FIFA’s Blatter Deserves Boot
The decision by FIFA to pull the plug on the second World Club Championship could have a positive outcome after all.
For one thing, it might cost Joseph “Sepp” Blatter his job as FIFA president, which would be a good thing given Blatter’s succession of blunders during his three years in office.
For another, cancellation of the tournament in Spain could bring about a visit to the Rose Bowl by European champion Real Madrid or South American champion Boca Juniors.
Major League Soccer is trying to get either or both to come to Los Angeles to play the Galaxy now that the team’s schedule has a one-month hole in it.
Meanwhile, the Galaxy will get at least some compensation for the minimum of $2.7 million it was to have received for taking part in the world championship.
World soccer’s governing body on Friday said the 12 teams that had qualified for the event will receive an unspecified amount of money.
“Most of the clubs are very, very unhappy,” FIFA General Secretary Michel Zen-Rufinen said at a news conference in Zurich, Switzerland. “We’ll pay them a lump sum to cover their costs in the next few weeks.”
No dollar figure was mentioned, but it will be interesting to see what the Galaxy does with whatever amount comes its way. Originally, the $2.7 million or more was to have been split three ways: between MLS, the Galaxy as a club and the Galaxy players.
That meant a minimum $45,000 windfall for each player, and some already had spent it, or at least decided how to do so.
“Most of the guys obviously were hoping this money was going to come through and maybe were planning on certain things,” Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid said.
“But I don’t think anybody has gone into debt or is going to have to sell the car or go bankrupt on their mortgage or something.”
In the meantime, MLS is trying to rearrange the league schedule to fill the unexpected one-month gap in the Galaxy season July 17-Aug. 15.
Blatter Blather
The World Club Championship was scrapped because Traffic, the Brazilian marketing company charged with selling the event to sponsors and TV broadcasters, failed utterly in its assignment.
Traffic’s miserable effort, combined with the financial collapse of ISL, FIFA’s marketing partner for the World Cup, has thrown the sport into disarray at the highest level and has brought calls for Blatter to step down.
Sweden’s Lennart Johansson, president of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body and the man beaten by Blatter in the FIFA presidential election in 1998, last week called for an extraordinary meeting of FIFA’s executive committee and demanded an explanation for the current financial turmoil.
But Blatter on Friday refused to call such a meeting, denied there is a crisis and said he would not resign.
“We are not in a crisis,” he said in Zurich after a meeting of FIFA’s finance committee. “We are in a challenging situation that we have to master. A crisis is when you don’t know what to do.”
Blatter suggested that ISL’s troubles might have been caused, or at least made worse, by the apparently improper diversion from soccer to other sports of $42.18 million paid to ISL by Brazil’s TV Globo.
“Unfortunately, we had to ascertain that part of this money was used by ISL to pay for something else,” Blatter said.
“This would be criminal; there is no other word for it.”
ISL held marketing rights not only to the 2002 World Cup but also to the 2002 Asian Games, the 2001 world track and field championships and the ATP Masters tennis series, among other events.
UEFA also has suggested that ISL funds had been siphoned from soccer to other accounts.
“As a result of the ISL collapse, we have not received 22.5 million Swiss francs [$12.67 million] owed to us as part of a profit-sharing deal after last year’s European Championship,” said Gerhard Aigner, UEFA’s chief executive.
“It was a big surprise to us when we learned what the bankruptcy situation was with ISL, and had hoped that someone would come in and take over the company.
“That is now unlikely to happen and we have to decide whether to go to court to protect our interests. That money was ours and we believe now it was used for other purposes.”
FIFA is following the money trail and has asked companies that have done business with ISL to send their contracts to FIFA headquarters in Switzerland.
“The only thing we or I know is that in the TV contracts it’s possible--or even probable--that around 75 million Swiss francs [$42.18 million] went to an account that did not belong to . . . the TV account,” Blatter said.
“If this proves true, if this is a secret account, we will have to consider filing suit.”
Bribes Denied
As if he didn’t have enough problems at the moment, Blatter was forced to react last week to media speculation that ISL had a slush fund to bribe sports officials, including Blatter.
“When German newspapers such as Die Welt or Die Suddeutsche write that I would be corrupt, then they have to prove it or they have to expect legal repercussions,” Blatter, who is Swiss, told Blick, a German daily newspaper.
“The Germans already tried to eliminate me in the 1998 elections [for FIFA president] with corruption allegations. It is the same thing now. I have contacted my lawyers.”
Lawyers, it appears, will be kept busy in Zurich as the financial drama continues to unfold.
Unfriendly to Luis
Mexico was trounced, 4-0, by England in Derby, England, on Friday in a game that matched the teams ranked 13th and 14th, respectively, in the world.
Galaxy striker Luis Hernandez was not selected for the trip.
Nor was Hernandez among those named Tuesday to Mexico’s 23-man roster for the FIFA Confederations Cup, to be jointly staged by Japan and South Korea, starting Wednesday.
Mexico, the defending champion, plays Australia, world champion France and South Korea in the first round of the eight-nation Confederations Cup, which is serving as a tuneup for the host countries for next year’s World Cup.
Also taking part are Brazil, Cameroon, Canada and Japan.
If Hernandez is called up by the national team for future friendlies, especially any preceding the 12-nation Copa America in Colombia July 11-29, Schmid, his coach at the Galaxy, said he will be allowed to go.
“The situation with Luis is different now than it was three or four months ago [when he was still on the national team],” Schmid said. “If he’s an automatic choice for [World Cup] qualifying games, then obviously we would be hesitant about releasing him for a friendly.
“But with him right now not being an automatic choice, if an opportunity presented itself where there was a chance for him to get himself back onto the [national] team, I think I owe it to him as a professional to give him that opportunity.”
