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There have been dark mutterings about one particular World Cup qualifying match, and further arrests in Spain and Italy. This could be much bigger, still.

Some details emerging from the investigation are truly frightening. 

Apparently, a betting gang managed to place two players into the squad of Bosnian club NK Travnik for two friendlies in Switzerland this summer. They also reportedly asked chefs in team hotels to poison players' food. One player, Marcel Schuon from VfL Osnabruck, has since admitted cooperating with the betting syndicate last season, when his team was relegated to the third division. His club is in shock.

For the German authorities, this case is particularly embarrassing. 

Four years after the case of the corrupt referee Robert Hoyzer threatened to overshadow the World Cup, it is clear that the early warning systems put in place with the help of betting companies simply do not work. These systems were designed to detect suspicious movements in the international betting markets before matches.

The problem is, these days matches are exclusively bet on "in-running" on the internet, in other words, during the matches. With one team leading until late in the game, the fraudsters wait for the odds to change and then bet heavily on the trailing team, for example, in the safe knowledge that they will stage a comeback. Two late goals later, they come away with thousands of Euros in profit.

One of the men arrested is Ante Sapina, from Berlin - the same man who was convicted for fixing matches together with Hoyzer. It seems he simply continued where he left off after his release from prison a year ago.

No high profile matches

So far, European football has found solace in the fact that no high profile matches, in the Bundesliga or Premier League for example, have been involved. It's much easier for criminals to rig lower division games or those in smaller leagues of course, where players earn less money and can be more easily persuaded to concede a goal or two. In the corridors of UEFA, it's long been an open secret that games involving Eastern and Southern European sides are particularly at risk in this respect. The president and captain of FK Podeba from Macedonia were banned by UEFA in April after evidence of match-fixing emerged.

FIFA have put the topic on the top of their agenda at the ExCo meeting in South Africa this week. The worry is that the World Cup itself can be targeted. At first, the chances of someone successfully bribing players contesting the biggest team sport competition in the world appear very remote - a few thousand Euros are surely not enough for a professional to throw a game in South Africa. That's certainly the case when it comes to Brazil, Spain, England or Germany, big teams packed with millionaires.

But there are other sides taking part, too, however.

Match fixing at the World Cup?

In 2006 in Germany, Togo's players threatened a strike because their federation refused to honour agreed payments. The squad from Trinidad and Tobago, made up of low division players and amateurs, was at logger-heads over salaries with their own football association for many years.

The tournament format could easily throw up a group stage game where nothing is at stake for one of the outsiders anymore  - and that's when it becomes very dangerous indeed. Unlike movies such as "The Sting" suggest, those who fix matches simply prefer the underdog to lose, so all it would need is a goalkeeper and defender to perform a little less diligently than usual. One billion people might watch the 4-0 defeat for the underdog but no one would suspect any wrong doing.

FIFA can't afford to be complacent in this regard: the game's  integrity is at stake.

"People go to football matches because they don't know the outcome", Word Cup winning Germany coach Sepp Herberger once said. Football is doomed without the public's trust.

Referees will have to be shielded from the outside world more than ever before next June, and FIFA would do well to keep a close eye on players' entourages and team hotel lobbies during the tournament.