"I always tell the players to be very careful," he told a news conference yesterday in Bulgaria. "They should know they'll never play football again if they're caught in the act. I'm telling them - play poker or go to the casino and or play some other gambling game but don't try to fix matches."
On Friday allegations of match-fixing and illegal betting in Bulgarian football erupted in the national media. According to 7 Dni Sport, UEFA had alerted Bulgaria's organised crime unit about possible match-fixing in a 2009 Bulgarian Cup game between second-division sides Marek Dupnitsa and Kaliakra Kavarna.
"I'm not a policeman and I'm not a judge, who fights with the mafia," Platini added. "I know we must defend football. You know that UEFA's executive committee and congress declared zero tolerance for corruption…We can't convict a person who has agreed to fix a match. This is not our function. But we're pushing to solve this problem.
"We gave €7.5 million to each of the national football associations recently to combat the problem and I can tell you that they'll receive €9.5 million each between 2012 and 2016."
