If you wanted to guarantee the result of a particular soccer match in order to win a large bet, and were prepared to bribe top players to do so, how would you go about it?


This rather public invitation to a criminal conspiracy is occasioned by the most extraordinary soccer corruption case in recent memory. Bruce Grobbelaar, late of Liverpool now of Southampton, the most successful goalkeeper in British history, has been accused by the country's most popular newspaper of taking bribes from betting syndicates to fix matches.


Specifically, The Sun charges that he accepted ?40,000 ($64,150) for throwing a Liverpool versus Newcastle game last season (Liverpool lost 3-0), and was offered more than ?200,000 for fixing matches against Manchester United and Norwich. The paper says he lost out on these payments by accidentally making "brilliant" saves.


The evidence is in the form of videos and tapes of conversations between Grobbelaar and his former business partner Chris Vincent.


Grobbelaar strongly denies these allegations and has issued libel writs. But the FA has charged him with accepting "considerations" and is investigating, as are FIFA and the police.


The British footballing public seems to have already made up its mind. Grobbelaar might be able to account for why he was accepting a fat envelope of cash from Vincent, they argue, but it will be more problematic to come up with a plausible explanation of statements like, "He is telling me that I am going to lose a game. So 20 minutes into the game I pushed the ball into the back of the net. That was the Coventry game."


Things do indeed look pretty bleak for the Zimbabwe international. But hang on a minute: several aspects of this case are a little puzzling. First, there is a distinct lack of detail (bank accounts, identities of the conspirators, etc.), and then there is Vincent's role.


What were his motives in so nobly assisting The Sun to tape Grobbelaar discussing these alleged misdeeds? Is he a law-abiding citizen so shocked by his friend's dark secret that he turned him in? Or is he in the pay of the Sun? We must remember that he is "a former business partner," a species whose veracity invariably depends on the circumstances in which "present" became "former."


But one thing above all does not add up. According to my research and sources, every known case of match-fixing involved bribing at least several, sometimes more, players in a game. Very few examples reach the dizzy heights of the 290 players and 15 referees banned as a result of the 1983 Hungary corruption scandal. But I can find no example in the history of soccer of a match being fixed by the bribery of less than three players. The conspirators buy up such numbers of players because it is necessary to subvert quite a few of the 22 men on the field.


Which rather raises the question, what the hell are you betting on if you only bribe one player, even if he is the goalkeeper? The goalie can only control what happens if the other side shoots on target. In two of the cases cited by The Sun, Grobbelaar lost his payout because the "shadowy Far Eastern betting syndicate" did not get the desired result.


If it was prepared to pay Grobbelar ?200,000 for fixing these matches, how much in God's name did it put on with the bookies (and lose)? And why were they prepared to pay him such big money when a lively performance by the Liverpool attack could instantly cancel out anything Grobbelaar was letting in at the other end (as happened in the Manchester United game)?


This confused columnist has taken some discreet soundings and can offer only three possible explanations. Either Grobbelar is innocent and the so-called conspiracies never existed, or they were perpetrated by the most incompetent large-scale gamblers in history, or they were bribing far more players than just Grobbelaar. I know which scenario my money's on.