Sporting integrity and preventing abuse in football: a coherent, holistic and systems-based approach

Integrity is generally perceived to be positive by its presence and problematic in its absence. In football, absence of integrity is demonstrated by the ‘unholy trinity’ of corruption, match-fixing and irregular sports betting. Other abuses that happen in and through football include child abuse and trafficking of children, and yet to date, these integrity issues are typically viewed as outliers to its nature. This chapter argues that all threats to the integrity of football should be viewed as residing within the same football system and that any ‘out of integrity’ behaviours show a deviation from the nature of the sport to promote sustainability, and through it, and ultimately threaten the game in its core. It is further argued that abuse in football (e.g. sexual, physical, emotional) and abuse through football (e.g. trafficking) are both manifestations of systemic failures within football, indicative of a broken sports system that lacks coherence and therefore fails to prevent abuse. The chapter calls for a broader holistic systems-based approach to promote sporting integrity in football which results in a coherent system designed, implemented and used with the intended purpose of identifying and preventing all forms of abuse.<p></p>