The captain of Nepal’s football team was seized on Wednesday in a coordinated series of arrests over allegations of match-fixing.

Sagar Thapa was one of the five current and former national players taken into custody for allegedly colluding to fix several matches, including the qualifiers for the last World Cup in Brazil, Agence France Presse reported.

Authorities said they’ve recorded “banking transactions,” in which large amounts of money were deposited in Thapa and other players’ bank accounts from alleged match-fixers from Southeast Asia.

Metropolitan Police Crime Division Chief Sarbendra Khanal told the news agency the transactions were between the players and “international match-fixers, including Malaysia and Singapore.”

UK-licensed online betting operator Betsafe has signed on as the new sponsor of English Premier Leaguers Manchester City FC.

On Thursday, Betsafe announced it had become Man City’s official betting partner across the team’s core regions for both the Men’s and Women’s teams. The deal allows Betsafe to set up branded betting kiosks and LED advertising at Etihad Stadium, with prominent placement across the club’s official digital channels as well as the standard special bonus offers for the teams’ fans.

Betsafe, an offshoot of Nordic operator Betsson, has a similar deal with German Bundesliga club FC Köln but global brand manager Martina Brynielsson said the company was “over the blue moon” for snagging Man City as Betsafe’s “first sizable foray” into UK partnerships.

STOIXIMAN INKS SHIRT DEAL WITH OLYMPIACOS

Global football body FIFA has banned a South African official for his role in match-fixing shenanigans during friendly matches leading up to the 2010 World Cup.

On Wednesday, FIFA banned Lindile Kika from all football activity for six years. A FIFA investigation found the former head of national teams for the South African Football Association guilty of five ethics violations involving “several” international friendlies played in South Africa prior to the 2010 tournament.

FIFA declined to specify Kika’s transgressions, but stressed that no players were involved. Kika has been linked to notorious Singapore-based fixer Wilson Perumal’s Football 4U group, who preferred to buy off referees. The matches in question reportedly involved teams from Thailand, Bulgaria, Colombia and Guatemala.

ENTIRE CANADIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE CORRUPT?

The 2016 European Championships has completed its group stages with minnows Wales, Northern Ireland and Albania gaining the automatic qualification.

What do Ian Rush, Mark Hughes and Ryan Giggs have in common?

They are world class footballers who failed to play in a single major national football competition. It was a curse I was sure would afflict Real Madrid’s Gareth Bale. I’m glad to say that I was wrong.

The Welsh were assured victory despite losing their first game of the campaign away in Bosnia after Cyprus beat Israel by two goals to one over the weekend. Bosnia and Herzegovina secured a play-off place from the same group. Belgium goes through as group winners.

More Australian Football League (AFL) clubs are signing up to a charter to end sponsorship and fundraising tied to gambling.

The St. Kilde, Essendon, and the Western Bulldogs have signed the Victorian Responsible Foundation’s Gambling’s not a Game program to remove the promotion of betting at their clubs and matches, joining the Hawthorn, Collingwood, North Melbourne and Melbourne Victory.

Under the charter, the clubs commit to refrain from making sponsorship with sports betting companies as well as keeping gambling away from areas young people are present including club, social and fundraising activities.

The clubs signing up to the charter have met cynicism as the majority of elite signatories have poker machine interests. Punters at Hawthorne-owned venues lose more than $22m in 2014. The Collingwood, Essendon, the Bulldogs and St. Kilda also have pokies.

UK-licensed online gambling operator Betway has signed on as sponsor of the UK’s largest eSports tournament.

On Wednesday, Betway announced that it has teamed with the Electronic Sports League (ESL) to promote the ESL UK Premiership, the finals of which get underway on October 24 at London’s MCM Comic Con. Betway, which recently launched its dedicated eSports betting portal, will begin offering odds on the Counter-Strike; Global Offensive tourney this Friday (9).

ESL UK community manager Peter Mather said betting was “already a huge part” of the CS:GO community and the partnership with Betway provides “a tried and trusted alternative for our fans and spectators.” Betway PR man Alan Alger said the deal “cements our commitment to the eSports community” and the site will be offering a wide variety of pre-game, in-play and handicap bets on the tournament.

The ESL is no stranger to the offline gaming world, as this Friday will also see the kickoff of the ESL’s $55,555 Counter-Strike Invitational at Crown Resorts’ casino in Melbourne. The winners of Friday’s qualifying heat will face off against pro teams Virtus.Pro and Cloud 9 in the finals on Saturday. Tickets for the main event have already sold out.

After Brendan Rodgers was sacked by Liverpool, Lee Davy offers his opinion on six more names that will be looking for new jobs by the end of the season.

Once upon a time, a fresh-faced Liverpool manager called Brendan Rodgers held up three white envelopes. He told his new squad that they contained the names of three players who would, “let us down this year.”

There were no names in the envelope. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. The buck always stops with the manager.

Rodgers has paid the ultimate price for failing to improve upon his stunning 2013/2014 season when they came so close to winning the Premier League for the first time in a very long time.

A pitcher for the Yomiuri Giants Satoshi Fukuda has been suspended for betting on games, including those involving his own team.

According to Giants president Hiroshi Kubo on Monday, Fukuda’s acquaintance contacted the team last month, saying the pitcher had not paid his gambling debts.

Fukuda had been invited to bet on games by an employee at a tax accounting firm who had been introduced by Giants pitcher Shoki Kasahara. Fukuda has allegedly bet on 10 Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) games and 10 major league games in an attempt to win back his losses.

In total, Fukuda is believed to have lost substantially more than ¥1 million.

Daily fantasy sports (DFS) operator DraftKings has entered into a partnership with Toronto-based Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE).

The four-year deal will allow select DraftKings players to enjoy “special experiences” with MLSE’s three pro sports franchises. MLSE owns the National Hockey League’s Toronto Maple Leafs, the National Basketball Association’s Toronto Raptors and Major League Soccer’s Toronto FC.

MLSE also owns Toronto’s Air Canada Centre, where MLSE chief commercial officer David Hopkinson said DraftKings would be setting up an “interactive zone” in which fans could play DFS on the site. DraftKings has installed similar ‘zones’ at three NFL stadiums.

The deal marks DraftKings’s first such pact outside the United States, and biz-dev VP Jeremy Elbaum said it marked the first salvo in a planned wave of international expansion. Elbaum called Canada an untapped market for DFS operators and said the MLSE deal was a natural given the “good results from people signing up in the Toronto area.”

Iran’s women’s national football team have caused a bit of a stir after it was revealed that eight of them were men. 

Eight of Iran’s women’s national football team are apparently men. I guess it’s not only Aberkenfig U14 team that doesn’t shower after matches.

This hot piece of news is traveling around the globe in a jet plane after Mojtabi Sharifi, an official close to Iran’s national football team, broke the news to Iranian media. It’s believed all eight of them are waiting for their man’s bits to be turned into female bits. A set of surgical procedures that were deemed legal in 1979, when the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini changed religious law. He didn’t, however, change the laws that can result in execution if you are found to be homosexual.

It’s not the first time that Iran’s women’s national football side has fallen foul of this particular law. Last year, four players were found to be men, resulting in new laws on gender testing being introduced by the Iranian sports governing body.

Lee Davys writes a little ditty about the money sucking game FIFA16, his view on why it needs to incorporate a competitive team mode to increase it’s status as a competitive eSports behemoth, and a look at the introduction of female teams.

After 22 years in the making, EA Sports has finally included female football teams in their FIFA franchise, but do not allow them to compete against male teams.

Now that’s what I call an own goal.

EA Sports has defended their position by stating that FIFA regulations would not allow males to compete with females in real life, and so the same will not be allowed in FIFA16.

Michel Platini’s dream to succeed Sepp Blatter is under threat as both to be under investigation by FIFA ethics committee.

The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) opened a criminal investigation against FIFA president Sepp Blatter for possible criminal mismanagement and misappropriation of FIFA money.

The OAG said in a statement that Blatter made a “disloyal payment” of 2 million Swiss francs to Platini in early 2011 for work carried out between 1999 and 2002. Allegations also relate to World Cup broadcasting contracts Blatter agreed to with disgraced former FIFA vice president Jack Warner in 2005.

“There is as suspicion that, in the implementation of this agreement, Blatter also violated his fiduciary duties and acted against the interest of FIFA,” the OAG said.

Standing its ground on classifying fantasy sports as gambling, NCAA Southeastern Conference (SEC) has cleaned up DFS ads off their network.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has confirmed that ads for the DFS sites will no long appear on the SEC network.

SEC Network, an ESPN-affiliated television network dedicated for college games and other content related, has been working since summer to phase out DFS ads.

“Is it [DFS] a form of gambling, is it a form of skill game, and I think there is some question about that,” Sankey told WVTM-TV. “And I think the appropriate place for us to land as a conference on the SEC Network, again working with ESPN, is not to include that advertising on the SEC Network moving forward.”