There are players who bring respect and honour to sports like Sachin Tendulkar who walked away silently without waiting for the umpire's decision when he knew that he was out. Or someone like footballer Miroslav Klose, who went back to the referee and told him to revoke a penalty awarded to his team by confessing there was no foul on him. Then there are those who lied, cheated and took every possible shortcut in order to achieve some mistaken glory that would only shame the sport as a whole. While we have seen multiple instances of match-fixing in the sport of cricket over the past two decades, there are some other huge fixing/cheating incidents across other sports that have shocked and angered fans all over the world.

Juventus were hit the hardest. The Turin club were stripped of their Serie A titles in 2005 and 2006 and were relegated to the second tier of Italian football, Serie B. Juventus’ then general manager Luciano Moggi, who was considered to be “the godfather of the Italian transfer market” was served a life ban from football.

While clubs like Lazio and Fiorentina were banned from participating in European competitions for more than two years, AC Milan, who had former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi as their club president, were able to escape bigger punishment by paying a hefty fine.

Despite serving the biggest punishment of all, Juventus fought their way back from the second division to earn promotion and win five straight Serie A titles. But, Serie A is no longer the lucrative league that attracts the world's top talents, AC Milan have plunged into depths of debt over the years and have been unable to qualify for Europe in the past four years. Reggina have gone completely bankrupt and have been booted down to the league of non-professionals. 

4. Andre Agassi's drug abuse, Tennis

In his own words, Agassi explained it in the book, “My name, my career, everything is now on the line. Whatever I've achieved, whatever I've worked for, might soon mean nothing. Days later I sit in a hard-backed chair, a legal pad in my lap, and write a letter to the ATP. It's filled with lies interwoven with bits of truth.”

After escaping that ban, Agassi went on to become only the fifth man to win all four Grand Slam titles and added a second US Open crown and ended the year 1999 back as World No.1.

Why was Andre Agassi not suspended if he tested positive and why was it never brought to the attention of the world? Because, nobody ever heard about it.

3. Shame of Gijon: Germany and Algeria's football rivalry

Algeria had made their World Cup debut that year and were drawn alongside Chile, West Germany and Austria in the group stage. Their first game was against the mighty Germans who were boastful ahead of their match with the minnows. One of the German players said that he would play the match with a cigar in his mouth while another player ridiculed Algeria by saying that he will even have goals left to dedicate to his dog. But the next day, Algeria became the first African team to beat a European team at the World Cup by winning 2-1. They lost their second game 2-0 to Austria, but were able to triumph over Chile in their final group game.

2. State-sponsored doping scandal, Russian Athletics

When the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) banned Russia's entire Track and Field team in November 2015 from the Rio Olympics, the entire world was shocked. While there were almost 136 athletes around the world facing a ban due to drug abuse before the 2016 games, the IAAF banning an entire contingent was never heard of. And just before the Olympics, a media report by a renowned British newspaper revealed that more than 80% of Russia’s Olympic and world championship medals in athletics were won by athletes who have been using performance enhancing drugs.

In July 2016, an investigation by the WADA showed that Russian security officials had found a way to remove tamper-proof lids of the containers which had the players' samples given at the 2014 Sochi winter Olympics. This allowed them to swap dirty samples from the Russian athletes for clean ones, but left scratch-like marks allowing the investigators to catch the culprits. Following this revelation, the IAAF banned all 67 Russian track and field athletes.

Following this ban, Russia claimed that all the allegations were false and tried to challenge IAAF's decision in August 2016. But there was little success for the Russians in the Court of Arbitration in Sports(CAS) and the ban on the athletes stayed. Adding more salt to the wound, the International Olympics Committee stripped 8 more Russian Track and Field athletes off their gold medals after samples from 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2012 London Olympics were tested positive.

Russia's doping scandal has been the deepest of all the scandals in athletics history since it involved an entire nation, and no one has still seen the end of it.

1. Lance Armstrong, Cycling

Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1996. Even the doctors gave him a very low chance of surviving after the cancer spread to his lungs, lymph nodes, abdomen and brain. But within three years, Armstrong underwent multiple surgeries, recovered from cancer and announced that he would be taking part in the Tour de France 1999. When this alone served as an inspiration to many, Armstrong went on to win seven consecutive Tour de France titles between 1999-2005, a feat impossible for even the best of the best cyclists in the game.

When EPO became a banned substance in 2000, Armstrong and his teammates started blood doping. This involved transfusion of their own stored blood in the middle of the race to boost the oxygen consumption in the blood to increase their performance.

If you would like a deep dive into the entire scandal, I would recommend you to check out the documentary “The Armstrong Lie” by renowned documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney.