Founded in 1904 the intent was to oversee International competition of the worlds most beautiful game. Starting off with good intentions and eight nations it now finds itself 110 years old, with a member base of over 200 countries, and episode after episode of embarrassment. If you go to their website you will see their mission statement is still ‘For the game. For the world’. On recent, and frankly, all too familiar events and allegations, I would argue it would be more honest if it instead read, ‘Forget the game. Own the world!’
Earlier this week the only recently re-elected President, Sepp Blatter, announced his retirement and a huge sigh of relief went up from a large portion of the soccer community. With the arrests before the election on Friday it seemed likely that Blatter would once again hold on to the reigns, weather the storm and basically remain the Teflon Don of the sport. But is Blatter the main problem at FIFA? It would certainly be foolish to believe that to remove Blatter would end all the alleged corruption overnight.
Only recently another ex FIFA official, Mr Chuck Blazer, admitted to accepting bribes in connection with the 2010 World Cup in South Africa along with one years before in 1998. It was he who was taking bribes before Blatter got into office. It was he who convinced, and then managed Jack Warners run for CONCACAF Presidency in 1989 before then initiating the investigations into both Warner and Mohammed Bin Hammam 22 years later.
In case it had slipped your mind, Warner, owned a travel and vacation company, profiting from selling 2002 World Cup tickets. In 2006, for the Germany World Cup, that same company was offering packages for $30,000, vastly marking up ticket prices. Abusing his position to obtain personal profit and failing to declare the business venture are just two of the questionable actions.
The FIFA’s ethics committee investigated and told Warner to sever all family ties with the company, he agreed but his son still remained a director throughout the 2006 World Cup, so you get an idea how well the ethics committee works at FIFA.
Asking for match fees for the Trinidad and Tobago friendly games along with funds donated to the Haiti Earthquake victims from T&T were all requested to be paid into Warners personal bank account. All this in over a decade and yet he was only indicted last week.
So Blatter is seen as the center of the rot within FIFA, and he is right now, but what about other FIFA Presidents? Before Blatter Joao Havelange, a Brazilian lawyer, was at the helm.
He too was accused of accepting gifts for votes and receiving $1 million from ISL (International Sports and Leisure). When Blatter took over FIFA it was acknowledged that they had known about the bribes but didn’t need the money repaid. Blatter vowed to strip Havelange of his honorary presidency.
Previous presidents, including one of the founders Jules Rimet, would be turning in their graves to see just how the organization has been twisted into a mafia type entity. Events over the past week have shown that FIFA is rotten to the core. The extent of the corruption is deep and intertwined within the whole structure and I fear we have only started to scratch the surface.
As a result, and with this in mind, the removal of Blatter alone will not be enough. The organization has to be dismantled totally and rebuilt if we are to move forward with confidence.
It must certainly include pulling the upcoming World Cups from their hosts and reassessing the merits. The fact that the hosts of the World Cup in 2022 have already had 1,200 workers die in the build up to the tournament should be reason enough to pull the project from them but, at the moment, the money is still doing the talking.
Jason is a Freelance Soccer Writer. You can follow him on Twitter @PACityboy and www.facebook.com/jasonbardwell1979
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