If only the crooked bankers, as the criminal individuals they are, had caused so much excitement in the corridors of the EU.
FIFA is in crisis – in case you hadn’t heard. The EU of course isn’t. Rolling in their taxpayer funded luxury the European governing body of people has decided that the people they govern need saving from a 79 year old despot at the world governing body of football. They want him out – NOW.
Because, of course, Europe trumps World when it come to governing bodies. Especially with a bit of US puppeteering. Never mind the never ending EU scandals that rocked the admin in Brussels over the years. One corruption scandal after the other and never a resolution.
Football used to be primarily known as a sporting pastime before it became a tool for enrichment and political grandstanding. It is played by (among others) the EU’s long suffering constituents (and always will be) – a sport that started as the working man’s (now person’s) game, and rightly celebrated for it. It was democratic in that it elected its rulers from its own membership, and it was – for the most part – independent of those seeking a political platform for other reasons. And it celebrated this as well. Football people are not defined by geography or borders and being a football person isn’t some kind of a club, it is just what these people are. And there are no barriers to entry (unlike the EU and its political elite).
The problem with the working person though is that they just don’t know how to govern themselves – and nor should they be allowed or trusted to if it gets in the way of a wonderful PR platform.
This is why they need the help of the European political overlords and their hyper-ventilating about the need for FIFA’s despotic Blatter – so much evil in such a small elderly man – to go while they can get their people to step in and save the world (presumably for Europe).
Are they really trying to help world football or are they just trying to dismantle it for their own gains – with the significant help of a number of European football’s own membership?
And this is where the EU have a fundamental misunderstanding of how football is structured and the rule of law. Yes, law. FIFA, like the EU, has a constitution – its much unloved statutes. But they form the law and they demand respect, whether you like them or not.
Interestingly, the EU has a constitution that its members are required to respect. It is a concept they need to think hard about when they are desperately trying to prove to themselves they really are the right people to lead their own organisation when they so desperately want to unconstitutionally topple another.
And perhaps they should also remind themselves that they are leading Europe and that their constitution, unlike FIFA’s, does not stretch wider geographically.
They should also perhaps remember that unlike the International Olympic Committee, FIFA is a sporting organisation that organises a sport 365 days a year, and not a government organisation (which the IOC is) which runs a couple of (big) events every couple of years. This is an important distinction which this column will return to at a later date.
So who pressed that EU ‘Blatter out now’ button – what inside intelligence do they suddenly have on governing the world of football that the world of football doesn’t already have? Must be pretty remarkable for them to decide that their requirements override the rule of law.
One can’t help feeling that a good two-footed, studs up, kick to the nuts would have brought the power hungry EU fruitcakes back to earth. And with a bit better timing it could have been delivered by FIFA’s sparky former communications director who could then have been red carded for something worth being red carded for and as a hero of the football people.
FIFA needs cleaning up – not even FIFA denies that. And it has a lot of help from the FBI in that regard. Let’s hope the FBI can be trusted to be chipping in with their media driven investigation for the right reasons. One would hate to find out that they had been playing the media all along for their own political objectives…
FIFA needs to go considerably further with its reform – FIFA doesn’t deny that either.
And President Blatter is going, he really is. And it will actually be quite soon. It seems far better for FIFA to follow its laws and arrange the succession democratically rather than be plunged into an even bloodier dogfight for control of world football than we are already witnessing and about to experience. Though in this regard we should be careful what we wish for: if Blatter leaves right away, Issa Hayatou will be interim president. Smart move, that.
The EU is duplicitous in its demands regarding FIFA. After all, they were the crowd that governed the European economy into two major banking crises where lives were changed irrevocably for the worse and trillions of Euro debt was ratcheted up. I didn’t see their leader(s) stepping down when that crisis was taking place. After all, it wasn’t their fault, that crisis was caused by rogue individuals – racketeers? – not many of whom were rooted out.
Hang on, haven’t we just heard that argument at FIFA and laughed at it?
Contact the writer of this column at moc.l1751491784labto1751491784ofdlr1751491784owedi1751491784sni@n1751491784osloh1751491784cin.l1751491784uap1751491784