Gamblers, stop harassing eighth-tier soccer teams in Sweden

Sports bettors across the planet are looking for a fix as the novel coronavirus locks the world at home. Groups like the Belarusian Premier League have signed 10 broadcasting contracts across the world because people are so desperate for live sports.

But for those interested in a wager, they’ve run off multiple matches in Sweden due to the harassment of players and staff before and after matches. It was just a friendly between seventh-tier Eskilstuna FC and eighth-tier Näshulta GoIF. But then the angle-shooters, sharps, squares, and degenerates got involved, and the Swedish FA decided it was best to cancel the game.

“All day yesterday people rang our players and staff,” the Eskilstuna FC chairman, Bengin Ozeran told fotbollskanalen. “They got in contact through social media. It was people from all around the world. They were saying things like ‘hope you lose’ or ‘good luck’. There were more than 100 people doing it in under an hour. It’s been chaos. It was not a fun day.

“We decided to cancel the game for the players’ safety. You never know [what could have happened] after people started contacting the players. They even contacted a coach in the same division we play in to check how we play and how we have played in the past. People even got in contact with some of our former players and asked about our starting lineup. It was sick.”

When people are going so far as to harass players on the Internet for one of the lowest tiers of soccer, something is very wrong.

Another club in Eskilstuna, AC Primavera, who play in the sixth tier, told Eskilstuna-Kuriren that they had received hate messages on their social media channels after losing a friendly recently. “It was after our game against BK Sport that it started to come in messages on our Facebook page,” the club’s chairman, Daniel Karlsson, told the paper. “People from abroad were abusive towards the club and, among other things, we were accused to have ‘fixed’ our own game and someone said they hoped we would die from coronavirus.”

We are all desperate for sports to return to our lives, but that’s why the Belarusian Premier League and lower-league table tennis in the Ukraine and Russia are here for you. So stop harassing players out for a friendly game of football.

We’ll get through this together. But until then try some iNASCAR or League of Legends betting. And no harassing players if you lose, jerks.

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