Football match-fixers may have approached no fewer than six national team players for the U-21 game against Montenegro, the Times of Malta has learnt.

Sources close to the football scene said that bribes of up to €5,000 had been offered to those approached, though it is unclear which of them had accepted. Some of the players eventually confessed and are helping the police in their investigations.

In what is turning out to be an intricate web of arrangements before the Malta-Montenegro Uefa qualifying game, the sources said individuals close to a particular football club could have masterminded the fix.

The club itself was not involved.

The sources said “shady characters” linked to match fixing in the past had been spotted in the vicinity of the hotel where the U-21 squad was staying in the run-up to the Montenegro game. The presence of these individuals raised the alarm and prompted the Malta Football Association to refer the matter to the police.

As part of the police investigation, a member of a club’s coaching set-up was interrogated at length last week.

The sources, indicated, however, that the individual was unlikely to have been involved in the match-fixing attempt, though he could have known about it and failed to speak up.

The police have so far charged Valletta youth player Seyble Zammit, 21, who was not on the Malta team. The sources said that Mr Zammit was an acquaintance of the players approached by the match-fixers.

Mr Zammit’s defence lawyer argued in court last week that his client was “not even a small fish” in a very complex web but more akin to fish eggs.

In court, the police said that Mr Zammit was “only one link in the entire chain” and that the case involved large amounts of money and several people, in-cluding foreigners.

Mr Zammit was remanded in custody after the police objected to bail. Police inspector Sean Scicluna said civilian witnesses were yet to testify as well as a colleague of the accused.

Mr Zammit is the son of Mosta FC coach Ivan Zammit, known as Is-Sei, a former national team player. The senior Mr Zammit was not the person interrogated by the police.

The sources said the initial approach for the game to be fixed could have come from Montenegrin individuals through fellow nationals living in Malta. These, in turn, approached a Maltese man close to the football club in question, who is believed to have made the necessary arrangements.

The game, played in Malta, was won by Montenegro 1-0. The U-21 outfit lost 7-0 to the Czech Republic less than a week later, in a game also suspected of having been in the sights of match-fixers.

The police are expected to bring more people forward for charges in the coming days.