FIFA Vote Unlikely To Be Based On Merit

Next week sees FIFA voting on the hosting of the World Cups of 2018 and 2022. Just a few days before that, BBC’s Panorama programme will be aired, which follows on from the Sunday Times expose of “cash for votes” being available from FIFA voting executives. On top of these recent allegations, new ones in the Italian press about the UEFA voting process in awarding the European Championships of 2012 to Poland/Ukraine, have now surfaced.

It could be that the Italian press is exhibiting a bit of belated ‘sour grapes’ - Italy having been originally the bid-to-beat favourite for that tournament. Now the English press could be similarly preparing the ground for the disappointment of losing out in the 2018 bid. But if you, like RTG, were aware that some impropriety had been taking place in FIFA circles for some time, but really weren’t sure of the extent and impact of them, then a little research can reveal some very disturbing facts about FIFA that threaten the very existence of football in the world.

Basically FIFA is a corrupt organisation, above the law, supportive of despots and tyrants, and totally unsuitable to be the guardians of the world’s most popular sport.

“Trust us and you will see confidence will be restored".

Sepp Blatter, FIFA President, October 2010


In RTG’s research, the best and most reliable source of information and facts can be obtained from the investigative journalist, Andrew Jennings. He is the person who is best remembered as being the target of Jack Warner’s, FIFA CONCACAF president, four letter, racist splattered invective in a BBC Panorama programme investigating the 2010 World Cup and Jack Warner’s behaviour in particular. RTG would strongly urge you to check out Mr Jennings’ work. His excellent writing and thoroughly convincing cases were amongst a whole wealth of information available on the web about FIFA and corruption, and it left RTG seething with rage.

This is the summary of the main points that RTG has learnt, but again, we would strongly urge you to do your own research and visit Andrew Jennings’ work in particular.

• Ever since the election of Joao Havelange in 1974 to the FIFA presidency, who bought the       votes of delegates funded by the Adidas corporation, almost every election and many               business decisions have been tainted by improper financial arrangements. 

• FIFA has been effectively run by commercial interests. Adidas in particular, but a host of other so called “partners” eg Coca Cola.

• The public ownership of football has been privatised via the back door and unbeknown to supporters worldwide.

• No surprise that FIFA and other sporting bodies have made their homes in Switzerland. FIFA uses Swiss law to hide salaries, bonuses, perks and expenses paid to FIFA employees. Because FIFA is a ‘non-profit sporting entity’, it is exempt from Swiss anti-corruption laws. However, any employee who finds evidence of corruption, a so called ‘whistle-blower’, can and has been prosecuted by Swiss authorities. No wonder then that Switzerland has long been such a popular haven for Nazis’ and other dictators’ lootings.

• FIFA has consistently given backing to dubious regimes. A dubious regime will quite often install a relative or other favoured courtier as head of their football association. FIFA will support that regime, both morally and fiscally, allowing further looting of that country’s coffers. In return, FIFA’s President gets that country’s vote in future for whatever he needs it for. The notorious Charles Taylor, currently on trial at the Hague for war crimes, installed his son-in-law as Liberian FA chief and he received funds from FIFA. FIFA were particularly busy in the period during the Soviet Union’s break up, when many new associations were created.

• ISL, a company formed from a spin off of Adidas, handled the marketing rights of world cups for many years (amongst other sporting tournaments). ISL collapsed which led to £100 million in losses to FIFA. A previous investigation by Panorama interviewed employees of ISL, who confirmed that the company had paid bribes to FIFA over a period of 20 years.

• The allegations led to some FIFA officials returning money. Others refused and FIFA repaid some money in a secret deal.

• Swiss authorities did investigate ISL between 2005 and 2010. They uncovered $143 million in kick-backs, some connected to FIFA. Proceedings were settled with compensation payments from accused parties without any admission of guilt.

• The company that took over the marketing rights from ISL, Infront, is run by…the nephew of Sepp Blatter!

• Anybody within FIFA who identifies any wrong doing is ostracised and subsequently ousted. In 2002, for example, Michel Zen-Ruffinen, ex-FIFA General Secretary, completed a dossier into financial mismanagement within FIFA. He was immediately sacked. An internal investigation committee by FIFA was stopped by Sepp Blatter, because members broke “confidentiality agreements”.

• When a financial impropriety is identified and highlighted, FIFA’s own Ethics Committee, which has no real authority, is usually given a very limited brief and scope for investigation. Indeed, the UK’s own Sebastian Coe resigned from it, presumably because he realised that it was a vehicle for ‘white washing’ misdemeanours.

• When FIFA’s own auditors revealed that Jack Warner profited by nearly £1 million from ticket re-sales for the 2006 World Cup, they bowed to media pressure and announced that he was to be fined and banned from dealing in tickets in future. Sepp Blatter, a close ally, defended Warner by saying that he wasn’t really responsible because the sales were done through Warner’s son Daryan. Apparently, FIFA insiders claim that the fine, like many others imposed on FIFA officials, will never be paid. Because of Swiss secrecy laws, we’ll never know.

“It could not be evidenced that Mr. Jack Warner had knowledge of the resale of these tickets at a higher price. The resale is certainly forbidden, but the person who did the re-selling is not subject to the FIFA jurisdiction, because it is the son of Jack Warner." 

Sepp Blatter, FIFA President, December 2006


• If any FIFA official is investigated by their own country’s authorities, FIFA quickly threatens to ban that country from international competition. This is exactly what happened to Nigeria following the last World Cup. This makes FIFA officials above the law in individual countries – after all, which politician is going to risk the wrath of his/her own people by getting their country isolated from competition?

• You can see the effect of FIFA’s influence here in England where many media commentators have accused the BBC of being unpatriotic because it continues to highlight the stench of corruption within FIFA – supposedly to the detriment of England’s 2018 bid.

• You can also draw inferences of the type of organisation that FIFA is through their employment of a PR agency to cloud issues and help sweep them under the carpet. This agency includes Union Carbide (of Bhopal disaster infamy) and sanction busting oil companies from the apartheid era amongst its clients.

The above are just some of the highlights of what RTG has learnt. As stated earlier, we ask you to do your own research for evidence, with particular reference to Andrew Jennings. But what can be done about it?

Originally, RTG felt that it would take a US senate style political investigation, perhaps by the UN: after all, it was a Senate Investigation Committee which pursued the IOC over the voting scandal involved in awarding the winter Olympics to Salt Lake City. However, following a lot of good words and angered sentiment being expressed, and some good senatorial suggestions, nothing has really changed.

And that’s the thing: politicians appear reluctant to push through reforms at the risk of alienating their own constituents. They have other pressing issues at the moment and, in the UK’s case (and indeed other countries), wouldn’t that be the pot calling the kettle black?

Let us know what you think and sign up to Reclaim The Game!

Now for a bit of humour from The Keeper

The Keeper

....always plays to the whistle

The Keeper wishes to express his full support for Harry Redknapp and his stance against the FA. Harry said he would refuse to do any post-match interviews for the TV if they fined him for his comments regarding Mark Clattenburg following the Spurs v Man United game. The Keeper was all for it if not only because it would have made a welcome change on Match of the Day not to see shifty old Harry twitching away and looking sideways rather than at the interviewer. His more dignified number two, Joe Jordan, would have made a welcome alternative….

…hmm…then again the Keeper was always a big Harry fan.

Far more pleasing on the eye than either Jordan or Redknapp is Linda Pizzuti (31), the new darling of the Kop, and wife of new owner John Henry (61). She has endeared herself to the Liverpool faithful by learning to tweet their songs. When Liverpool came back from the brink against Napoli last week she was seen to tweet, “You’re not singing anymore”. Delighted to see her embracing English football culture in this way, and keen to know more about their new advocate, the Kop faithful were straight back on the tweet with a host of questions. “Hi Linda, who’s your favourite player?” “Linda, great song. What others do you know?” “Linda, you seem like a great girl. What first attracted you to ageing billionaire John Henry?”

Talking of events over the pond, LA Galaxy reached their conference’s play-off final. Or rather, according to the media over here, they were “led” to the final by David Beckham. What Becks actually did was to simply take a corner that led to a goal and some might say that Galaxy skipper, Landon Donovan, could be more accurately described as having led them to victory. But in the world that is the Beckhams and the media in England, that doesn’t necessarily apply. All he has to do is fart and the English media would bottle it up as Eau de Beckham and sell it.

Perhaps most shocking of all last week were revelations about Arsène Wenger having an affair with a blonde French singer over 20 years his junior. The Keeper was hoping that this shocking exposé would lay to rest once and for all those disgusting paedophile songs that some opposing fans sing at The Emirates. That was until it turned out he’d been seeing her for the last 25 years!

The Right Time to Change the FA

As expected Sepp Blatter got his proposal through to end the continental rotation policy for World Cup hosting. The FA and several bandwagon jumping politicians leapt to advocate the English candidacy for the 2018 tournament. Needless to say England were immediately installed as favourites by the bookies bolstered by the apparent support of such luminaries as Michel Platini and Franz Beckenbauer. Like most English supporters, of course, we are gagging to see a major football tournament on these shores again.

This morning's papers have given estimates as to the cost of a winning bid to be anything between £12-£15M which, if true, would seem to be good value given that the five votes the England 2006 bid secured, cost £10.75M. But, hang on, this is an estimate from English sporting administrators and a British government. The 2012 Olympics original total cost was estimated at £2.5bn and, despite a concerted PR offensive to obscure costs, is widely believed to be currently somewhere between £8bn and £12bn. So, a miscalculation of a factor of between three and five times. Based on that, we should expect that the real 2018 World Cup bid will cost in the order of £40M-£50M.

Frankly, RTG can't give a toss what it costs (within reason), so long as England wins it. However, RTG does not have a lot of confidence in the FA to deliver. Take the 2006 bid where the voting took place in 2000. By all accounts, England had agreed previously with Germany that they would do a quid pro quo deal whereby Germany's support for England's Euro 96 bid would be reciprocated by England's support for Germany's 2006 World Cup bid. Although, Bert Millichip, who was the England negotiator for this arrangement, apparently slept through this part of the meeting. Whatever happened, in hindsight, England were never going to win the 2006 bid as shown by their first round voting elimination after a paltry five votes (out of 24 cast). This despite several large financial inducements made to various national football associations in order to procure their votes.

The only conclusion RTG can find for this ludicrous decision to make the bid was for a load of suits at the FA to go on one big jolly around the globe at what is ultimately the supporters' expense. Indeed, if reports are to be believed, ex-players who fronted the bid were making more money than they ever did as full-time professionals (£400K split between Sirs Charlton and Hurst). Little wonder that there is already an orchestrated media campaign by certain parties to ensure their names are in the hat for the next round. Hic! Shhhorry.

Some people might say that the 2006 bid provided a good 'dry run' for future bids. In this case, this was clearly not so. The perception amongst voting associations was that England had 'done the dirty' on Germany and that their programme of financial incentives was underhand. This included funding Peter Withe as manager of the Thailand national team, a friendly against Saudi Arabia, Manchester United's participation in the farcical FIFA 'World Club Championship' amongst others. The bottom line is that, if anything, this actually damaged England's reputation in world football. Imagine the damage and embarasment that would have been caused by a half-finished Wembley Stadium!

Frankly, that £10.75M could have been spent a lot more wisely on the constructive development of English football. Why, for instance, with the total dearth of English management talent in the country, is there no official FA-backed management academy? We appear to be wedded in this country to the belief that only top level ex-players can successfully manage a team. One wonders what would have happened to an English Mourinho or Wenger. But that's the subject of yet another debate.

For several years, England has been the richest footballing nation in the world. We should be a superpower in football given the financial backing and a population of 50 million people. But as already stated in previous RTG posts, we have not come close to winning anything apart from 1990. It is clear the archaic FA is neither structured nor staffed to be able to take advantage of England football's financial muscle.

Surely this bid represents the ideal opportunity to restructure the whole game within England to, not only successfully win the bid, but also win the World Cup!

Reclaim the Game - The Week's Events

• Various reserve teams slogged out the fourth round of the Carling Cup over the last two days. Unusually, the fifth round, ie the quarter finals, feature Premeirship only teams and, indeed, three of the big four. RTG leaves you to draw your own conclusions as to the significance of this because we're not really sure.
• Congratulations go out to Petr Cech for winning his libel case against Kelvin MacKenzie and the Sun. Mr MacKenzie claimed in his Sun column that the Cech family dog had attacked his own dog whilst out on a walk. Once again it has been shown that the Sun and Mr MacKenzie write lies and manipulate the truth. The trouble is they have an enormous impact on football. It will be hard to get things changed for football in this country with the vested interests of News International and its sister company BSkyB. Especially grateful to Cech for being brave enough to take on the Sun and a fine gesture to donate his 'substantial' damages to charity.

Blatter's Proposal Only Scratches the Surface of Change

Our favourite 'champion of the game' and esteemed President of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, has actually done England a favour for once and cleared the way toward us making a bid to host the World Cup in 2018. He is suggesting an end to the current rotational policy between the various global football associations that currently dictates where the tournament is staged. This has naturally been opposed by executive committee member of Concacaf (and who could only be American with this name), Chuck Blazer, as rotation should decree that it be held in North or Central America. In other words, being totally realistic, the USA. And, of course, Chuck is not going to give up the chance to attract all that sponsorship revenue and the boost to the MLS.

For once RTG is in agreement with Sepp Blatter, if only because it is farcical for the competitive nature of the bidding process when only one nation in three of the major football associations can even hope to host it - namely, Brazil in South America, the USA in North America and South Africa in Africa (and they, reportedly, are struggling). As you'd expect from RTG, we fear also that a US bid will regurgitate some of the issues that concern us greatly such as: extended half-times, four quarters, larger goals and, of course, rampant commercialisation.

But this highlights one area only where the World Cup is falling short as the most popular sporting spectacle on the planet. Currently you have a situation where, in Europe, (where new countries are being created at a rate that will keep cartographers in gainful employment well into the next century) you have 62 nations fighting for 13 places (in 2006). This despite having 21 of the top 32 teams in the FIFA World Rankings. The USA and Mexico effectively get a bye straight into the finals, as do Argentina and Brazil though they have to play 18 games to achieve it. Plus, they can end up with five places from just 10 teams. Europe is clearly the strongest continent in World football, and looks to remain so for the foreseeable future and yet, because of the archaic and political machinations of FIFA, the quality of the tournament is being compromised. Whereas, of course, it should be the highest quality of football anywhere. Nowadays, the Champions League is easily of a much higher standard.

With so many nationalities now playing football all over the globe, the time has surely come for a rationalisation and reorganisation of international football tournaments and fixtures - removing the geographical element of qualiying groups. That is, pick qualifying groups based on seedings and world rankings.

We have to now be looking at reorganising groups in order that we get the 32 best nations in what is the World Championship of football. We should have some form of pre-qualifying for the smaller nations. It seems ludicrous that qualifying for the major football tournament in the World could come down to having to beat Lichtenstein by 8 goals. OK, we admit we're still bitter about losing out to Italy in 1978 because we didn't beat Luxembourg by enough goals. But the point is very valid.

In 1974, England failed to reach West Germany after losing out to Poland in a group that contained just three teams. Contrast that with the current Euro 2008 qualifying groups of seven to eight countries. Which means we played four games in 1974 to qualify and now we have to play a minimum of 12. Surely we should be looking to play less games not more (from a sporting not commercial point of view). This might mean Wembley has to host a few more NFL matches or Giant Wheel Monster Truck racing events but so be it.

In addition, with groups that are based on ability and not specific geographic areas, and playing less games, we should be able to co-ordinate national and international schedules more effectively. South Americans based in Europe have to be away 18 times during qualification. With the Club versus Country issue brewing, surely this would be an excellent compromise in addressing the needs of both national and club interests. Watch out for more of this come the African Nations Cup in the new year (ridiculously, still played every two years). If our aim is to improve African football, why are we giving top clubs every reason not to recruit African players? A point already made by Sir Alex Ferguson by not having any in his current squad.

We're sure people will find many reasons for dismissing these ideas - not least because it will involve fewer qualifying matches and less revenue. We're not saying we have all the answers but the point is that currently they're not even being debated. If there is only one thing we should do with immediate effect it is to get rid of these pointless, mickey mouse confederations cups in between tournament years that just heap more unnecessary matches on tired players and a fatigued supporter base - or as the new football oligarchy would like us to be known, "GUESTS".

RTG - The Weekend's Events

• Despite being in Third Division, sorry the LDV Windscreen, sorry League 1 whatever, Leeds United recorded the fourth highest attendance in England this weekend. Admirable indeed. An entertaining game against Millwall, featured in virtually all the Sunday papers, took Leeds into the play off spots despite their 15 point penalty deduction at the beginning of the season. Strangely, no mention of the pitched battles involving riot police charging Leeds fans and Millwall fans being held back inside the ground for hours. A Leeds source close to us says it was worse than anything he'd seen in the 1970s/1980s. While the Yorkshire Post reported that there were minor skirmishes in the ground with the 800 or so Millwall fans trying to break through police lines to taunt Leeds fans during the game, no mention was made of any other incident that we can find in local or national press or the media.
• For all those supporters turning up at Old Trafford on Saturday at 3:00pm.....congratulations. You got to watch a game at last! Don't worry. 'Normality' is resumed next weekend at 12:45pm on Saturday at The Emirates. Don't forget to set your alarms!

Hats Off. Take a Bow (or not)!

Player of the Week - Cesc Fabregas. Top scorer in the Premiership from midfield and rescued a point for Arsenal. Frankie. You know what you've got to do.

Hero of the Week - Martin Jol's nephew. The only person who appeared to have the balls to tell him what was going on. i.e. that he'd been sacked (in a crowd of 36,000).

Villain of the Week - Daniel Levy. In amongst news of his inevitable dismissal, we hear that 'his recruits' for this season's assault on fourth place were actually not his choice at all. Spurs put their money where their mouth was. But whose mouth? Certainly not the manager's who has paid the ultimate price. Levy's pathetic attempts to justify his and his board's conduct during this period is incredible and cannot possibly instil confidence in the board from the supporters. RTG says, "sack the board". Oh! Unfortunately they can't!

Shock of the Week - Besiktas beating Liverpool. Leaving aside the comedy defending, they were the only English club to lose in the Champions League this week.

Cliche of the Week - I'm totally committed to continuing to help and seeing out the remainder of my contract.