We’ve just finished
reading Badfellas: FIFA Family
at War (Mainstream Publishing, London, 2003), John Sugden and Alan
Tomlinson’s latest exposé of the organisation that runs the game worldwide. It’s a fascinating account of the intrigue and corruption
that surround FIFA operations.
We were relieved to discover our
scathing criticisms a few years ago of the Football Association’s disastrous
World Cup 2006 hosting bid were more than justified.
We were also reminded of the role the F.A. played in Sepp Blatter’s
ascendancy to the FIFA presidency in 1998.
It voted for Blatter, switching at the last-minute from its support of
Lennart Johansson, UEFA’s president, who had promised to bring
transparency and reform to FIFA in the wake of the murky financial dealings
surrounding Brazilian João Havelange’s quarter of a century in the FIFA
presidency.
Blatter, long-time FIFA executive secretary under
Havelange, was the Brazilian’s man, and his victory ended any hopes that
FIFA would become more democratic and open.
It ensured that FIFA’s highly questionable dealings remained secret,
immune from review, and that FIFA would continue to do business as usual,
behind closed doors. The F.A.’s
switch, just another in a long line of unprincipled actions it took in
connection with its obviously doomed World Cup hosting bid, came because Johansson
was firmly committed to Germany’s bid.
_______________
Who's Childish -
Not to Mention Hypocritical?
21 September
2004
“Childish” was the
word of the moment as the English football media and many football big-wigs,
including Sepp Blatter, vented their rage at England’s players for having
the audacity to refuse to speak to the media following their 2-1 World Cup
qualifying victory against Poland. The
players were objecting to abuse from the media in the wake of their 2-2
qualifying draw with Austria a few days earlier.
They made it clear they were not protesting mere criticism, but stories
that went well beyond that.
Who is it that is childish, we ask, when The Sun
sends a donkey to Poland to play goal for England, and when the media in
general, including the broadsheets, churn out endless reams of print devoted
to the private sex lives of Wayne Rooney, David Beckham, national coach Sven-Göran
Eriksson and other England figures, all of it boring and utterly irrelevant to
team performance. They devote
their efforts to this kind of tripe while, with rare exception, leaving
FIFA’s mismanagement of the game unexamined, bought off by a few free drinks
and trinkets passed out as gifts.
When one is abused, it makes eminent sense to stop
dealing with those who do the abusing. The
fact that the players are well-paid does not, as some of the blinkered idiots
who write for the national press apparently believe, mean they must put up
with abuse without protest.
The English media are not strong on introspection,
however, and not a word of criticism, much less abuse, appeared about the way
the media cover the England players. Instead,
they almost universally claimed the England players’ refusal to talk was
disrespectful to England fans and deprived young stars Jermaine Defoe and Paul
Robinson of their chance to talk to the media about their performances against
Poland.
Frankly, all the boycott deprived the media of was
another opportunity to make fun of the players' continual invocations of “at
the end of the day,” “massive” and “you know.”
We’ve rarely seen a comment worth reading from England’s players.
We’d wager that some of the media hypocrites who
cover the England team are well-known in foreign brothels. Fuelled with drink and armed with foul mouths and vicious
tempers, some of them have made idiots of themselves at various venues around
the world over the years.
Their hypocrisy never dawns on them.
A year or two ago, one of the nation’s leading sport journalists
transferred from a financially troubled newspaper to another of more prestige
at a much higher salary. Among
his first columns for his new newspaper was one blasting Rio Ferdinand for
lack of loyalty in moving from financially troubled Leeds United to Manchester
United for more money.
___________________________________________________________________________________
England
Football Online