Football and Gangsters: How Organised Crime Controls the Beautiful Game

Who controls football in Britain today? The FA? The clubs? The fans? The shocking reality is that organised crime is moving in more aggressively than a Wayne Rooney tackle and there’s little the authorities can do about it. Football and Gangsters is an explosive in-depth investigation into the sinister underbelly of modern soccer. It exposes the new phenomenon of ‘taxing’ - a protection racket in which villains force young, highly paid Premiership stars and their agents to hand over cash under threat of injury and death. Michael Owen, Rio Ferdinand and Robbie Fowler are just some of the sport’s big names to have fallen foul of the game’s godfathers and paid the price. Their alarming stories are told here. No one might be willing to admit it, but criminal organisations have manoeuvred themselves into a position of power in football. Drug-dealers launder money by buying clubs, hooligan gangs have muscled their way into big-time crime and the boardroom, and the influence of Asian betting rings continues to grow. Through a series of dangerous undercover investigations, along with interviews with players, club officials, police and the underworld figures responsible, the sensational evidence is laid bare in Football and Gangsters .