Ex-EFL star who served betting ban desires playing adverts axed from soccer

On Dec 1, 2023

It’s honest to say soccer’s relationship with playing is a recreation of two halves.

On one hand, gamers are forbidden from putting any type of guess on a match. For occasion, a non-league part-timer can’t even gamble on the Champions League or World Cup. In distinction, footballers and stadiums are successfully billboards for playing corporations, which lavish enormous sums on sport, and soccer particularly.

Various gamers have fallen foul of betting guidelines and paid the worth, Brentford striker Ivan Toney and Newcastle’s Sandro Tonali being high-profile examples. But they don’t seem to be the primary and possibly gained’t be the final.

Last yr, former Sunderland, Sheffield Wednesday and Aberdeen ahead Chris Maguire’s profession was placed on maintain amid soccer betting allegations. He was initially charged with greater than 50 breaches however pleaded not responsible to most having been the sufferer of id fraud. Having been suspended by Lincoln, his membership on the time, in August 2022, he was initially fined £750 by an impartial regulatory fee and given a warning, just for the FA to enchantment towards the sanction.

In January, he was ultimately handed a six-week ban, however because it was backdated to the earlier November, he may resume his profession. The breaches of FA rules associated to 10 bets positioned by Maguire.

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Chris Maguire, pictured after hitting a hat-trick for Lincoln at former membership Sunderland in January 2022, desires to see betting adverts in soccer axed
(Image: Owen Humphreys/PA Wire)

“It was difficult,” the Eastleigh striker tells Daily Star Sport forward of his aspect’s FA Cup second spherical tie with Reading on Sunday. “It got here out and other people simply assumed I used to be responsible.

“There have been issues that got here out which have been a shock to me as a result of I believe they charged me with 52 bets, which was a whole shock. I then discovered that accounts have been made up in my identify.

“I acquired discovered responsible of 10 bets which, within the grand scheme of issues, is nothing. It’s really like two bets as a result of every crew on an accumulator is one guess.

Brentford striker Ivan Toney is serving a size ban for betting offences
(Image: Getty Images)

“That was a tough period in my career. I left Lincoln and then my future was a bit unknown because I had this charge over my head. Now it’s behind me and I can just focus on playing football.”

While it’s an episode the 34-year-old is eager to place behind him, he has sturdy views on the sport’s hyperlinks with the playing business and wish to see a blanket ban on betting promoting within the recreation.

“It’s day-to-day life, footballers are human beings who make mistakes,” he displays. “In this point in time, if you’ve acquired issues like that thrown in your face, you by no means know what’s occurring in folks’s lives. It’s clearly an issue and I believe it’s essential take the entire betting stuff out of soccer, to take it away from gamers.

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“It’s all right saying they get [paid] good money, this, that and the other. But if the FA want to be really strong about it then there shouldn’t be any advertising to do with gambling.

“For what the rules are, the amount it’s in your face, the punishment… It’s happened to myself, it’s happened to loads of players. I’m not the first and I won’t be the last person to get found betting. I think it needs to get looked at properly to resolve it.”