An end-of-season football game between Mosta and Pembroke last week has been flagged as highly suspicious by a leading anti match-fixing organisation.

A report in Italian newspaper La Stampa on match-fixing quoted the general secretary of FederBet predicting at least four goals in the game at 7.35pm on Thursday 28 April – an hour or so before the game got underway.

After Mosta raced to a two goal lead within 25 minutes, Francesco Baranca made another prediction: "Pembroke will score five goals." 

Pembroke eventually levelled the deficit and went on to win. The final score? 5-3.

MFA integrity officer Franz Tabone said they were made aware of suspicious betting patterns surrounding the Mosta vs Pembroke game several days ago by SportRadar, the MFA's partner in monitoring suspicious betting patterns.

The MFA had immediately passed on the information to the police, Mr Tabone said. 

“All you need is three or four players to fix a result,” Francesco Baranca told La Stampa. His job is to monitor bets in real time, follow the money and sniff out suspicious patterns. And he’s got his hands full.

Italy arrested more than 50 people as part of a match-fixing inquiry in May 2015. Among those suspected of match-fixing were Farrugia brothers Adrian and Robert. Adrian Farrugia is a former technical director at Mosta FC, one of the two teams involved in these latest allegations.

Local football authorities announced last November that they were probing a match between Naxxar Lions and St Andrews after receiving information claiming the match had been fixed. Naxxar came from behind during that game to win 2-1.

In a separate case, Maltese under-21 player Seyble Zammit was arraigned and charged with match-fixing in aseries of UEFA U-21 matches last March. He admitted guilt but escaped punishment after cooperating with police. His lawyer told a court “he isn’t even the small fry - he's fish eggs in this entire chain."

Back in 2014, the Malta Football Association banned two Hamrun Spartans players and two of the club’s board members for life after it found them guilty of fixing matches.

Match-fixing has become a billion-dollar criminal enterprise, with clubs in football leagues all over the world involved. In 2015, FederBet said it suspected about 50 games across Europe of having been rigged, with the problem “getting bigger and bigger.”

In Italy, end-of-season lower league matches have become so suspect that many bookies refuse to take bets on them.