Will Fifa Ever Be Rid Of Sepp Blatter?

With the election campaign for a new Fifa president well underway the incumbent Sepp Blatter is pulling out all the stops to keep his corrupt administration going another four years

Sepp Blatter, who, despite his ability to plaster a politically apt media-friendly smile on his face at a moment’s notice always wears the hunted eyes of a Nazi war criminal found to have been hiding in the Israeli Knesset for the last seventy years, has of course completely reneged on his promise to step down and not seek another term as Fifa President, but then none of us expected otherwise, the aging power grasping egotist was never going to go quietly.

Battered Blatter Battles Badly
• Sepp Blatter Fifa presidency marked by scandal
• Three challengers in 2015 for the job
• Blatter plays the race card in Africa

His stranglehold on football since 1998 has been profoundly ghastly to watch culminating in the farcical awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, a nation that not only doesn’t really play football but is so hot during the summer, when a World Cup is played, that it may actually prove physically impossible to do so. The trunk rotting stench of corruption, payoffs and kickbacks now so strong that it almost defies belief that investigations carried out, by Fifa itself of course, don’t reveal anything more than a few bad apples on the tree.
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The opposition to Blatter has been growing steadily over time gambling news of his crimes would unseat him, but still they face an almost impossible task in their efforts to rid international football of this nasty boil on the bum, his position consolidated, his ongoing campaign to retain the position always disguised behind the veil of “official Fifa business” as he travels hither and yon at Fifa’s expense garnering support from whomever he can by any methods he believes he’ll get away with.

His opponents in the election this time round are Jordanian royal Prince Ali Bin al-Hussain, Dutch FA president Michael Van Praag and the former World Footballer Of The Year, Luis Figo, and, unless there is a miracle (or serious accident to Sepp) none of them stands a ghost of a chance against this master of manipulation and misinformation. He has the election in the bag because not only does he possess the bag in the first place, but paid off the makers of the bag to sew the top up so no one else could put their name in.

Scandal After Scandal Follow Blatter

The collapse of ISL the company that dealt in rights for match broadcast lead to discoveries that it had been paying bribes to people from a $100m slush-fund. Of course Blatter denied all knowledge and nothing was proved against him, Fifa itself merely saying he was “clumsy” not “criminal” for his handling of a $1m bribe that was to be given to Joao Havelange. Indeed apparently whatever allegations surface of impropriety Blatter walks away with Fifa failing to see him as having done anything wrong.

This is mostly because he’s a fat liar and there’s never enough evidence to throw back in his smug face as he tells these barefaced mistruths. For instance he said he would oversee reform of Fifa in the aftermath of the 2011 election to put back the good reputation of the organization, completely ignoring the fact it was he who had won the election using the self-same tactics that brought Fifa’s reputation into question in the first place.

So he puts together a few proposals one afternoon, a few documents and a couple of committee meetings that get absolutely nowhere and he’s overseeing it all, saying it needs more consideration, more careful study, a measured weighing of the pros and cons, something to be looked at in terms of the long view, to be perhaps addressed at the correct juncture, when the time is ripe, sometime, a long time, later, and thus his ridiculously obvious lie is now covered in the paperwork of bureaucracy he himself controls.

Of course his promises mean nothing. His assurance to step down four years on from 2011 have come to naught with him now insisting “A mission is never finished” which smacks just a little of claiming a 1000 year Reich and he’s done all he can to facilitate that being one of the key figures behind the system of patronage, perks and distinct monetization of both the World Cup and Fifa as a whole. He set the system up to make the presidency as strong as it is, but he doesn’t rely on it being unassailable.

Does The Race Card Need To Be Given The Red Card?

At the recent Africa Cup there was a spot of bother between rival fans as hosts Equatorial Guinea got beaten 3 – 0 by Ghana, the sort of crowd trouble soccer has seen much of the world over down the years, but Mr. Blatter, being the two-faced twisting scumbag that he is, saw western media coverage of the disturbances and instantly accused it of being racist. This blatantly self-serving interpretation of coverage of course was designed to play to the African audience.

Blatter has repeatedly sought to portray the European football centers as being racist towards those in the rest of the world, going so far as to worry about a take over of Fifa by the major fiscal interests of some of the famous rich clubs therein that would leave the non-european football interests out in the cold. He paints a picture that leaves people in the UK gambling laws on libel will be changed so he can be sued. It’s ridiculously barefaced fear mongering campaign of falsehoods to divide voting at the upcoming election.

Greg Dyke the FA Chairman compared the Fifa congress under Blatter to be akin to “something out of North Korea” as the Swiss swizzler hands out “bonus” payments to nations right there in public, knowing only too well that they’re really bribes for support in the future. He has played the 209 members of Fifa that exist in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean like a fiddle and kept them fearful and mistrusting of the European confederation.

That’s why if you look at sites akin to Bet365 you’ll discover Sepp Blatter, the tainted personification of all that is wrong with the organization that looks after international football, is 1/41 to retain his presidency (no, that’s not a typo) and the rest of the opposition barely get 33/1 at the most generous which means if you like to bet on sport in the UK you’re far better off putting some money on one of this weekends FA Cup games than on the Fifa Presidential election.