PANAJI
Sporting Clube de Goa (SCG) have been docked three points and three goals from their final tally for the 2019-20 Goa Professional League season by the Ethics Committee of the Goa Football Association, the football body said in a press release.
“The GFA Ethics Committee held that there was grave conflict of interest for the match nos. 44 and 116 played between SCG and Panjim Footballers and therefore it is presumed that the match no.44 was in all probabilities fixed with the sole purpose of enabling Sporting Clube de Goa to top the table of Goa Professional League for the season 2019-2020,” it said in its report after an investigation into several matches that were red-flagged in the Goa Professional League during the 2019-2020 season.
The committee directed the GFA to "review and rework the standings of the teams in the GPL 2019-202 as on March 17, 2020 in view of match No 44 being declared as a fixed match in all probabilities considering the grave conflict of interest displayed by the officials and Executive committee members of the SCG and Panjim Footballers.
The committee further ruled that "under no circumstances could the GFA and/ot its executive committee declare joint winners of a professional league that was abandoned due to an ongoing pandemic and with 13 matches yet to be played to conclude the tournament."
Sporting Clube and Churchill Brothers were declared joint winners in 2020. "The Committee also observed that the representatives of the teams who have been jointly declared as winners of GPL of 2019-2020 were presiding over the Executive Committee Meeting that was held on September 29, 2020 when the resolution was passed declaring the two teams Churchill Brothers Football Club (CBFC) and Sporting Clube de Goa (SCG) as joint winners of the season 2019-2020," the report said as the committee nullified the decision of awarding the 2019-2020 GPL title to Sporting Clube and Churchill Brothers as joint winners as "being unprecedented and unethical as the league was abandoned leaving no scope for declaring a winner".
The Sporting Clube, meanwhile, has rejected the report and said they will file an appeal against the order. "Sporting Clube de Goa intends to file appeal or further proceedings to quash and set aside the said Order as it indirectly unnecessarily casts a shadow on Sporting Clube de Goa and it is passed on surmises, which are termed as presumptions in the Order," club's director Diogo Nathan Vaz said in a statement. "The club is at a loss to understand why no action was taken in the matter of the other matches which were flagged off for the same reason as match fixing and why only Match No 44 was picked up for inquiry."
"Sporting Clube has never indulged or encouraged any form of match fixing and have won three of the last five titles cleanly. Hence, there was no need for any match fixing on the part of Sporting Clube. Also, the moment Anthony Vas received a message by WhatsApp requesting him to permit Panjim Footballers by a margin of two or more goals, Anthony Vas immediately lodged a police complaint so that the police could take immediate action and he did so in an attempt to thwart any match fixing," Vaz said.
