It was a most extraordinary press release.

The Canadian Soccer League’s release began by promoting the quality of the league based on a study that indicated more than 40 players that had played in the CSL had gone on to play on various national teams.

The end of the release talked about interest being expressed by potential new franchises.

But as befits a poop sandwich, the dirt was in the middle.

The centre part of the release addressed the “most challenging issue in the New Year. . . .” That issue was “to ensure the league is free of match manipulation.”

That is a polite way of saying the league is going to do whatever it can to make sure CSL soccer games aren’t being fixed — again.

It might as well have been an epitaph before actual death happened.

Match fixing in soccer is not unusual. It happens regularly, especially overseas, and has become a huge money-maker for organized crime.

The CSL press release recognizes the issues stemming from a 31-page report done by the International Centre for Sport Security. The document was obtained by British newspaper The Daily Telegraph late last year.

The document focused on the 2015 CSL season and included allegations that all 12 of the league’s first division teams participated in at least three suspicious matches between May and early September and that 42 per cent of this year’s top tier matches “showed signs of suspicious betting activity, resulting in an estimated 4.5 million pounds” in potential profits, according to the Telegraph.

The report is damning to the CSL, the league that London City competes in.

Since the Gauss family sold London City in 2011 to Andrew Crowe, a Hamilton businessman who in turn sold it to another businessman, the team has fallen out of sight. They still play at the Hellenic Centre but the management group prefers to leave all the publicity and distribution of information to their public relations officer.

The league itself struggles for recognition.

Allegations of match-fixing in the league have come up before, when a German court in 2011 indicated that a CSL game played in Quebec was fixed in 2009.

But from the press release and discussions with Stan Adamson, the CSL’s director of media relations, there’s no question match-fixing is what might bury the CSL.

One cannot bet on the CSL in Canada but Adamson says more than a “$1 million” was spent on betting on CSL matches overseas last year. It’s that kind of odd betting behaviour that raised eyebrows and launched the investigation.

Millions of dollars in profits were realized from those bets.

Adamson said the league is trying to obtain the 31-page report but has yet to see a copy. He said a copy is in the hands of the RCMP.

The only hope the CSL has is that a law enforcement organization decides the issue is serious enough to investigate the teams and clean house.

“The (Canadian Soccer Association) is as dead as a doornail and they have done nothing about it and so we are on our own,” he said. “I have filed a Freedom of Information request to see the document.”

Canadian Soccer Association decertified the CSL two years ago.

Meanwhile, the CSL is howling at the wind.

The CSL would like to do something but is helpless and without teeth.

They would like to see CSL games removed from betting lines overseas.

The CSL announced in the press release they will be “assigning match observers to all games played in 2016 in an attempt to identify games that appear suspicious.”

Considering that during a “suspicious” game in 2015, one team was attempting to score on THEIR own net while the opposing team was doing what it could to prevent them, it wouldn’t take a trained eye to catch that anomaly during a game.

The CSL is looking at entering into a relationship with an organization that monitors betting data from sports events, including soccer and including the CSL.

That’s too little and too late for anyone to trust the integrity of the game.

It’s clearly is a case of the soccer goal being defended long after it’s already been defiled.