Like the dog that did not bark in the night in the Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Hound of the Baskervilles, one of the most fascinating aspects of the FIFA crisis is that one group has said nothing: the players.
It is astonishing to consider, given all that has been written about the problems of FIFA, that there is very little about what the players think. Their silence has been stunning.
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Sepp Blatter always complains that he is a leader who is not as powerful as his title of FIFA President may suggest. For a start, he is in the odd position that he cannot choose his own cabinet, something that Barack Obama or David Cameron would find intolerable.
So Blatter’s cabinet, the FIFA Executive Committee, are elected by the Confederations and foisted on him. There is nothing Blatter can do about that. He has to live with their choices.
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’
England’s defeat to Germany in the 2010 World Cup triggered the inquiry into football governance, so humiliating was the nature of the 4-1 loss, and yesterday the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee which took on the inquiry proposed its solution to the questions thrown up by that humbling experience. It is this context in which their report on football governance should be seen; a means to an ends, that end being the success of English football,
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.
FIFA is facing its own News International moment with its corruption scandal. News International thought that by saying phone hacking was the work of one rogue reporter, Clive Goodman, the royal correspondent, and his confidant Glenn Mulcaire, it could isolate the problem. As the world now knows, it could not.
FIFA is in danger of making a similar mistake if it thinks the corruption scandal has been dealt with once the Ethics Committee finishes its work on July 23.
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 –
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Is there anybody at FIFA minding the shop? Sepp Blatter, the President, clearly does not give the impression he is.
He may strut about as if he is the head of a unique Vatican-style sporting state, no territory or army, but through football, as the Vatican does through religion, reaching out to places no politician can. But the FIFA corruption crisis has exposed the fact that while Blatter is a master tactician who can turn almost every short term situation to his advantage,
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,
Can Sepp Blatter turn round the fortunes of FIFA like Juan Antonio Samaranch once did the International Olympic (IOC)?
To even pose this question shows how far we have come from the dark days of the Olympic Movement back in 1998.
Also, it shows how much we now need to re-evaluate the role of the Spaniard.
FIFA is providing the press and blogs with ample ammunition this week and continues to run the risk of imploding or perhaps rendering itself irrelevant with almost daily announcements.
In fact, the world probably feels FIFA is more a soap opera rather than a highly respected world sports governing body.
The biggest question so far I have seen is how FIFA should deal with governance issues.
The past, in football, is not a foreign country. It is ever present and always points the way to what is going to happen. The FIFA Congress in Zurich was a wonderful illustration of that.
What it showed was that Sepp Blatter uses the football past as if he owns it, and the English Football Association never seem to learn from history.
Sepp Blatter proved the ultimate politician, as he has done so often in the past,
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.
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One is rarely quite 100 percent sure with FIFA.
But it now looks like Joseph Blatter will get the go-ahead on Wednesday to extend his stint in the governing body’s top seat to 17 years.
Unless 75 percent of the organisation’s 208 member associations vote down the congressional agenda, it is hard to see what can stop the ‘election’ from going ahead, in spite of a campaign that has achieved the seemingly impossible by turning FIFA into even more of an international laughing-stock than it was before.