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RFEF and UEFA join forces to promote Fair Play at the European Championships

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Under the slogan ‘Do the right thing’, the national team has been given a talk on the prevention of sports rigging by the Integrity Officer in Spain.

Adjective. Said of a person: Upstanding, honest, trustworth. These are the words to describe the qualities that footballers must now make a reality during the Euros organised by UEFA in Germany.

It is precisely the governing body of continental football that is leading the fight for integrity and the defence of Fair Play, which national federations such as the RFEF are committed to ensuring that these ideals are embodied in all levels of our football: from the grassroots of the Spanish league football at a regional level to the top of the senior national teams.

The national team led by Luis de la Fuente is therefore one of the cornerstones of this shared strategy, which during the preparation training camp for the European Championships has experienced one of its most important steps with the talk given to the international players by Felipe Sánchez-Pedreño Manglano, UEFA Integrity Officer in Spain.

‘Integrity in football means respect for Fair Play’.

‘In football, the concept of integrity is not at all broad, but is fully defined and consists of respect for Fair Play,’ explained Sánchez-Pedreño to the players, before whom he explained the joint work deployed by the UEFA-RFEF pairing to provide tools and preventive measures to football professionals in matters such as match-fixing, spot betting or so-called illegal betting.

In the face of these scourges, players have a whole range of possibilities for reporting possible attempts at bribery or match-fixing, as well as being subject to important sanctioning measures, because, as the UEFA Integrity Officer in Spain stressed, ‘no matter how much capacity there is to recruit from outside, if the football environment does not offer cooperation in the face of attempts at match-fixing, Fair Play does not break down’.

‘As long as we are part of this sport, we cannot gamble,’ Sánchez-Pedreño reminded a national team that followed this talk on Integrity very closely, aware that, as UEFA's motto on this subject states, doing the right thing at the European Championships and during their professional lives as sportsmen and women is limited to displaying their talent on the field of play and exercising the example of Fair Play off it.