By Jesse Fink
May 30th 2008 @ 5:25am
A river of sleaze
Agents, player managers, promoters, snake oil salesmen, call them what you will. Be done with the lot of them.
I’ve heard so many stories this week about the ugly side of the football business I’m tempted to hand in the laptop and become an Amish farmer. But it’s not just agents. It’s coaches. Journalists. Chairmen.
Muck galore all the way to the top of the dungheap, FIFA. And I haven’t even been anywhere near the FIFA Congress in Sydney this week. But the sleaze is just part of the game’s “rich pageant” and it’s here to stay. Football incubates corruption and deception, that’s for sure, but when the full story of the Indian Premier League is told, for instance, cricket will make football’s sordidness look as whitebread as an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. We ain’t seen nothing yet.
So to the Iraq game, which is back on, but was always going to be.
My former Fox colleague and sometime café buddy Simon Hill has written an excellent piece on the shenanigans leading up to Sunday and I had my own chance to catch up with Simon on Wednesday. He’d just been to a press conference on the Tuesday by Sepp Blatter and was convinced there was more to the story that met the eye. Back to the sleaze again. Gag the man!
Undoubtedly the core of this issue is former Uday Hussein crony Hussein Saeed, who’d temporarily lost his job as president of the Iraq Football Association until his pal, Blatter, stepped in and demanded his reinstatement. At times like this I wish Andrew Jennings was in town to ask the hard questions, but being banned from any FIFA event anywhere in the world, he has as much chance of pegging down Blatter as I do dating Sophie Marceau. Sigh.
Just know this: FIFA likes to parade itself as some paragon of virtue, raising the spectre of “government interference” in the sport from time to time to crack down on recalcitrant (read uncompliant) FAs and paint itself as the good guy. But the reality is the bandying about of the words “government interference” usually has more to do with whether Blatter’s support base is being compromised.
An Iraq-style situation was averted two years ago in Cambodia when Khek Ravy, the president of the Cambodian Football Federation, was asked to vacate his post by the Hun Sen regime to make way for its own man, military goon Sao Sokha. Ravy was a committed supporter of Blatter. FIFA stepped in and Ravy kept his job, albeit as vice-president under Sokha.
Subsequent “elections” for the CFF were held and completely rigged – with the authorities’ tacit blessing. “It’s better that things were worked out beforehand and things are a formality. This way there’s more or less a consensus and there’s no animosity”, Rene Adad, former Philippine Football Federation president and an AFC observer, was quoted by my friend and journalist Charles McDermid in a story for the Phnom Penh Post.
Nothing should surprise anyone in football.
Jesse Fink's columns now appear every Wednesday and Friday on The Roar.
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sledgeross said | May 30th 2008 @ 9:46am | Report comment
What about the rumour doing the rounds that Iraq will be kicked out after the Aussie match. This stay of execution was done to avoid embarrassment for FIFA with so many luminaries in Oz for the conference.
Millster said | May 30th 2008 @ 11:26am | Report comment
What happens if you are right Sledge? If we lose against Iraq but then they forfeit their place, do all parties who played them retrospectively get 3 points or are the points for forfeiture only awarded for matches in the future? I guess the saving grace if your scenario is right is that, after Sunday, we are exactly half-way through the set of fixtures, and each other team in the group will get at least one set of the “free points”.
On the other hand, if you look at the table, it makes the fixtures this weekend massively important. The outcome of China Vs Qatar will play a huge part in setting up the remaining scenarios for the group of 3 that would be left if Iraq withdrew. It would also essentailly mean that we would have to come away with at least a point from Qatar away.
Salvation said | May 30th 2008 @ 11:33am | Report comment
I hope PVB has kept his charges focused…
Dez said | May 30th 2008 @ 12:18pm | Report comment
Good article.
If enough people keep nibbling away at FIFA the whole farcical ediface must surely crumble. But imagine the mayhem after that in an uncontrolled free-for-all of football’s riches.
The future of this wonderful game is not wholesome - but then again, nor - when you take off the rose-tinted specs - was its past.
Eamonn Flanagan said | May 30th 2008 @ 4:46pm | Report comment
Good one Jessie, I note few,if any, Aussie journo’s have been asking anything significant at the FIFA Congress. Any thoughts on this? Is this football journo’s market in Australia, too small, too limited in newspace to make asking anything worthwhile worth it?
Millster said | May 30th 2008 @ 4:56pm | Report comment
Eamonn - as an ‘educated punter’ I can answer you …. YES!
But at the same time, thanks to the handful of you, spead across the various media publishers and outlets, that do contribute thought, controversy and vision into the debate about football’s development.
Market size measured in column inches will look after themselves. Broadly speaking, finally, we’re pointed in the right direction in terms of football in this country and starting to make a few delicate steps of progress.
Spiro Zavos said | May 30th 2008 @ 5:25pm | Report comment
John O’Neill in his role as CEO of Soccer Australia, having endured the politicking of the ‘old farts’ of the IRB when he running the ARU, was adamant that soccer politics was the most ferocious and machiavellian he’d ever encountered. Jesse’s splendid column and that of Simon Hill explaining some of the intricacies involved in the parallel universe of Sepp Blatter provides an insight into the O’Neill experience. I must admit it’s disappointing that the mainstream media has not given us any sort of insight provided by Jesse and Simon.
It would be wonderful if Andrew Jennings could blow apart the parallel world constructed by Blatter. His work on the IOC, especially his exposure of Juan Samaranch, has led to a certain cleansing of the Olympic movement. Hopefully a Jennings expose of FIFA will have a similar result for world football.
Steve Kaless said | May 30th 2008 @ 7:32pm | Report comment
Spot on Jesse. The Iraq game was never going to get banned with the FFA needing to bank a full house at Suncorp Stadium.
It is sickening the way most of the Aussie press fawn about Blatter. They were all up in arms when he did the original back flip about the World Cup spot, but now they are swooning again.
Does make you wonder just what we need to said and what will need to happen and who will need to be paid in the great World Cup hosting campaign. Of course, we if get it Blatter we says it is because of beaches, barbies and sporting culture and we’ll all smile and think ‘what a nice man’.
Jesse Fink said | May 30th 2008 @ 10:47pm | Report comment
Guys, thanks for the comments. Spiro first: check out Jennings’s book Foul!, which is about FIFA and the “river of sleaze” that took him to the top and keeps him there. There is the original edition (white cover) and a revised one (red). Yours truly gets a guernsey in the revised edition for a comment I made about “Teflon Jack” Warner. Eamonn, I haven’t made it to the FIFA Congress myself (real life intervened and I inadvertently missed the process of actually getting the accreditation required). But Simon told me the Tuesday press conference had about 60 reporters in attendance and only two, himself and News Ltd journo Tom Smithies, asked questions. I’ve seen the timidness of the international football media first-hand at the World Cup. After the Australia-Japan game in Kaiserslautern, not one Japanese journalist asked a question, and there were hundreds of them in the room. Back to Jennings, though: the new issue of Inside Sport has a piece on the Congress by Jennings. A good read.
sheek said | May 30th 2008 @ 11:45pm | Report comment
Sadly, it seems, as a sport grows & expands, it is invaded by the darker forces of humanity. Exhibit A - Soccer. Exhibit B - rugby league. Exhibit C - rugby union.
As the young kid implored to ’shoeless Joe Jackson’ upon being cionvicted of match fixing - “say it ain’t so, Joe”.
Unfortunately, it is so, with regards to the imposition of the darker forces of society.