Now that the outrage over Sepp Blatter’s unfortunate remarks about racism is receding somewhat, let’s take stock of the entire episode.
Blatter’s comments, as we all know, made headline news across the UK but the fact is they were hardly reported anywhere else; at least not with the same ferocity. Why was that?
How long can Ricardo Teixeira possibly last as the increasingly tarnished head of the 2014 World Cup organising committee? Unpopular in his own country and embroiled in all manner of scandal, Teixeira is the great survivor.
While those around him – the latest being Brazilian Sports Minister Orlando Silva – have either resigned or been kicked out, Teixeira, like a cat with nine lives, seems to wriggle out of every crisis that envelops him and his country.
Sepp Blatter has made much of the need to crack down on corruption following the highly publicised bribery scandal and a raft of other misdemeanours within his organisation. Yet there is mounting criticism of the token punishments handed out by FIFA’s Ethics Committee to those who either took or were offered bundles of cash back in May.
Just when FIFA could have made an example of the guilty Caribbean officials who attended the infamous Trinidad meeting,
Please just sort it out. Sit round the table, thrash out a deal and stop the squabbling before everyone gets thoroughly fed up with the whole interminable saga.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Tottenham Hotspur’s refusal to pull out of the race to take over the Olympic Stadium after next summer’s Games, the entrenched positions of all parties has got to an embarrassing and, quite frankly, irritating stage.
How must the International Olympic Committee (IOC) be feeling when,
It’s one thing spearheading FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s election manifesto against a single opponent who later pulls out anyway. It’s quite another taking on a sceptical global media to try to repair the organisation’s battered standing in the game.
That’s the task facing FIFA’s new communications chief Walter De Gregorio, who takes up his new post on October 1.
Given the need-to-know basis on which the FIFA communications policy has operated in the past,
Messy, sloppy, awkward, embarrassing. Just four of the adjectives that could be applied to the ongoing spat between Swiss club FC Sion and UEFA. Let’s add a fifth: dangerous.
Football fans at large may not be too interested in an argument involving a middle-ranked football club that has little or no international relevance outside its own country. But didn’t they say a similar thing about journeyman Belgian footballer Jean-Marc Bosman all those years ago?
The giant makeshift marquees at the swish Marina da Glória where the 2014 qualifying draw took place have been pulled down and all delegates have now left town. Rio is back to normal daily life. But that, of course, still means a national obsession with football.
Bold and brassy, sexy and spontaneous, there is little doubt that in terms of colour and excitement, this country will put on a show in three years’
Just when Qatar thought it could turn over the page and move on in an atmosphere of trust and integrity, along comes another distasteful saga to give its 2022 World Cup preparations an unwanted headache.
First things first. Mohamed Bin Hammam’s lifetime ban from all football activities in Zurich had nothing whatsoever to do with his country’s landslide victory per se.
Bin Hammam wasn’t initially even in favour of Qtar going ahead and only aligned himself to the bid once it was clear the project was an immoveable force that had the support of those who pull the purse strings.
Football politics is a murky world at the best of times but the experience I have just encountered has made me question whether there are dark and evil forces at play.
The other day I received an email from my mobile phone supplier asking me whether I wanted to reset my password. What password? I’ve never had a password for my mobile phone. My gut instinct – and thank goodness I acted on it –
Disgraceful, scandalous, unbelievable. Just three of the adjectives that have been used over the past few days – and rightly so – to describe FIFA’s decision to close the case against Jack Warner despite overwhelming evidence that their most senior vice-president played a prominent part in world football’s biggest bribery scandal.
Who on earth were FIFA trying to kid by dropping their investigation into the hopelessly tarnished Warner and allowing him to withdraw from football by praising his contribution and inserting that now-infamous phrase,
An emotional Sepp Blatter’s first task after being re-elected FIFA President by a landslide will be to restore his battered reputation.
Despite his final four-year mandate being a foregone conclusion, Blatter looked genuinely moved as he re-entered the Congress hall clutching a bunch of flowers and hugging members of his family after sweeping to victory with 186 votes.
It was widely anticipated that supporters of Mohamed Bin Hammam, the Asian football chief who was Blatter’s challenger until pulling out of the race on Sunday,
Brave and courageous where no-one else feared to tread, or foolhardy and ill-timed in the extreme?
I freely admit I have mixed feelings about England’s doomed effort to have the FIFA Presidential election postponed, the latest blow to their global credibility following the 2018 World Cup debacle.
Anyone in their right mind, given the cloud of collective suspicion and skullduggery enveloping FIFA, should applause a genuine attempt to bring about change after the most sordid episode in the organisation’s history.
Can next week’s FIFA Presidential election possibly go ahead on schedule as a result of the latest seismic bombshell to hit football’s world governing body?
The decision by FIFA to investigate claims that Sepp Blatter’s only challenger, Mohamed Bin Hammam, and the organisation’s longest-serving vice-president, Jack Warner, were both caught up in a bribery sensation is by far and away the most damning of all the recent scandals to strike at the heart of the governing body’s hierarchy.
As Sepp Blatter prepared for a press conference at FIFA House in Zurich on Tuesday about new ways of making football a better spectacle, the only line of awkward questioning he was probably contemplating was why the three most high-profile members of FIFA’s newly-established Task Force 2014 had failed to show up for its debut session.
Then someone, presumably his general secretary, told him the bad news. That in London at exactly the same time,
If at first you don’t succeed…try another tack. That seems to be the strategy of Tottenham Hotspur as they seek to overturn the decision to allow rivals West Ham United to move into the Olympic stadium after next year’s games.
Having lost a considerable amount of pride, as well as a fistful of dollars, in having their case booted firmly into touch by the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC), Spurs have gone away,