Nick G
I’ve never liked FIFA. I’ve always taken a very simplistic view of it, largely disregarding the good it might do for football in developing nations. I don’t like FIFA simply because I don’t like the idea of any organisation that owns something that I consider unownable. Football is something that nobody should control.
I know that sounds naïve, and I’m fully aware that there needs to be a body in a position to ensure consistency in the way the game is played around the world. It’s a global sport and as long as two teams in different parts of the globe wish to play each other, be they clubs or national representations, they need to play to the same laws.
That doesn’t stop me resenting the tinkering with the game. In my world they don’t have the right to tinker. The game is the game and I wish Sepp Blatter and his cronies weren’t able fanny around with it in order to make it more appealing to rich Americans who don’t get low scoring sports.
And then the Panorama programme came out. Corruption at FIFA HQ is an old story, and yet another reason for my disliking it, ‘though for some reason that never affected me quite as much as the tinkering with the laws, so I wasn’t that interested in what the media told me the programme was going to dramatically reveal. If anything I was irritated that the BBC was prepared to put a fly in England’s bid ointment in order to garner maximum publicity for the show. I’m not that excited by international football, it’s Arsenal and only Arsenal for me, but as long as we’re going for it, I’ll support the bid. I think this country is great at putting on big events and they’re a source of national pride and feel-good that is worth much more than any profits that may be generated.
Then I actually watched the programme and I was incensed by the brazen corruption that is clearly endemic throughout the organisation. I was even more enraged by the arrogance of the extortionate demands made by FIFA upon prospective World Cup host nations that were revealed by the investigation, and I was embarrassed by the England bid team’s compliance with it all.
For possibly the first time in my life I agreed with David Mellor. England’s role should not be to go along with this sickening nonsense but, as the mother of the game, to do something to restore its reputation.
Quite seriously, I’d like to see England pull out of FIFA for a start, and to campaign for a complete overhaul to make it clean and transparent. To get rid of this cabal of crooks that run my favourite sport and replace them with honest people who are there for the development and promotion of the game, not people like Jack Warner who is there to line his very large pockets.
England may not win tournaments but we are important to FIFA. If we pull out of the World Cup the competition and the organisation will be seriously undermined. Such action would encourage other nations to follow suit, nations like Holland where there is already a groundswell of dissatisfaction with FIFA.
I don’t think it is beyond the realms of possibility that FIFA can be brought down and then the clean-up can begin.
So I applaud Panorama and the BBC for broadcasting their programme. It’s time the rot at FIFA was stopped, and this week is no better time to start that process.
(Ed’s note – For those that were at the Carling Cup game on Tuesday evening, the programme can be watched on the BBC iPlayer here)
