PRAGUE \u2014 Czech Cup winner Karvin\u00e1 was expelled from the top division as punishment by the Czech Football Association for its involvement in a major match-fixing scandal.<\/p>\n
The association\u2019s ethics committee also fined Karvin\u00e1 10 million Czech koruna (US$480,000) for offering bribes to two referees and two players to influence a league match and two relegation playoff games involving the club in 2024.<\/p>\n
Karvin\u00e1 town mayor Jan Wolf offered the bribes and was banned from soccer for 12 years and fined 3 million Czech koruna (US$144,000).<\/p>\n
The committee announced its decision late Monday. The club, which is owned by the eastern Czech town, has five days to appeal.<\/p>\n
The verdict will likely impact the club\u2019s participation in European competitions, with UEFA to have a final say.<\/p>\n
By winning the Cup, Karvin\u00e1 advanced directly to the fourth round of qualifying in the Europa League next season. If it were to lose the fixture it would still have a berth in the third-tier Conference League.<\/p>\n
In March, the association said a total of 47 individuals and teams, including referees, officials, players, former players and clubs from the top four leagues, were facing a disciplinary investigation for their alleged involvement in the scandal.<\/p>\n
The announcement came after Czech police detained dozens of people in nationwide raids.<\/p>\n
The ethics committee also said it fined five players from lower leagues and banned them from 15 months to 12 years for agreeing to fix matches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PRAGUE \u2014 Czech Cup winner Karvin\u00e1 was expelled from the top division as punishment by the Czech Football…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-740680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}