(Real) Football politics
Posted: Sun May 31, 2015 10:22 amI am amazed this hasn't been beat to death here....not being a...soccer....fan, I found all this quite interesting; this is from www.politico.eu ; completely different from the viewpoint I assumed would prevail...interesting reead.
COPY:
Seven take-aways from the FIFA arrests
The beautiful game is an ugly monster.
By TUNKU VARADARAJAN 27/5/15, 7:39 PM CET Updated 28/5/15, 12:30 PM CET
There can’t be a single soccer fan anywhere in the world who didn’t have the sports-lover’s equivalent of a righteous orgasm on learning of the arrest at dawn — by the Swiss police — of seven FIFA senior officials. As of this writing, these men were being readied for extradition to the United States, where they will be prosecuted for “racketeering” — a fabulous word that is America’s greatest bequest to the lexicon of criminal justice.
Here are seven short take-aways from the episode, some reflective of hard fact, others, perhaps, of wishful thinking:
1. The pantheon of world soccer has a new hero. To the names of Pele, Maradona, Cruyff and Messi, add another: Loretta Lynch. The US attorney general, confirmed by the Senate just three weeks ago by the most un-soccer-like score of 56-43, is destined to go down as the most consequential woman in the history of the game. She has burst into the Augean stables of FIFA with a team of industrial cleaners, determined to rid the governing body of international soccer of its legendary filth.
2. FIFA has met its match … in the United States of America. Long after the world’s big banks were brought to heel by the recession and zealous prosecutors, one global body stood apart from the rest, a law unto itself, defiant in its scorn for transparency: FIFA. With its I’m opaque, what are you going to do about it? attitude, FIFA awarded the World Cups for 2018 and 2022 to Russia and Qatar, respectively, breathtaking decisions both. But if FIFA is a global behemoth, the US is an even bigger one. What America wants, America gets. It is hard to see how the soccer body will survive the Department of Justice’s charges without radical reform.
3. The award of World Cup hosting rights to Russia and Qatar will, before long, be nullified. No other outcome is possible, given that Switzerland’s attorney general has also announced an investigation into “suspicion of criminal mismanagement and of money laundering in connection with the allocation of the 2018 and 2022 Football World Cups.” Once Russia and Qatar are stripped of host status, the bidding process for both World Cups will have to start afresh. We could soon have — hallelujah! — the first totally transparent selection process in the history of FIFA.
4. Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, is seeking a fifth term at the body’s helm. This is unlikely, and, conceivably, the only term he faces now is probably one in jail. If the Swiss investigation runs its course and finds criminal mismanagement, the tainted buck must stop at Blatter. Putinesque in his concentration of power, he doesn’t delegate decisions, and his inflexibly dirigiste methods could come back to bite him. Not for him the defense that he didn’t know what was going on. Blatter is the least-loved man in the history of the Beautiful Game, and words like “poobah,” “pasha,” “panjandrum,” and “dictator” are regularly deployed in descriptions of him.
5. Vladimir Putin will go apoplectic on this issue. If Russia’s hosting rights are withdrawn — as they must be, and as they should have been already after his invasion of sovereign Ukraine — he will treat the legal assault on FIFA as an assault on Mother Russia itself. There is already rumbling among Russians of a Department of Justice conspiracy to rob them of the World Cup. Brace for an almighty political crisis, with a boycott by Russia of the next World Cup.
6. There remains the unlovely question of Qatar, which was awarded the 2022 Cup in a decision that was a disgrace at every level. The weather is so hot in Qatar in the summer that the World Cup there is to be rescheduled to the winter months, devastating Europe’s soccer leagues which take place at the same time. A significant pedigree in the game had, heretofore, been a sine qua non in a host: Yet Qatar has no soccer history to speak of. Most distressing of all has been the manner in which Qatar has gone about preparing its infrastructure for the Cup, with stadiums built by indentured workers from the Indian sub-continent, toiling for a pittance in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, and dying by the hundreds. Put flagrant corruption to one side: For its execrable human rights record alone, Qatar should be stripped of the Cup.
7. FIFA will have to be rebuilt from scratch. An opaque boys’ club that was founded in an era when the game was less global and the money negligible is unsuited for the management of a sport whose income makes the eyes water. A small committee of respected figures — British judges, Swedish prime ministers, and the like — should be convened to come up with a new blueprint for FIFA. The organization needs to be thoroughly and mercilessly un-Blattered.
COPY:
Seven take-aways from the FIFA arrests
The beautiful game is an ugly monster.
By TUNKU VARADARAJAN 27/5/15, 7:39 PM CET Updated 28/5/15, 12:30 PM CET
There can’t be a single soccer fan anywhere in the world who didn’t have the sports-lover’s equivalent of a righteous orgasm on learning of the arrest at dawn — by the Swiss police — of seven FIFA senior officials. As of this writing, these men were being readied for extradition to the United States, where they will be prosecuted for “racketeering” — a fabulous word that is America’s greatest bequest to the lexicon of criminal justice.
Here are seven short take-aways from the episode, some reflective of hard fact, others, perhaps, of wishful thinking:
1. The pantheon of world soccer has a new hero. To the names of Pele, Maradona, Cruyff and Messi, add another: Loretta Lynch. The US attorney general, confirmed by the Senate just three weeks ago by the most un-soccer-like score of 56-43, is destined to go down as the most consequential woman in the history of the game. She has burst into the Augean stables of FIFA with a team of industrial cleaners, determined to rid the governing body of international soccer of its legendary filth.
2. FIFA has met its match … in the United States of America. Long after the world’s big banks were brought to heel by the recession and zealous prosecutors, one global body stood apart from the rest, a law unto itself, defiant in its scorn for transparency: FIFA. With its I’m opaque, what are you going to do about it? attitude, FIFA awarded the World Cups for 2018 and 2022 to Russia and Qatar, respectively, breathtaking decisions both. But if FIFA is a global behemoth, the US is an even bigger one. What America wants, America gets. It is hard to see how the soccer body will survive the Department of Justice’s charges without radical reform.
3. The award of World Cup hosting rights to Russia and Qatar will, before long, be nullified. No other outcome is possible, given that Switzerland’s attorney general has also announced an investigation into “suspicion of criminal mismanagement and of money laundering in connection with the allocation of the 2018 and 2022 Football World Cups.” Once Russia and Qatar are stripped of host status, the bidding process for both World Cups will have to start afresh. We could soon have — hallelujah! — the first totally transparent selection process in the history of FIFA.
4. Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, is seeking a fifth term at the body’s helm. This is unlikely, and, conceivably, the only term he faces now is probably one in jail. If the Swiss investigation runs its course and finds criminal mismanagement, the tainted buck must stop at Blatter. Putinesque in his concentration of power, he doesn’t delegate decisions, and his inflexibly dirigiste methods could come back to bite him. Not for him the defense that he didn’t know what was going on. Blatter is the least-loved man in the history of the Beautiful Game, and words like “poobah,” “pasha,” “panjandrum,” and “dictator” are regularly deployed in descriptions of him.
5. Vladimir Putin will go apoplectic on this issue. If Russia’s hosting rights are withdrawn — as they must be, and as they should have been already after his invasion of sovereign Ukraine — he will treat the legal assault on FIFA as an assault on Mother Russia itself. There is already rumbling among Russians of a Department of Justice conspiracy to rob them of the World Cup. Brace for an almighty political crisis, with a boycott by Russia of the next World Cup.
6. There remains the unlovely question of Qatar, which was awarded the 2022 Cup in a decision that was a disgrace at every level. The weather is so hot in Qatar in the summer that the World Cup there is to be rescheduled to the winter months, devastating Europe’s soccer leagues which take place at the same time. A significant pedigree in the game had, heretofore, been a sine qua non in a host: Yet Qatar has no soccer history to speak of. Most distressing of all has been the manner in which Qatar has gone about preparing its infrastructure for the Cup, with stadiums built by indentured workers from the Indian sub-continent, toiling for a pittance in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, and dying by the hundreds. Put flagrant corruption to one side: For its execrable human rights record alone, Qatar should be stripped of the Cup.
7. FIFA will have to be rebuilt from scratch. An opaque boys’ club that was founded in an era when the game was less global and the money negligible is unsuited for the management of a sport whose income makes the eyes water. A small committee of respected figures — British judges, Swedish prime ministers, and the like — should be convened to come up with a new blueprint for FIFA. The organization needs to be thoroughly and mercilessly un-Blattered.
