Pawel Cibicki, a former striker for Leeds United, was suspended from all professional football-related activities for four years in 2021 for a match-fixing offense he committed in Sweden in 2019.
Cibicki has acknowledged that his Elland Road move exacerbated his gambling addiction, delaying his ascent to the top of the football league. The 30-year-old acknowledges in a recent interview with Sportbladet that a significant pay boost he obtained when he joined Leeds in 2017 fueled a high-stakes gambling issue that has ultimately lost him the last three years of his career. SportWitness cited Cibicki as saying: “I had to decide between Leganés and Leeds. It goes without saying that I should have selected Spain and La Liga since those teams play football far closer to my taste.
“Gambling was about to take over totally, and my girlfriend at the moment chose to stay in Sweden rather than join me into the workforce. And everything completely fell apart when I was abandoned in England. My monthly salary from Leeds was little over 200,000 kronor (£14,500), which could be depleted in an hour. There was no upper limit.
Cibicki, who had departed Leeds a year earlier, was given a four-year ban by the Swedish FA in September 2021 after the Swedish Court of Appeals ruled him guilty of match-fixing. It was discovered that the player, who was playing for the Swedish team Elfsborg, had been bought into getting a yellow card during a game.
Despite Cibicki’s appeal to the Swedish Supreme Court, FIFA sustained and approved his suspension, preventing him from engaging in any football-related activities worldwide for the length of the Swedish FA’s four-year punishment. “There was always a bonus or something from Leeds,” Cibicki continued. “At this point, money had entirely lost all of its importance to me. There was nothing but air.