Gokziek - Douglas De Concinck

Gokziek (in english: addicted to gambling) is a work of Belgian research journalist Douglas De Coninck from 2009.

During the soccer seasons of 2005 and 2006, the Belgium Jupiler League was in the hold of `the chinese`, Zheyun Ye, a matchfixer who tried to buy himself into about 4 clubs and fix the results of the games they played.

La Louviere, Lierse, Sint Truiden and Mons in the highest division, and Ronse and Verbroedering Geel in second, together with the Finnish team AC Alliansi where his primary targets, and it was mostly Lierse that is chronicled in the book as that was the team where he `was caught` with his carrousel.

He had the coach, the assistant coach and a couple of key players in his pocket, but unfortunatly for him things didn`t go as he wanted and according to later confessions and thoughts of `big` matchfixers (Bah Wee Lin from Malaysia who was caught in Austria, the serbians from the Hoyzer schandal in germany) he was an amateur.

But he got away with quit some things and the lack of action of the KBVB, the highest organ of the Belgian soccer federation, the investigation was slow and nonchalant, resulting in the chinese in the end getting away with it.

This book (though short at 200 pages in a big letter type and a `dialogue` writing style, compressed in a novel format I estimate it would barely reach 100 pages) chronicles and details the walk of the Chinese gambling maffia through our national competition, using conversations as they where later declared in players who where or where not, or not known how `deeply` involved with the whole schandal.

But the saddest part perhaps is, that the whole network came crashing down to earth by the confessions of a then 19 year old girl who the chinese had tried to rape after he had shown her how he fixed matches... and she didn`t even know what off-side was.