Stephen A

Roar Rookie

Joined June 2015

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Melbourne Storm, Melbourne Victory and Manchester United all make my life interesting and never dull!!

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Football has always been political and will always be political, one example off the top of my head is when Mussolini used the Italian national team as his propaganda tool during his reign when Italy won their first World Cup in the 1930’s. What’s changing is that the ‘new world’ (UAE, Qatar) has been pumping absurd amounts of money into football across Europe and other parts of the world, buying clubs and media companies/rights, but the ‘old world’ (Northern Euorpe (I’m not going list all the major football powerhouses but you get my point) don’t like this idea that someone else is having a say on something that they have been controlling for many years. They are happy to take their money, but not let them have a say in the administration of the sport.

On one side, it seems like the Europeans want to re-gain some sort of imperial control over FIFA again and take care of themselves and isolate the other Football associations (think it was in the 1970’s that Joao Havelenge wrestled power away from the Euro nations after he won the FIFA presidential election). The other side is that the rest of the world thinks that is FIFA is controlled by UEFA, it will be a return to the days when Europe looked after their own and cared little of the rest of the Football world.

You make a good point about whether the US has jurisdiction to investigate FIFA, how they can arrest the FIFA members for corruption and fraud but not charge any of the big US banks that caused the global recession in 2009. FIFA’s conduct over the last 20 off years has been pretty deplorable and there should be an investigation into their financial dealings (which I think will lead to the FFA having some serious questions being asked of them).

First post on The Roar by the way, glad to discover a good sports forum like this!

Football is getting political

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Football

2015