How Was Lucas Paquetá Cleared of Match-Fixing Charges?

Paquetá’s two-year ordeal ends with a “not proven” verdict, while Italy’s Maduka Okoye walks away from similar allegations. Suspicious betting alerts often collapse when intent can’t be nailed down

Headlines in the UK and Brazil seemed to assume the career of West Ham midfielder Lucas Paquetá was over. Yet Paquetá was cleared this week after a two-year investigation.

This may have come as a surprise, given the details of the case that had been released. The case against Paquetá centered on four matches between late 2022 and mid-2023 in which he received yellow cards. An abnormal cluster of bets on Paquetá to be booked in those specific games, many of them traced to the player’s hometown in Brazil.

The bets themselves were not huge windfalls. One wager was as small as £7 and the largest was around £400, but the pattern was suspicious enough to trigger the FA’s alarm.

Throughout this ordeal, Paquetá vehemently protested his innocen…