314-page judgment damning about lack of expert witness
FA appeared ‘not certain what case it was presenting’
The Football Association has been strongly criticised by the regulatory commission that cleared Lucas Paquetá of spot-fixing charges over its failure to provide an independent assessment of the betting data on the West Ham player receiving yellow cards.
A 314-page report by the commission that heard Paquetá’s case was published on Wednesday and makes damning reading for the FA, with its evidence criticised for containing “an obvious flaw, namely the lack of an independent assessment of the data”.
Nick De Marco KC, who represented Paquetá, wrote on X that the report was “understood to be the longest sports-related judgment ever issued in the world, a reflection of how serious the case was, and the amount of evidence deployed in the biggest case in the FA’s history”.
