There was just a hint of irritation from the Football Association, Uefa and Fifa in their response to Europol, the EU's intelligence-sharing agency, after it announced a massive alleged match-fixing conspiracy without substantially sharing the details with the football authorities. Of Europol's bombshell that a Champions League tie played in England "three or four years ago" is under suspicion, an FA spokesman said: "The FA [is] not aware of any credible reports into suspicious Champions League fixtures in England, nor has any information been shared with us."

Rob Wainwright, Europol's director, said the agency will shortly be informing Michel Platini of its investigations, and Uefa's response confirmed the organisation is awaiting details.

It could be suspected that Europol was trying to make a name for itself, via the incomparably newsworthy medium of football, by announcing sensational match-fixing allegations, many of which remain vague and unspecified.

If that was indeed its intention, Europol certainly succeeded. English football woke up from a weekend of rousing Premier and Football League action to be told at a sombre press conference in The Hague of "hundreds of criminals and corrupted officials and players" across Europe, and "match-fixing on a scale we've not seen before".

The lurid picture was painted of criminal syndicates – with "ringleaders of Asian origin" – using "facilitators" in Europe to bribe and corrupt players and other football people to fix matches for illegal betting gains. These included "more than 380" professional matches in Europe, from the German fourth division to European Championship and World Cup qualifiers, via that unidentified Champions League tie played in England. There were also 300 matches played in Africa, Asia and Central and South America, Europol said.

"A total of 425 match officials, club officials, players and serious criminals, from more than 15 countries, are suspected of being involved in attempts to fix … professional football matches. The activities formed part of a sophisticated organised crime operation, which generated over €8m in betting profits and involved over €2m in corrupt payments to those involved in the matches," Wainwright said.

This was dizzying dirt to be hurling at the beautiful game first thing on a Monday morning. Then, as the day wore on and Europol refused to release any further detail, for example which cases are concluded and which ongoing, and where any of the investigations are up to, the questions queued up.

It was not made clear how many of the allegedly fixed matches had led to convictions, except in Bochum, Germany, where the investigation produced prison sentences totalling 39 years for the 14 people convicted. That did give credibility to the suspicion voiced by Andreas Bachmann, of Bochum's prosecution service, that the €2m found to have been paid in bribes, is "only the tip of the iceberg". Bachman said they had seen manipulation in more than 300 games in Germany and outside, from the country's fourth division "up to Champions League and World Cup qualifiers" and that "many international games were fixed".

It was suggested that the betting, on illegal markets in Asia, is on incidents in matches rather than the results themselves, similar to the spot-fixing conspiracies that have scarred cricket. Besides the corruption itself, parallel investigations were also necessary to trace the money which, Europol said, is laundered in offshore tax havens.

Fifa, which appointed Ralf Mutschke, a former Interpol official, as head of security in 2012, called for more co-operation with law enforcement agencies and sterner prison sentences for those outside "the football family". Uefa said that it has "zero tolerance" for match-fixing, and the FA said it takes "matters of integrity in football extremely seriously".

A clue to Europol's intentions came when Wainwright said: "This is a sad day for European football and more evidence of the corrupting influence in society of organised crime. But this investigation also proves the value of international police co-operation in fighting back against the criminals involved."

As a plea for international co-operation on the fight against organised crime – from an EU agency established to do just that – match-fixing in football provided a fittingly headline-grabbing subject for a press conference.

Nobody is saying it isn't so, that the danger is not real, or difficult to detect. But now the world waits to see how many of these matches will produce evidence, and proven culprits in the end.