Football. The world’s most popular sport. It has come a long, long way from its humble beginnings. Countless peoples throughout history have played a game in which they used their feet to kick some sort of spherical object.

Yet, the world had to wait until the middle of the 19th Century for the modern game to appear. On the cold, wet and muddy fields of Victorian England, the modern game took shape. After decades of growing popularity on the British Isles, the game we today know as Football spread to all corners of the world, becoming cherished billions of people in all four corners of the globe.

As with anything that becomes so popular, there is another aspect which has come to dominate the modern game, that being: Money. The influx of money into the sport has — to all intents and purposes — dampened its original spirit of fair play. Corruption is rife in the world of football and it is doing lasting damage to the so-called beautiful game. From match fixing to agent-player ownership fraud, there are myriad ways in which the cancer of corruption has eaten away at most popular sport in the world.

Without naming the organisation’s most at fault, or individuals accused of alleged offences ( we will leave that to the lawyers) it is fair to say that corruption has become endemic within the sport and has spread to all corners of the globe.

Indeed, it has become so widespread that people often wonder how it is possible to stop it or, at least for the sake of the game, halt its spread. It has sent its roots so deep that it even infringes on the smallest aspects of the game.

If this is the case, how are we to envisage a brighter and more transparent future for the game of football?

Our answer lies in the technology and its application to the grassroots. We envisage that with the correct implementation of blockchain technology to the grassroots of football — the academies themselves — we are able to be at the forefront of the fight against corruption in the sport we so love.

If we start at the bottom we can effectively change the practices at the top over time. Bitcademy has given itself the mission to help fight corruption at the very bottom, with the aim of eventually changing the very top.

How do we hope to achieve this? The answer to this: we need to start from the very beginning of the footballer’s story. Therefore, with our model, we are going to introduce a ‘Player Passport’ which the players in our academies will have from their induction into our system. The ‘Player Passport’ will hold important information relating to the player’s individual identity such as their fingerprints. It will be secured on the blockchain and will act as proof that the player is who they say they are.

You may ask: why is it this important? It has recently been announced by Egyptian FA Media Officer Medhat Shalaby that age-fraud is the cancer of African football because it halts the development of the players. Bitcademy seeks to help solve this problem and bit by bit we will tackle corruption from the bottom up. We aim to make Football more transparent and with that make the game more ethical, productive and also more credible for the fans.

Bitcademy believes in the power of blockchain to bring transparency to football and we hope that as our project continues to develop, we will be able to effectively challenge the status quo, bringing clarity, trustworthiness and the power of technology to revolutionise the world of football. We are happy to have the task of cleansing the best game on the planet and we are glad that you are also part of the journey.

Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/45549805

http://www.spiegel.de/international/manchester-city-and-the-fight-against-financial-fairplay-a-1236347.html

http://www.spiegel.de/plus/football-leaks-mancity-episode-3-wie-pep-guardiola-beim-fc-bayern-abgeworben-wurde-a-288ea8cc-bb19-4430-a7e9-6b8bd57becae