Can a broken soccer team be fixed?

Let's start with a very simple premise: Team A must beat Team B by at least two points to advance to the second round of a prestigious, world-class sporting event. Team A can possibly win by one point, if there is a winner in the match between Team C and Team D...Ok, this is getting complicated, are you guys confused? I always find it easier when I use real nouns to describe something...Let's give Teams A and B made up names to make it easier to follow. Team A we will call the completely random and made up word "France." Team B will also be completely random and even more made up: "Togo."

So "France" must beat "Togo" but at least two goals to assure advancement. Now to make this more interesting let's say that "Togo" is a tiny little country from one of those poor continents. "Togo" has trouble paying their players because they don't have enough money. "France" is a well-off country from one of those rich continents. Now to make things even better, let's say that "Togo" is already eliminated from competition and no one has expected them to really do anything spectacular, being their first entry in such a well-known tournament. "France" on the other hand is expected to advance, and not advancing will be a huge hit to their federation and country in general.

Now, let's continue on this hypothetical journey. Let's say that someone from the Federation of "France" (we'll call it the "FFF" for short) contacts someone from the Football Federation of "Togo" and says, "sorry that your boys are out of competition, however, we have noted that many of them are playing at a high level and may be in a good position to come to clubs in France. We'd like to help you out..." Or maybe he says something like, "we know that you guys are having trouble paying your players, maybe we can give you a hand by loaning you some money, or by taking other actions...how would you like to play a friendly between the "Togo" national team and the "French" national team in Lomé. It won't cost you guys anything and all the merchandising and revenues from the match goes directly into your cash register. You're not into the National teams? we could probably arrange for our national champions to come down and play some exhibition matches with your teams."

So, maybe they come to an agreement. Now the implementation may be a bit tough. How do you convince a team to fake lose? I guess the best place to start would be in Italy. But after, you need it to look like it wasn't fixed. You can't really get the whole team on board, too risky at such a high level. So you talk to a couple of the key players. Let's say a full-back and maybe a striker. You tell them to play hard, but to make the game turn out "right." Heck, they could even score a goal if they wanted too, as long as the difference is two to make our fake team, "France," advance. Let's say that both teams play hard, both teams fight it out, but eventually the "French" team scores their two goals...Maybe they weren't even fake, they were real goals, but now there are two of them. Let's say that this is around the 61st minute. Now what happens? Well maybe the striker who was aware of what needed to be done realizes that he has done his part and he asks to be substituted.

Maybe the speed of the game slows down greatly. Maybe both teams are happy with what they have done and relax.

I know, this could never happen. We're talking about the pinnacle of professionalism in sports.

On a utterly and completely different subject; good luck to Les Bleus who beat the The Hawks yesterday 2:0 to advance to the Round of 16 and I hope that Emmanuel Adebayor isn't too tired. He looked pretty exhausted when he went off at 75 minutes.