Ex-Rangers defender Dorin Goian admits to betting on matches with teammates at Ibrox
Dorin Goian says that he used to bet on matches with his Rangers teammates when he was a defender at the club a decade ago.
In words relayed by Romanian journalist Emanuel Rosu on Twitter (19 October) the ex-Ibrox centre back shared that he and “mates in the locker room” would “write odds on the board” and “have fun watching the matches”.
The 42-year-old said the group would regularly each place £20-£30 on each game, during his two-year stay in Glasgow between 2011 and 2013.
Gambling in football is increasingly in the spotlight due to the heavy advertising presence throughout the sport, coupled with the authorities cracking down on players’ participation in the industry.
Brentford’s Ivan Toney is currently serving an eight month ban for betting on games, while Newcastle’s Sandro Tonali is now facing heavy punishment of his own [Guardian, 18 October] after admitting to gambling on matches while in Italy.
Backwards
It seems relatively likely that what Goian has described won’t be much different from what happened in dressing rooms all over the world at the time, and possibly still does.
It’s no great stretch that young men with plenty of money who are already focused on football matches, especially ones with spare time on their hands, may get into the habit in a big way.
Clearly the difficulty arises with the possibility of match fixing of the games the players are involved in, hence the powers that be are going hard after the likes of Toney and Tonali.
But when it is a well-known addictive activity there are questions to be raised over how much rehabilitation should be the focus instead of punishment.
Additionally, since it has been revealed that players will be banned for months but club owners play by a different set of rules altogether [Guardian, 24 September] it feels like the situation is entirely unworkable in its current guise.
With football awash with money from gambling sponsorship the two industries need to work out their relationship in a sustainable way as more cases will likely only continue to come out, and will therefore affect matches negatively with stars unavailable for large stretches of time.
In other Rangers news, four senior players should be on their way out under the new management according to a club partner.