island.

Spanish football has to say goodbye to Rubiales

It started with a kiss and God knows where it will end. If the powers that be in Spanish football have any wits, or at least half the competence of the women on their national team, this victory lap in the wake of their World Cup victory will culminate in the launch of Luis Rubiales from his throne.

Grabbing his crotch next to royalty, planting creepy kisses unwelcome on his players, and the cartoonish ravings of a press conference where he sang over and over that he wouldn’t step down – has there been a brighter and more ludicrous example of flipping triumph? in a disaster?

At last count, 81 women from the Spanish football ecosystem say they will not play until this man has left his role. His federation’s response was to initiate legal action against Jenni Hermoso for saying she didn’t consent to the kiss, and it raises one of many other more important questions: How good would that team be if they weren’t restricted? by So many fools in suits, from the manager many hate, to the president who fell in love with the buffoon in the mirror?

Spanish FA president Luis Rubiales declared at a press conference on Friday that he will not govern, but has since been provisionally suspended from his role by FIFA