It is a matter of great comfort to me, as a football fan, that all the allegations made against the various Fifa delegates have been shown to be utter fabrications. I had been a little worried. We know now, though, that they are utter fabrications because the boss of Fifa, Sepp Blatter, a man of unimpeachable honesty and integrity, has said they are — and that’s good enough for me.
It had been alleged that one Fifa delegate, the Paraguyan-born Nicolas Leoz, had demanded a knighthood in return for supporting England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup. But Fifa instigated a rigorous investigation which seems to have consisted of asking Leoz if these allegations were true or not, and the allegations have been proved to be unfounded. That’s what I expected, as someone who has always felt a degree of affection and sympathy for Leoz, ever since Panorama quite unjustly proved that he was as bent as a nine-bob note and had flogged the TV rights to the World Cup to himself. Luckily Fifa took not the slightest bit of notice of this, either.
It has since been alleged that Leoz demanded that Britain’s oldest football trophy, the FA Cup, be renamed in his honour in exchange for his vote as a delegate. I daresay some British functionary, embittered at the humiliation of having lost the bid, will further suggest that Leoz demanded to sleep with Princess Anne and be installed as the chairman of next year’s Man Booker prize. Blatter will undoubtedly instigate a similarly rigorous investigation which will surely clear Leoz once again.
There have been allegations of dishonesty, corruption, soliciting bungs etc against fully nine of the 24 Fifa delegates, including Blatter, and not all of them have come from embittered Brits. The latest has come from the American Fifa delegate, a man called Chuck Blazer. I don’t suppose that there is a scintilla of truth in any of them, either. As it happens, one of the Fifa delegates, Mohamed bin Hammam, from Qatar, has been suspended for a while so that one or two allegations of wrong-doing can be sorted out. By coincidence, Mr bin Hammam was the only rival to Sepp Blatter in the election for chairman of Fifa. But, as I say, that’s simply a coincidence. And I am cheered by Mr Blatter’s confidence that football is not in a crisis, there are merely one or two little problems that will be sorted out ‘within the family’. That’s the way it should be done. Allegations against Fifa representatives come thick and fast; far better to sort them out in private, away from the prying eyes of the general public and the media.
Mind you, I suppose the exoneration of Nicolas Leoz leaves Lord Triesman, the former chairman of our own Football Association, in a ticklish position. He had made those nasty allegations about Leoz before a House of Commons select committee and Fifa is therefore implying that he made it all up. Perhaps he should sue them for libel.
It is all a truly filthy business, involving greedy and extraordinarily self-important people who believe themselves to be way beyond the reach of the law or indeed beyond the realm of normal moral standards. Appropriately enough, I suppose you might say, for a truly filthy sport full of greedy and self-important people; a sport which at its highest level has for some time considered itself beyond the reach of either financial or moral sanity. Fifa has been corrupt for decades, but nobody anywhere has the will to do anything about it; nobody wants to rock the boat. And you have to say that if England had succeeded in its attempts to secure the 2018 World Cup, nobody would be rocking the boat now, either. And nobody in Fifa takes England very seriously any more.
Certainly you cannot look to the individual football associations to do anything about it; the sports minister, Hugh Robertson, recently and rightly described football as being the ‘worst-run’ sport in Britain, which is one reason why the culture, media and sport select committee is investigating the whole business. The FA seemed to be heading in the right direction with the appointment of the excellent Lord Triesman, who was quite clearly shocked at what he found within. But his tenure came to an end as a consequence of a honey-trap set up in a London restaurant when he was recorded telling a woman he thought there might be a bit of match fixing in the World Cup. Heaven forefend! He was forced to resign because such allegations might have rocked the boat when we were grovelling before the likes of Leoz for votes to have the right to host the World Cup.
But at least now the politicians are beginning to get themselves involved, both in Switzerland — where they’ve told Fifa to clean up its act or get the hell out of the country — and at home. The Prime Minister has mumbled his displeasure; the select committee continues to dig away at its investigation.
My own remedy would be to withdraw from Fifa entirely until its chairman and delegates have been replaced and it accepts the requirement for full transparency. This would mean we would be denied the pleasure of watching England lose to Andorra in a World Cup qualifying match; but it would also mean that we will spared the sight of our Prime Minister and Prince William on all fours, kowtowing to the likes of Nicholas Leoz and the repulsive Concacaf boss Jack Warner for the right to stage a tournament which I suspect the majority of British people do not wish to host. In the meantime, let Fifa hold its World Cups in Russia and Qatar, or any other satrapy that can provide the biggest bungs.
Offer ends in:
