Super League and NGO "Transparency International Greece" in collaboration with the European Professional Football Leagues (EPFL), other European Football Leagues and European chapters of Transparency International, implement the Prevention & Education pilot project and promote information and awareness-raising actions aiming at further advancing football integrity.

The project called "Sportsmanship in Football: Your club. Your career. Your responsibility!"  focuses on the development of prevention and education activities of mostly young players and their coaches  in Football Academies, as well as on awareness-raising activities for the public.

Through the implementation of model education seminars for footballers, the development of information material and education manuals for coaches, as well as the development of an innovative online education application, the project will contribute to the awareness of the young football generation on the values of fair play and the importance of sportsmanship on the pitch.

At the same time, the Super League, following the successful pilot application of the project "Information-Awareness on Sportsmanship-Fairplay" during last football season, implements this project for the young footballers participating in the U-17 and U-20 youth academies of its Club-members.  The project deals with the attitudes developed by football players on and off pitch and aims at cultivating concepts and values promoting sportsmanship in football. The application of the project is implemented by Mr Yannis Zarotis, Psychologist-Sports Psychologist.

The project is already underway with education presentations and meetings in the Football Academies of Apollonas Smyrnis and Asteras Tripolis. The activities will continue in 2013 as well, with the football academies of the remaining 16 clubs playing in the Super League, as well as the implementation of a public event where the results of the project will be presented in the International Conference "FootbAllAbout" to be held at the end of March 2014.

The president of Super League, Mr Yannis Moralis, said: "Betting is an international phenomenon, not limited within a specific country. In this framework and in collaboration with other European leagues, such as the Bundesliga, the Ligue 1 and the Premier League, representatives of the Civil Society such as Transparency International, as well as the EPFL, the European Professional Football Leagues, we implement an awareness-raising and information project for young footballers participating in all the clubs making up the Greek football league. We implement a framework of activities focused on young players so that they can form a strong knowledge basis since the onset of their career."

Costas Bakouris, president of Transparency International Greece, stated: "We firmly believe that education and awareness is the 'key' to deal with the global challenge of match manipulation caused by the infiltration of organised crime and illegal betting and which hurts football integrity."

Note to the media:

The project called "Sportsmanship in Football: Your club. Your career. Your responsibility!" is implemented in the framework of the European project "Staying on Side" in which participate six chapters of Amnesty International in Germany, Greece, United Kingdom, Italy, Lithuania and Portugal, under the coordination of the Transparency International Secretariat in collaboration with the European Professional Football Leagues (EPFL) and the German Football League (DFL). The project is co-financed by the European Commission – Directorate-General for Education and Culture.

Following the exponential growth of the global online betting -estimated to be worth over US$700 billion annually- this pioneer pilot project aims at securing the integrity of sports matches and game reputation against the threat of manipulated matches associated with illegal sports betting and gambling addiction.

"With the co-financing of the European Commission – Directorate-General for Education and Culture. This publication only represents the opinion of the author and the European Union is in no case responsible for any use of its content."