The whiff of corruption continues to bedevil FIFA
One month from Tuesday, on Dec. 2, the devils will gather around a possibly pentagon-shaped table in Zurich, Switzerland, checking their pitchforks at the door and tucking their pointed tails beneath their chairs.
With winter fast approaching, there might be a fire blazing in the hearth. That would be appropriate, warmth and devils going hand in hand, as it were.
Of course, things have been a little too hot lately for the devils. Each new suggestion of corruption and each new accusation of collusion, bribery and devil-knows-what has raised the temperature at soccer’s global headquarters by several uncomfortable degrees.
But then, if you want to be a FIFA executive committee member with all the power and all the perks that entails — in other words, running your cloven hooves roughshod over the sport while filling your pockets with gold — you either stand the heat or get out of Hades.
“Our society is full of devils, and these devils, you find them in football,” said Joseph “Brimstone” Blatter, the man whose house of cards (all of them jokers) threatens to go up in flames because of the scandal surrounding the upcoming votes on the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments.
There are four bidding interests for 2018 — England, Russia and joint bids by Portugal-Spain and Belgium-Netherlands.
In the case of 2022, Australia, Japan, Qatar, South Korea and the U.S. are the bidders.
Considering how one unsavory detail after another has come to light about the (for want of a better word) “ethics” of certain FIFA executive committee members, the Dec. 2 twin votes should have been postponed.
But Blatter, taking a page from the Richard Nixon school of dealing with unpleasant news, is stonewalling.
“There was never a question of changing anything,” the testy and troubled 74-year-old Swiss former public relations man said at a news conference last week. “We cannot stop the match which has already started.”
At the same time, Blatter, who constantly advocates “transparency” in everything, said “a secret ballot” would decide which nations will stage the World Cup in eight years and 12 years.
The inherent contradiction apparently is lost on the man who has worked for FIFA for 35 years, has been its president for the last 12 years, and wants to continue in that role, collecting meaningless medals from every fly-speck-on-the-map Third World country he can.
The very fact that the voting is done behind closed doors by a select group of often odious men invites all sorts of irregularity. You might as well have the Bell City Council in charge of FIFA.
Even recent encouragement from Jacques Rogge, the Belgian president of the International Olympic Committee, urging Blatter to clean house cannot be relied upon to have any real effect. Not when the rot starts at the top.
“I encouraged him [Blatter] to do exactly what he has done and to try to clean out as much [corruption] as possible,” Rogge said last week in Mexico.
The IOC went through similar embarrassing times and expelled 10 of its members in 1999 in the wake of the bribery scandal surrounding Salt Lake City’s bid to stage the 2002 Winter Games.
In FIFA’s case, two executive committee members, Amos Adamu of Nigeria and Reynald Temarii of Tahiti, have been provisionally suspended after being embroiled in a bribes-for-votes scandal uncovered in a sting operation by reporters from England’s Sunday Times. Both have denied any wrongdoing.
Four other FIFA officials also were suspended pending an investigation now under way.
To judge by his reaction, Blatter is either out of touch with reality or is doing his darnedest to limit the damage and prevent the discovery of even more damning evidence.
“I am sorry to have to inform you of a very unpleasant situation which has developed in relation to an article published today in the Sunday Times, entitled ‘World Cup votes for sale,’” Blatter told executive committee members via the FIFA website.
“The information in the article has created a very negative impact on FIFA and on the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.”
You think?
Later, Blatter blamed the media for creating the fuss. He didn’t like the message, so he targeted the messenger. “One can ask whether it is appropriate for newspapers and journalists to set traps for people,” he said.
Meanwhile, the suspicion that the FIFA hierarchy has been rife with corruption for decades still lingers.
Blatter has promised to try to “bring back credibility to FIFA,” but there can be no assurance that everyone in soccer “behaves like we would like,” he said.
“Nobody can give a guarantee, but we have to fight for fair play, we have to fight for respect, and especially we have to fight that the people [who] are in charge of FIFA . . . behave as they should do, and if this is not the case then we have to intervene.
“Trust us and you will see confidence will be restored.”
Sorry, Sepp, but trust is in devilishly short supply these days. You know how it is.
