Along with the transfer market season, summer for football fans has also become synonymous with some scandal or other. This means happy media agencies who manage to fill in their pages and airtime with something more than the usual invented transfer rumours to attract people to read or watch their “news” of the day.

This year we have the Catania match fixing allegations which the investigation has been dubbed as “the goal trains”. Well it is not really an allegation when the main person involved (their own president Pulvirenti)  has admitted that he did pay five opposing clubs €100k each in April, but denied that this influenced the results in any way. Quite a strange statement to make there, as the team was going through a bad period and during those five matches (Varese, Trapani, Latina, Ternana and Livorno) the Sicilian side managed to obtain four wins and one draw, before returning to their former form, which made them finish 15th out of Serie B’s total of 22 teams.

If this was not the case, then that is a strange way to invest half a million Euros. However, if this was the case, it makes you think that maybe, when considering the elevated costs of footballers nowadays, it is probably cheaper to buy matches than star players!