The referral of England’s bid to host football’s 2018 World Cup to the ethics committee of FIFA encapsulates the way that undemocratic international organisations such as world football’s governing body and the International Olympic Committee are beyond satire and seemingly beyond any concept of legal oversight.
It should come as no surprise that as the 2010 World Cup is getting under way in South Africa, the politics of FIFA’s executive committee are being challenged. There are many in FIFA who would prefer the politics of future World Cups to be beyond the scrutiny of the media in Britain and other countries. Even Rupert Murdoch’s empire may be interested, as its television arm is currently locked out of providing live coverage of FIFA’s premier competition.
What gave FIFA the excuse to intervene was the downfall of David Triesman. He resigned as chairman of the Football Association after what he had thought was a private conversation with a young female friend was recorded by her and sold to the Mail on Sunday.
The Labour peer alluded to alleged attempts by England’s rival World Cup bidders to exert undue influence on referees at this year’s competition. Bogus moral indignation was stoked by the right-wing press and given legs by international sporting fat cats in pursuit of their own ends. The departed Triesman is now an object of ridicule. However, anyone familiar with how those who run world football operate may not regard his musings as wholly fantastic.
What is now at stake is the award of a prize that will engender massive amounts of largesse and indulgence for FIFA personnel and their hangers-on as the wait to see who will win the race to host the World Cup final stages in 2018 and 2022.
International sporting bodies are the perhaps last redoubt of the sort freeloading, grasping individuals and morally repugnant individuals who should never be allowed
near a budget that extends to more than three figures.
It is hard to think of less ideal role models than such people whose greed is matched only by their incompetence. The trough of their excess is financed by the Sports media and sports goods industry.
Although its reputation is slightly better than FIFA’s, the European Union of Football Associations (UEFA) has its own network of junketeers, dubious links with sponsors and a too-close relationship with those who hold TV rights across the continent. Murdoch’s Sky regards its rights to UEFA’s Champions League as one of its main selling points.
However, many football fans would agree that the Champions League has distorted sporting competition and entrenched a system whereby the richest clubs in Europe’s richest leagues have become part of an informal cartel that rewards its members to such a degree that it is very difficult for outsiders to break in.
To observe a UEFA organised football event is to see an incredible amount of junketeering along events on the pitch. This is ultimately is paid for by supporters of clubs and national teams and who those who
pay for the season tickets of TV subscriptions that underpin everything.
Wherever the event is held, all the best hotel rooms are reserved for UEFA representatives and their guests. The number of guests can run into many hundreds and that doesn’t take into account guests of sponsors and their associates. Just about every head of every European sporting body and their partner will be invited. They may include such notable people as the head of the European Handball Federation and the head of the European Swimming League.
All will be invited to partake in UEFA’s hospitality with their home organisations paying for travel and “pocket money” only. Reciprocal invitations to other organisations’ official events are the also the order of the day in a self-serving cycle of perpetual indulgence.
Not only will sporting administrators from other sports be on the guest list. It is also likely to include the heads of all the national affiliated partners of the sport and an extensive guest list of lackeys and hangers-on. Major football events are becoming so corporate heavy that up to 50 per cent of the available tickets can be taken up by non-interested guests of sponsors and organisers.
Many of sport’s governing bodies have their bases beyond international scrutiny in secretive Switzerland. It is as these organisations see themselves as above the law in individual countries and they suspend members if a national government attempts any to implement any real oversight on the domestic affiliate of these sporting bodies.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter has an iron grip on the organisation. Countless words have been written about the financial shenanigans of FIFA, its senior members and the dubious activities of governing bodies of other sports. Investigative report Andrew Jennings has written widely and devastatingly on the subject. His Player and Referee: Conflicting Interests and the 2010 World Cup, shows FIFA and other international sporting organisations such as the International Cricket Council and the International Olympic Committee have become Trojan horses of global capital, particularly when it comes to awarding the rights to host international sporting competitions.
Player and Referee can be downloaded from the Institute of Security Studies website at www.iss.co.za/uploads/Mono169.pdf. But a health warning should be attached. The document is a truly depressing exposé of greed and avarice on the part of those by those closely associated with FIFA and the organisers of the World Cup in South Africa. Some of the details are truly nauseating and you may need a strong stomach.
And this is no tale of corruption endemic in Africa. The biggest thieves and villains are outwardly respectable white men in expensive suits hiding behind Swiss laws of anonymity.
