Fifa

[Stavros]

UK readers and others with an interest in football/soccer will be aware that the world governing body, FIFA, is being accused of bribes, corruption and so on, by Lord Triesman, formerly head of the Football Association of England -in fact he has indicated before that he was unhappy at some of the things that he was exposed to, but only now has he given any details.

I dont know what proportion of what he says is true, but it seems to me that, like the Olympics, if you have a bidding/tendering system for major sporting events, you are inviting under-the-counter deals: those of us who love football are not surprised to find reps from small countries who have no record of success in the game but are nevertheless voting members, making 'unreasonable demands' -but why do it anyway? Why not have a rotation in place so that the world cup takes place in North America, then Western Europe, the Africa, then Asia, then South America, then Eastern Europe, then Australasia, then Central America, then the Far East, and back again.

Football is BRILLIANT! (but not the geezers who run it)...

[robertlouis]

I agree wholeheartedly with everything you say, Stavros - and thanks for adding to my thoughts on Seve, by the way - and I think that it's the process and the formula applied in particular to the lobbying for the Olympics and the football World Cup that deserve the greatest scrutiny. They both provide, and in certain cultures almost demand, active intervention, involving everything from persuasion to serious corruption.

It used to be simpler, when only developed countries could afford to stage either tournament. Now, understandably, everyone wants to get in on the act.

However, I don't think that simply setting up a four-yearly rota of continents or other geographical definitions will solve the problems on its own. The corruption and its associated practices are too well entrenched for that.

In the meantime, we've ended up with the grotesque situation in which Brazil will be hosting both events within a three year span, and even worse, the World Cup has gone to Russia where racism is endemic and violent. Just wait for what happens in Poland and Ukraine, equally unreconstructed in terms of their racism, jointly host the UEFA championship next year.

And finally, the coup de grace which saw Qatar getting the World Cup in 2022 - a country in which there is no serious tradition or history of the game and therefore no infrastructure to speak of, homosexual acts are illegal and may even attract a death sentence, and where temperatures at the scheduled time of the tournament will be in the mid 40s.

If it wasn't football, you couldn't make it up.

[SammiValentine]

FIFA, UEFA, even the FA themselves- all bad knobheads.

Far to much money in football - which is what breeds bribary and corruption.

FU SKY, FU MURDOCH. Beautiful game? Ha - most stadiums are full of customers/ whoppers, sat there recording everything on mobile phones, wearing jester hats, they are not supporters, sat there expecting entertainment - not local tribal passion and banter and blaaa - and what causes this moooooooooneymoneymoney skyskysky!

football needs serious tweakage, wage caps, ticket price regultions , anything!!

ooops sorry footy is my most masc aspect , well minus the cock.

ok back to sun bathing and then need to get ready to shoot lol xxx

[SammiValentine]

heh doh was on about state of the game in blighty generally. i realise some countries are not quite as bad

[robertlouis]

FIFA, UEFA, even the FA themselves- all bad knobheads.

Far to much money in football - which is what breeds bribary and corruption.

FU SKY, FU MURDOCH. Beautiful game? Ha - most stadiums are full of customers/ whoppers, sat there recording everything on mobile phones, wearing jester hats, they are not supporters, sat there expecting entertainment - not local tribal passion and banter and blaaa - and what causes this moooooooooneymoneymoney skyskysky!

football needs serious tweakage, wage caps, ticket price regultions , anything!!

ooops sorry footy is my most masc aspect , well minus the cock.

ok back to sun bathing and then need to get ready to shoot lol xxx

Hope you're enjoying the break in the sun, Sammi. What you're saying is essentially correct as far as most of the premiership goes, where fans long ago became milking machines to pay inflated wages for overpriced goons.

However, it's a different picture in the lower leagues where it's pretty much a hand to mouth existence for most clubs, and beyond the fat cats and established premier league clubs there's still genuine passion - Blackpool's fans and their football have been a joy this season.

But here's a tale of what football is really all about. My team, through family tradition, is Dunfermline, so although coming myself from Glasgow, I've never had any feeling for either of the Old Firm clubs. My dad, however, came from Cowdenbeath, a dismal wee mining town in Fife, and he took me to a game at Central Park to watch the Blue Brazil (now THERE's a sense of irony!) play Stenhousemuir one bleak grey sleety freezing Saturday in February in front of a crowd of 200 or so stoic souls and an arthritic dog. It ended 0-0, and as we trudged back, soaked to the skin and frozen to the soul, my dad came out with these immortal ( and very presbyterian) words:

"Let that be a lesson to you, son. That is what football is all about when you boil it down - needless suffering."

It was a lesson in existential futility that I've never forgotten.

[Stavros]

Jim White in today's Telegraph criticisesLord Triesman his point being that if his Lordship knew the bidding process was bent, then whey did he not say something and prevent England continuing to spend millions of £ in a futile exercise...

...meanwhile the FA Cup, which used to be the climax of the season, is apparently just an aside to the Premiership, a cultural downgrading that I feel is an insult to the game -only a handful of teams can ever win the Premier League, but anyone can win the cup, which is what gives the competition its kudos, how else could teams like Birmingham or Stoke -and their fans, experience the glory?

Sad times.

[robertlouis]

Jim White in today's Telegraph criticisesLord Triesman his point being that if his Lordship knew the bidding process was bent, then whey did he not say something and prevent England continuing to spend millions of £ in a futile exercise...

...meanwhile the FA Cup, which used to be the climax of the season, is apparently just an aside to the Premiership, a cultural downgrading that I feel is an insult to the game -only a handful of teams can ever win the Premier League, but anyone can win the cup, which is what gives the competition its kudos, how else could teams like Birmingham or Stoke -and their fans, experience the glory?

Sad times.

Never mind, Stavros. Let's cheer Stoke this afternoon, a modest club with modest means showing the big spenders how to run things well on a tight budget, with per capita the loudest and arguably most fervent fans in the league. They've earned the right to be in the final today - Man City have bought the right, and that's a big difference.

[SammiValentine]

The "magic" of the cup has been rekindled a bit the last couple of years - even the league cup has had a kick in the right direction this year (interest wise)

Saying that as my dad says cup final day, it will never be the same as the old days, to much mass media and kick off times dictated by money - which is what messed Saturday up.

[robertlouis]

The "magic" of the cup has been rekindled a bit the last couple of years - even the league cup has had a kick in the right direction this year (interest wise)

Saying that as my dad says cup final day, it will never be the same as the old days, to much mass media and kick off times dictated by money - which is what messed Saturday up.

And it wasn't much of a game either, although most FA Cup finals are anti-climaxes. Last really good one was Liverpool vs West Ham in 2006, when Captain Fantastic Stevie G effectively won it on his own.

[robertlouis]

This article from yesterday's Observer pretty well sums up just how crap the FA are when it comes to representing the national interest. In Sammi's pithy summary - all bad knobheads.

Grovelling FA are a laughing stock after World Cup bidding farce by Paul Hayward

After Lord Triesman's explosive allegations, the English game is guilty either of monumental naivety about how Fifa operate or of ignoring the organisation's seedy side

'Every day would be a beautiful day,' the prime minister promised. Out came the royalty card (dashing Prince William). On to the stage stepped the alternative monarch (David Beckham). Many of the grandest names in English sport were dragged into this epic farce.

Row back to December in Zurich, where the British prime minister is trying to seduce Fifa into awarding England the 2018 World Cup. When the great phrases of David Cameron are gathered up for posterity, this one will feature highly. To Sepp Blatter and his cardinals, the PM says: "We really believe that we know what you want."

Badly advised and wasting his time in Switzerland, Cameron might have thought he was addressing an international parliament, when even the most junior civil servant should have been wise enough to tell him he was prostrating himself before an inscrutable private club of 24 executive committee members, some of them on the make.

"Every day would be a beautiful day," the prime minister promised. Out came the royalty card (dashing Prince William). On to the stage stepped the alternative monarch (David Beckham). Many of the grandest names in English football and sport were dragged into this epic farce as Beckham evoked his late "Grandad Joe" and Manchester City's Eddie Afekafe spoke of the game as salvation for youngsters from deprived areas.

Afekafe, and many others, were at the court of Blatter out of a sense of patriotism and optimism about their country. But who led them there? Who sold them the lie? After Lord Triesman's explosive allegations before a parliamentary inquiry, the English game is guilty either of monumental naivety about how Fifa operate or simply chose to ignore the kind of experience Triesman had been having on the campaign trail, and elected to play the game anyway.

To think naivety was the problem, we have to believe Triesman kept all this to himself, sharing nothing with his 2018 bid colleagues before a newspaper sting forced his resignation. Andy Anson, the chief executive who called the BBC "unpatriotic" for running a Panorama programme on widespread corruption days before the 2018 vote, evidently never came across any evidence of skulduggery and walked round Zurich with earmuffs and a blindfold on.

The point is that England took their circus to the lakes quite willing to overlook Fifa's seedy side as long as they could go home with the prize: the World Cup, which is devalued with each allegation. The accusation – denied – that representatives of Qatar 2022 paid cash for votes has rendered the decision to send football's biggest carnival to a tiny Gulf state risible on more than merely logistical grounds.

"An excellent, remarkable pitch" is how Blatter described England's slick presentation, and then Fifa binned it, out of contempt for the English game and its administrators and because the real business was going on elsewhere. The Football Association didn't know that, we are expected to believe, until Triesman used parliamentary privilege to settle a few old scores. As the Panorama and Sunday Times allegations deepened, a few isolated voices called for England to withdraw from the whole burlesque, but the FA and their partners pressed on anyway, scoring a princely two votes (one was from their own Geoff Thompson) in the ballot.

Keep your eye on the FA at this point, because this was its chance to apologise for grovelling to Jack Warner, a Fifa vice-president, who is now accused of asking for money to build an "education centre" and buy World Cup television rights for Haiti, around the time Beckham was being sent to woo him and the England team were being flown to the Caribbean to play Trinidad & Tobago (this toadying still failed to secure Warner's vote).

So what to do next, in the snow of winter? Renounce Fifa or reintegrate, play the game, cultivate Blatter's Vatican? One man – Roger Burden (great name), the FA acting chairman – stood down, saying he could no longer trust or work with such a dubious organisation. But overall the integrationist argument won. The FA could not stand on the fringes, throwing rocks. They had to be involved.

The next important date is the end of April, when nominations closed for the office of Fifa presidency. Blatter is seeking re-election. He is opposed by Qatar's Mohamed bin Hammam, who is enduring his own PR calamity. Amadou Diallo, who is accused of being Qatar's 2022 fixer, is a close friend of Bin Hammam and worked for Fifa for more than six years. When the application deadline passed, Uefa declared in favour of Blatter, which meant that Thompson, England's representative, had by definition supported the re-election of a president who sits at the top of a dysfunctional culture. There was certainly no suggestion the FA would be opposing Blatter (this was before Triesman's parliamentary blitz).

Incredibly, the FA board meeting was scheduled for 19 May – after the Fifa deadline and after Uefa's pro‑Blatter declaration. Diary confusion, incompetence or institutionalised timidity? Or all three. Suddenly, post Triesman, the FA are now emboldened. "I don't think it [supporting Blatter] would go down very well," announced David Bernstein, the new FA chairman, pulling out the rabbit of an "abstention" while others on the FA board go on lobbying for Bin Hammam.

So what we see is a governing body reacting to events, avoiding responsibility, being trampled on by Fifa and Uefa and lacking moral leadership, even now, when they could denounce and disassociate themselves from Fifa in their current form without losing anything. No wonder Blatter and his gang just laughed at them in Zurich.