Le Tissier stood to win £10,000 from the betting scam

Matthew Le Tissier has confessed that he attempted to beat the bookmakers with an audacious betting scam in a Southampton match against Wimbledon in 1995.

The former England and Southampton striker was blessed with an abundance of natural talent on the football pitch, but it let him down in spectacular fashion when he plotted to make £10,000 from deliberately kicking the ball out in a Premier League game some 14 years ago.

Le Tiss, who now works as a Sky Sports pundit, and a fellow teammate hatched a plan to win on the spread betting market on the time of the first throw-in.

‘The plan was for us to kick the ball straight into touch at the start of the game and then collect 56 times our stake. Easy money’ he says in his autobiography Taking Le Tiss.

‘Spread betting had just started to become popular. It was a new idea which allowed punters to back anything from the final score to the first throw-in.’

‘It was set up nicely. The ball was to be rolled back to me and I would smash it into touch. It seemed to be going like clockwork. We kicked off, the ball was tapped to me and I went to hit it out towards Neil Shipperley on the left wing.’

‘As it was live on television I didn’t want to make it too obvious or end up looking like a prat for miscuing the ball so I tried to hit it just over his head. But with so much riding on it I was a bit nervous and didn’t give it quite enough welly.’

‘The problem was that Shipperley knew nothing about the bet and managed to reach it and even head it back into play.’

‘I have never run so much in my life. If there had been Pro Zone analysis back then my stats would have been amazing for the next minute as I charged around the pitch desperately trying to kick the ball out of play.’

‘Suddenly it was no longer a question of winning money. We stood to lose a lot of cash if it went much longer than 75 seconds before the ball went out.’

‘Eventually we got the ball out on 70 seconds. The neutral time meant we had neither won nor lost. I have never tried spread betting since.’