Integrity directly focuses its activity towards the fight to maintain the nature of fair play and the department works at full capacity in the face of the detected growth of fixing and illegal betting around football (around the world), a proliferation that has been accompanied by the increase in misuse of new technologies. The RFEF combats this scourge through its Global Training and Awareness Program for the Protection of Integrity, a plan developed by the Las Rozas Football City, which evolves each season and which seeks to raise awareness among all football players, prevent criminal behavior and warn about the dangers of misusing new technologies in general and social networks in particular. The latter, apparently a harmless tool, is the way that mafias use most easily to seduce the footballer.
The RFEF tries to protect Spanish football by giving sessions to locker rooms (both in adults and in lower categories), technical bodies, employees or referee groups of different categories, covering as much as possible the entire national football fabric, also counting on the figure of the Integrity Point that exists in each territorial federation. This branch that reaches each autonomous federation comes from the concept of fair play that also establishes FIFA and UEFA, so the same point of reference is established between elite and amateur football. Because anyone who plays federated football is exposed to danger.
How the misuse of new technologies affects the footballer, his club and football
In this work of raising awareness, information and promoting responsible conduct, the Integrity area of the RFEF has seen the responsible use of new technologies as a key element. A footballer’s smartphone can range from a factor of deconcentration that alters the quality of the player himself – and by extension his club and football – to offering information about the club that is not of interest to the entity or being the means of contact between an organization criminal and the player.
Due to what was previously described, In each Integrity talk, the need to raise awareness about the responsible use of new technologies is emphasized.. It is a fundamental part of the message that the player receives.
On the other hand, and independently of the Integrity sessions taught to players, in the specific session format on the responsible use of new technologies intended for player management profiles (coaches, delegates, tutors, doctors, physiotherapists…) An overview of the problem is made, differentiating three levels:
The RFEF It knows, through data, the percentage of Spanish society that is in each color of the traffic light and also of the people who are not aware that they are in a certain phase of the traffic light. In this sense, the Integrity area of the RFEF tries to prevent within football that the use of social networks goes from being abuse to being addiction and to do so it works with the first hospital unit for the treatment of addiction to new technologies and with the Technological Addictions Service (SAAT). The moment it becomes an addiction, the quality of your football is affected and, therefore, it has an impact on your club and the sport.
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Felipe Sánchez-Pedreño, head of the Integrity area of the RFEF, during a talk.
RFEF
“In all the talks we look for a point of reflection on what level each one is at and how it affects their performance on the field. We detect cases in which there is no conversation between a footballer and his physiotherapist during a session of almost an hour. How can it be possible? Because the footballer was on his phone… In this example, the professional treating the player loses information about where the footballer needs to be treated with the highest priority because the athlete, at that moment, is not focused on his treatment. And so it happens with other processes or activities and this affects his performance and, therefore, distorts football,” he comments. Felipe Sánchez-Pedreño, head of the Integrity area of the RFEF and who gives more than a hundred talks annually throughout the map of Spain.
In each talk the question of what is necessary and what is not necessary to show on a social network is raised. The RFEF has been the first sports entity in Spain to detect the irresponsible use of new technologies and feels the duty to protect the football community because, among other things, it affects something as serious as sporting performance and can become a internal problem. “In the sessions we detected this link between new technologies and this attack on fair play,” says Felipe, who emphasizes that this point takes on a “vital importance when we talk about minors.” Of course, and aside from football, the department is also aware of the impact that everything related to football has on society, so the population benefits from this work of education and ethics.
Each session opens the melon of the use of social networks and generates an internal debate in each one. “There is usually a wake-up call afterwards because no one says: “This doesn’t suit me.” “It is not demonized, but responsible use is advocated.”
How mafias use social networks to reach the player
Sánchez-Pedreño also explains how simple is that a criminal gang hits the key to persuade a footballer through social networks. “If a criminal organization perceives in a social network of a footballer that he likes, for example, motorcycles and traveling, they already have the bait to try to seduce him.: ‘Would you like to have a motorcycle and this trip? Well, listen to what you would simply have to do to earn it…’. And, knowing his tastes, it is easier for the athlete to fall into the trap.”
The format of the sessions offered by the RFEF is very innovative, with a lot of interaction and few academic connotations. “It invites more reflection and is very attractive for the recipient. We have gone from memorizing concepts to reflection and showing the two possible channels: this decision can take you on this path and this decision on another path, you choose which is better” , contextualize.
The success of raising awareness among more than 4,000 footballers annually
The message, furthermore, is clear: they are going to catch you yes or yes. Today there is cross-referencing of betting data and deep monitoring through the world’s leading fraud detection company – with which FIFA and UEFA also work – through which any request or complaint can be made. The RFEF works aligned with both the Civil Guard and, above all, with the specialized fraud unit of the National Police. They regularly maintain conversations and updates and criminal offenses are on the table. The RFEF has jurisdiction up to a point, then other tools come into play to pursue and punish each case.
Annually, the Integrity area of the RFEF has reached more than 4,000 players in a single season through more than a hundred talks, some of them even given in the locker room itself, the sacred place. With its work, it has managed to position itself at the top among the integrity departments of world football because they have evolved the concept defended by UEFA and, today, they have managed to create a mirror effect, a model and a reference that different federations and organizations consult. entities such as UEFA itself. So much so that the highest body in European football has delegated to the Integrity area of the RFEF the task of developing the Integrity model – between 2024 and 2027 – of the UEFA Youth League, where the future stars of the ball play.