The Panama Papers will very likely change the world of offshore finance forever. That football, its rights holders and its marketing agents have been using the same corporate and financial tools to avoid tax (sometimes legally) is no surprise. But what should be a surprise is that FIFA’s shiny new president has been so quickly dragged into the scandal.
When Sepp Blatter celebrated his 80th birthday this week in the bosom of his ultra-loyal family, perhaps with more than a touch of resentment at seeing his contribution to the game all but ignored during last month’s presidential hand-over, the man who replaced him was just completing his first week in charge.
Reflecting on the way FIFA history is being rewritten with its new reform championing president, one wonders if two weeks ago football (we’ll soon be calling it soccer) had its WMD moment.
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Juvenal, Satires
“Who watches the watchmen?” This question, first posed by classical writers thousands of years ago, is perhaps one we would do well to ask ourselves now, as civil liberties hard won in the second millennium are gradually eroded in the third.
Fortune favours the brave. Or in Gianni Infantino’s case, being in the right place at the right time.
Jérôme Champagne has come out swinging in these final days of the FIFA Presidency campaign, claiming that spending pledges tabled by UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino are “very dangerous”.
Manchester United exec Ed Woodward sees the newly-acquisitive Chinese Super League (CSL) as “another useful market if we are looking to sell players”. And the recent £20 million-plus deal that took Ramires to Jiangsu Suning, to the considerable benefit of Chelsea’s bottom-line, surely demonstrates that he is right.
The sorry Liverpool saga about season ticket prices, increasing prices, fans walking out, then price rise rescinded, has once again raised the question of what is the place of fans in modern football.
At the start of the FIFA presidential race, all we heard was the need for a clean campaign, with each candidate energetically promoting his own cause. No finger-pointing, no duplicity, no mud-slinging.
Even the slickest, best choreographed media events – and I have attended few slicker than this week’s descent on Wembley by FIFA Presidential candidate Gianni Infantino and his footballing legends – have revealing moments.
When candidates of opposition political parties in US and British elections, and in many other countries for that matter, want to convince the voting public that they are best person for the job, they frequently go head-to-head on television as an important way of their getting their messages across. So what’s so precious about football?
‘Oh shut up, silly woman,’ said the reptile with a grin
‘You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.’
From The Snake by Al Wilson
My social media threads at the start of this week were full of the sarcastic indignation that is part of the medium’s stock-in-trade.
It is a country with a rich history, a history emblazoned with glory and noble victories, though at present the Italian national team performances are a little ‘see-saw’. The Italian Football Federation look at their trophies and their world position and are struggling to understand what’s going on.
Isha Johansen, President of the Sierra Leone Football Association, has a little game she plays with taxi drivers whenever she comes to London. The taxi is taking her to Oxford Street, Selfridges, and the taxi driver asks, “Going on another shopping spree are you? Going to shop till you drop?”
United States attorney general Loretta Lynch may change FIFA, but old school football politics is likely to prove an altogether tougher dragon to slay.