FIFA Can’t Hide From Failings
Children are an integral part of Asia’s first World Cup, just as they have been in the last several tournaments.
Before each of the 64 matches in Korea/Japan ‘02, it is children who carry the yellow Fair Play banner onto the field, and it is children from around the world who stand in front of the players as they line up for the national anthems.
Children are something useful for FIFA to hide behind. Children project an image of innocence. There is nothing corrupt about children, so therefore there must be nothing corrupt about world soccer’s ruling body.
Sadly, the truth is just the opposite.
The latest World Cup is not yet two weeks old and already the ugly side of FIFA has been seen, albeit briefly, when the public relations facade was peeled back and the truth was revealed by FIFA’s actions, not by its words.
First there was the matter of the pirated television images of World Cup games being shown in North Korea. No one is sure how the North Koreans got the videotapes, but FIFA demanded an investigation.
It wanted impoverished North Korea, a land where another corrupt regime holds sway, to be financially accountable--in other words, to pay for broadcast rights. That simply would not happen.
Instead of seeing the opportunity to use sport to open doors that politicians have failed miserably to open, the money-grubbing men of FIFA saw only lost revenue. Shame on them.
Then there was the matter of Rivaldo, the Brazilian forward who made a mockery of fair play during Brazil’s game against Turkey. When a Turkish player fired the ball at Rivaldo, who was waiting to take a corner kick, it was clear to everyone that the ball hit his leg.
Yet Rivaldo crumpled backward clutching at his face and remained on the ground, feigning injury. South Korean referee Kim Young-Joo bought it and ejected the Turkish player, Hakan Unsal, meaning that the Turks had to play a man short and that Unsal would miss the next game.
Afterward, Rivaldo admitted that he faked injury intentionally to get Unsal red-carded. Fair play? You bet.
“[FIFA] told us that any action designed to fool a referee would be punished, but it’s our players who are being punished,” said Haluk Ulusoy, president of the Turkish soccer federation.
The outrage caused by the incident was widespread--everywhere but in Brazil, naturally--and FIFA was widely expected to suspend Rivaldo, thus handing him the same punishment his unsportsmanlike behavior had inflicted on Unsal.
Not a chance. FIFA buckled under the pressure of not wanting to harm the four-time world champions and Rivaldo was given a $7,350 fine. The amount is pocket change to a millionaire player.
Once again, FIFA served its image, not the sport.
Finally, and most odious of all, there is the matter of Mohammed Bin Hammam, a FIFA executive committee member from Qatar and a key ally of FIFA President Joseph “Sepp” Blatter in his recent successful reelection bid.
It appears that World Cup tickets that Bin Hammam had purchased for the upcoming Sweden-Argentina game somehow ended up on the black market, where they were bought for $500 over their face value.
Five hundred dollars might not seem like much except for the fact that FIFA executive committee members are allowed to buy as many tickets as they want at face value. The guideline says there is a limit of 10, but it is only a guideline, not a rule.
Bin Hammam has left the World Cup and returned to Qatar, where he has been supplied the serial numbers of the tickets in question and has been asked to investigate how they might have shown up on the black market.
In other words, he has been given time to concoct a story that FIFA can pass off as the truth. The groundwork already has been laid.
“The general secretary has been in touch with Bin Hammam and he was totally, genuinely shocked and amazed; totally at a loss to understand it,” FIFA spokesman Keith Cooper said.
The general secretary, of course, is Michel Zen-Ruffinen, the man who maintains that corruption is rife within world soccer’s ruling body and who, because he tried to expose that corruption, has been fired by Blatter, effective July 4.
Soccer is a beautiful sport, one that has aroused passions around the globe for three-quarters of a century. Because of the huge interest, the sport is a money-spinner for those who control it.
Unfortunately, those who control it are more interested in lining their own pockets than in the sport itself. Yet soccer prevails.
On Sunday night, thousands of fans lined up outside the World Cup Stadium in Daegu, waiting for the chance to buy one of 5,000 tickets that were to be made available at 6 a.m. Monday for the South Korea-United States game.
Their number included many children, innocent, every one. And each one with more moral fiber than all of FIFA’s leaders combined.
