Stupid bet. But just the once, mind.
Over the years footballers have been busted throwing a game or caught betting. With the exception of the scandal involving a rather famous, big moustached, Liverpool goal keeper, these incidents usually involve players that you nor I have ever heard of. Hard-up lower league players, some with gambling addictions.
Well, Southampton’s most famous son, Matt Le Tissier, has just released an auto-biography and revealed that he participated in a spread bet concerning the time of the first ‘throw in’, during a game he played in.
The collective gamble meant many people were relying on him being able to get the ball out of play for a throw in as soon as he could before 70 seconds of the tie with Wimbledon had elapsed.
Bizarre eh? Well the Saints legend recounts his involvement in the new book and explained how he had never ran so much in his life.
“It seemed to be going like clockwork. We kicked-off, the ball was tapped to me and I went to hit it out towards Neil Shipperley on the left wing. As it was live on television, I didn’t want to make it too obvious, so I tried to hit it just over his head. But, with so much riding on it, I was a bit nervous and didn’t give it enough welly. The problem was that Shipps knew nothing about the bet and managed to reach it and even head it back into play. We stood to lose a lot of cash if it went much longer than 75 seconds before the ball went out. I had visions of a guy coming to kneecap me.”-Matt Le Tissier
The ball went out for a throw exactly on 70 seconds (fancy that) meaning the consortium of gamblers didn’t lose any cash.
Le Tissier says that the incident was a one off and he has never done anything that might affect the outcome of a game. The final result of the ‘throw-in’ game was 2-1 to Southampton, Le Tissier scored.
Seems kinda stupid for him to bring it up as he was fronting that failed attempt to take over Southampton a couple months ago. Not sure I’d want to invest with this guy after hearing this… because as most gamblers know, there’s no such thing as “only the 1 time…”
Not really.. he’s trying to sell a book and this gets him publicity.
So he’s a slut of sorts. At what price? He’s willing to sully his name as one who consorts with gamblers in order to sell a few more books. Might be a good read, probably is, but still says somethign about his decision-making.
Well, I’ve just found something new to bet on.
It’s standard PR for this kind of s**t. The Brady Bunch cast member shopped her memoir everywhere and got all kinds of press for her drug addiction and such.
For LeTiss, he’s just trying to spark nostalgia of his playing days (which shouldn’t be difficult, as he was one of my favourite players back in the day), and this fairly indifferent anecdote should do the trick