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FIFA FIXA
- Thread starter freddy
- Start date
- Admin
- #42
The men's Under 20 World Cup in New Zealand starts tomorrow (on TSN). Should be the first public appearance to football fans at a stadia? Should be interesting what kind of reception Blatter gets before he comes to Canada and the women's World Cup IF he's still in power.
The corruption charges have tarted the ball rolling. The CSA have announced they will not be voting for Blatter, along with the US, UEFA and some other countries.
The CSA will be represented at the FIFA AGM in Switzerland by Victor, Rob Reed and Charmaine Crooks, and possibly some staff.
The CSA will be represented at the FIFA AGM in Switzerland by Victor, Rob Reed and Charmaine Crooks, and possibly some staff.
I'm pasting the full article here because the site has a paywall which may block some people...
Why Sepp Blatter is a genius
Simon Kuper
Fifa boss understood very early that there’s a new world order in which westerners don’t matter much
The hotel concierge — der Portier, in German — is a recognisably Swiss type. Some people even say he embodies Switzerland. Der Portier is friendly, multilingual and has no ideology. He always remembers his guests’ names. Above all, he knows which of them have money: in the 19th century, it was the British, later Americans, then Russians and currently Gulf Arabs.
Sepp Blatter, from Switzerland’s touristic Valais canton, is a born Portier. That’s why on Friday he will be re-elected to his fifth term as president of Fifa, the corrupt global football authority. Western countries rightly decry Blatter. However, we ought to recognise his genius. This 79-year-old understood very early that there’s a new world order in which westerners don’t matter much.
I only realised how deluded most of us westerners were on December 2 2010. That afternoon Fifa’s executive committee (Exco) chose Russia to host the 2018 World Cup and Qatar to stage the 2022 tournament. I had followed the bidding campaigns for years. I had had many off-the-record conversations with western bidders. A few had predicted Russia’s victory. Almost nobody foresaw Qatar’s.
Each western bidding country, I now realise, imagined that Fifa thought much like the country itself did. The English and American bidders, instinctive capitalists, thought they could win because they had big soccer markets. The Spanish-Portuguese bidding team probably thought they could win because they had friends inside Fifa. Australia hired lobbyists with other friends inside Fifa. The Dutch and Belgians believed in their green and compact bid. They even cycled into Zurich to present it.
Writing in the Financial Times before the vote, I chastised bookmakers William Hill for making Qatar runaway favourites. Hadn’t Fifa’s own evaluation report called Qatar’s extreme heat “a potential health risk for players, officials, the Fifa family and spectators”? I tipped Russia and the US to win. I was wrong. So were almost all other western observers. Theo van Seggelen, president of the international footballers’ trade union Fifpro, says: “For me — and I was reasonably close to the fire — the vote was a complete surprise.”
©Luis Grañena
It turned out that Fifa cared only about naked power and money. Vladimir Putin twisted voters’ arms. Long-legged Russian ladies stalked football conferences. Qatar funded football projects everywhere. In addition, more than a third of Exco’s 24 members were accused of corruption linked to the vote. Several resigned from football. Jérôme Valcke, Fifa’s secretary-general, wrote in a leaked memo that Qatar “bought” the World Cup. (He later said he’d been misinterpreted.) Last year The Sunday Times alleged that a Qatari, Mohamed bin Hammam, made payments totalling $5m to win support for Qatar’s bid.
Bin Hammam and Qatar have denied wrongdoing, with the country insisting Bin Hammam never had any official role supporting the bid and always acted independently.
Western countries, hopping mad to lose the World Cups, have cried “corruption!” But most non-western participants dismiss them (with some justification) as hypocritical, whining losers. Richard Attias, a French communications consultant who works with Qatar, told me: “Only a microcosm is interested in how World Cups are attributed — a very British microcosm.”
Fifa’s vote presciently recognised the geopolitical rise of Qatar and Russia. Fifteen days after the vote, a Tunisian fruit seller set himself on fire, and north Africans rose in revolt. Qatar, “flush with the success of winning the rights to host the . . . World Cup and with its international recognition soaring as a result,” then helped spark the Arab spring, writes Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Baker Institute fellow for the Middle East. Qatar funded Islamists across north Africa, and helped unseat Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi. In 2014, Russia’s naked power surprised the west again: Putin annexed Crimea. We live in a new world order.
It suits Blatter. Coming from a small country, he is skilled at accommodating big power brokers such as Putin. Moreover, he thinks like them: Blatter, too, likes legal immunity, motorcades on empty highways, and respectful underlings. The central American football officials who recently compared him with Jesus and Nelson Mandela presumably knew the comparisons were absurd. But the absurdity simply emphasised their loyalty.
Many non-western football officials admire the efficient Portier. Blatter is good at organising World Cups, admits Michael van Praag, a Dutchman who tried to run against him. And the Portier handles people well. “He is charming,” says Van Praag. “He knows the name of every national association’s chairman, even his wife’s name.” Better, Blatter dishes out perfectly legal gifts to national associations. True, he cannot charm western media. But, though their attacks wound his vanity, he knows that media scarcely matter in the new world order.
Western countries are powerless to change Fifa. They could boycott the World Cup but, characteristically, they won’t make sacrifices for their principles, says Roger Pielke Jr, political scientist at the University of Colorado.
Now some westerners are complaining about Blatter’s unfair advantages over any opponent in Friday’s vote. Many national football associations fear their supposedly secret ballots won’t stay secret. But Blatter isn’t even listening. At the concierge desk nowadays, we westerners are last in line. Given waning western power, asks Pielke, “how do you effect global change? It turns out it’s really difficult. If we can’t reform Fifa, my goodness, how can we deal with nuclear proliferation or carbon emissions or trade?”
simon.kuper@ft.com; Twitter @KuperSimon
Illustration by Luis Grañena
Why Sepp Blatter is a genius
Fifa boss understood very early that there’s a new world order in which westerners don’t matter much
The hotel concierge — der Portier, in German — is a recognisably Swiss type. Some people even say he embodies Switzerland. Der Portier is friendly, multilingual and has no ideology. He always remembers his guests’ names. Above all, he knows which of them have money: in the 19th century, it was the British, later Americans, then Russians and currently Gulf Arabs.
Sepp Blatter, from Switzerland’s touristic Valais canton, is a born Portier. That’s why on Friday he will be re-elected to his fifth term as president of Fifa, the corrupt global football authority. Western countries rightly decry Blatter. However, we ought to recognise his genius. This 79-year-old understood very early that there’s a new world order in which westerners don’t matter much.
I only realised how deluded most of us westerners were on December 2 2010. That afternoon Fifa’s executive committee (Exco) chose Russia to host the 2018 World Cup and Qatar to stage the 2022 tournament. I had followed the bidding campaigns for years. I had had many off-the-record conversations with western bidders. A few had predicted Russia’s victory. Almost nobody foresaw Qatar’s.
Each western bidding country, I now realise, imagined that Fifa thought much like the country itself did. The English and American bidders, instinctive capitalists, thought they could win because they had big soccer markets. The Spanish-Portuguese bidding team probably thought they could win because they had friends inside Fifa. Australia hired lobbyists with other friends inside Fifa. The Dutch and Belgians believed in their green and compact bid. They even cycled into Zurich to present it.
Writing in the Financial Times before the vote, I chastised bookmakers William Hill for making Qatar runaway favourites. Hadn’t Fifa’s own evaluation report called Qatar’s extreme heat “a potential health risk for players, officials, the Fifa family and spectators”? I tipped Russia and the US to win. I was wrong. So were almost all other western observers. Theo van Seggelen, president of the international footballers’ trade union Fifpro, says: “For me — and I was reasonably close to the fire — the vote was a complete surprise.”
It turned out that Fifa cared only about naked power and money. Vladimir Putin twisted voters’ arms. Long-legged Russian ladies stalked football conferences. Qatar funded football projects everywhere. In addition, more than a third of Exco’s 24 members were accused of corruption linked to the vote. Several resigned from football. Jérôme Valcke, Fifa’s secretary-general, wrote in a leaked memo that Qatar “bought” the World Cup. (He later said he’d been misinterpreted.) Last year The Sunday Times alleged that a Qatari, Mohamed bin Hammam, made payments totalling $5m to win support for Qatar’s bid.
Bin Hammam and Qatar have denied wrongdoing, with the country insisting Bin Hammam never had any official role supporting the bid and always acted independently.
Western countries, hopping mad to lose the World Cups, have cried “corruption!” But most non-western participants dismiss them (with some justification) as hypocritical, whining losers. Richard Attias, a French communications consultant who works with Qatar, told me: “Only a microcosm is interested in how World Cups are attributed — a very British microcosm.”
Fifa’s vote presciently recognised the geopolitical rise of Qatar and Russia. Fifteen days after the vote, a Tunisian fruit seller set himself on fire, and north Africans rose in revolt. Qatar, “flush with the success of winning the rights to host the . . . World Cup and with its international recognition soaring as a result,” then helped spark the Arab spring, writes Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Baker Institute fellow for the Middle East. Qatar funded Islamists across north Africa, and helped unseat Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi. In 2014, Russia’s naked power surprised the west again: Putin annexed Crimea. We live in a new world order.
It suits Blatter. Coming from a small country, he is skilled at accommodating big power brokers such as Putin. Moreover, he thinks like them: Blatter, too, likes legal immunity, motorcades on empty highways, and respectful underlings. The central American football officials who recently compared him with Jesus and Nelson Mandela presumably knew the comparisons were absurd. But the absurdity simply emphasised their loyalty.
Many non-western football officials admire the efficient Portier. Blatter is good at organising World Cups, admits Michael van Praag, a Dutchman who tried to run against him. And the Portier handles people well. “He is charming,” says Van Praag. “He knows the name of every national association’s chairman, even his wife’s name.” Better, Blatter dishes out perfectly legal gifts to national associations. True, he cannot charm western media. But, though their attacks wound his vanity, he knows that media scarcely matter in the new world order.
Western countries are powerless to change Fifa. They could boycott the World Cup but, characteristically, they won’t make sacrifices for their principles, says Roger Pielke Jr, political scientist at the University of Colorado.
Now some westerners are complaining about Blatter’s unfair advantages over any opponent in Friday’s vote. Many national football associations fear their supposedly secret ballots won’t stay secret. But Blatter isn’t even listening. At the concierge desk nowadays, we westerners are last in line. Given waning western power, asks Pielke, “how do you effect global change? It turns out it’s really difficult. If we can’t reform Fifa, my goodness, how can we deal with nuclear proliferation or carbon emissions or trade?”
simon.kuper@ft.com; Twitter @KuperSimon
Illustration by Luis Grañena
The problem is most of Africa (56 members) and Asia (47 members) support Blatter because they are footballing backwaters and don't care about the integrity of the tournaments. They just care about getting their FIFA $$
FIFA has 209 members in total. If Blatter gets the 103 votes from Asia/Africa, he only needs 2 more votes to have a majority.
FIFA has 209 members in total. If Blatter gets the 103 votes from Asia/Africa, he only needs 2 more votes to have a majority.
- Admin
- #48
LOL, tarted and @reedie mentioned in the same post made me LOL
Rob Regnier would be a better representative than Rob Reed for this junket... can drink about the same but a bit more reserved once past 10 on the blot-o-meter, or as they say in Swiss... Blatter-meter
PS. Steve Reed is the person I think you meant
I'm pasting the full article here because the site has a paywall which may block some people...
Why Sepp Blatter is a genius
Simon Kuper
Fifa boss understood very early that there’s a new world order in which westerners don’t matter much
The hotel concierge — der Portier, in German — is a recognisably Swiss type. Some people even say he embodies Switzerland. Der Portier is friendly, multilingual and has no ideology. He always remembers his guests’ names. Above all, he knows which of them have money: in the 19th century, it was the British, later Americans, then Russians and currently Gulf Arabs.
Sepp Blatter, from Switzerland’s touristic Valais canton, is a born Portier. That’s why on Friday he will be re-elected to his fifth term as president of Fifa, the corrupt global football authority. Western countries rightly decry Blatter. However, we ought to recognise his genius. This 79-year-old understood very early that there’s a new world order in which westerners don’t matter much.
I only realised how deluded most of us westerners were on December 2 2010. That afternoon Fifa’s executive committee (Exco) chose Russia to host the 2018 World Cup and Qatar to stage the 2022 tournament. I had followed the bidding campaigns for years. I had had many off-the-record conversations with western bidders. A few had predicted Russia’s victory. Almost nobody foresaw Qatar’s.
Each western bidding country, I now realise, imagined that Fifa thought much like the country itself did. The English and American bidders, instinctive capitalists, thought they could win because they had big soccer markets. The Spanish-Portuguese bidding team probably thought they could win because they had friends inside Fifa. Australia hired lobbyists with other friends inside Fifa. The Dutch and Belgians believed in their green and compact bid. They even cycled into Zurich to present it.
Writing in the Financial Times before the vote, I chastised bookmakers William Hill for making Qatar runaway favourites. Hadn’t Fifa’s own evaluation report called Qatar’s extreme heat “a potential health risk for players, officials, the Fifa family and spectators”? I tipped Russia and the US to win. I was wrong. So were almost all other western observers. Theo van Seggelen, president of the international footballers’ trade union Fifpro, says: “For me — and I was reasonably close to the fire — the vote was a complete surprise.”
©Luis Grañena
It turned out that Fifa cared only about naked power and money. Vladimir Putin twisted voters’ arms. Long-legged Russian ladies stalked football conferences. Qatar funded football projects everywhere. In addition, more than a third of Exco’s 24 members were accused of corruption linked to the vote. Several resigned from football. Jérôme Valcke, Fifa’s secretary-general, wrote in a leaked memo that Qatar “bought” the World Cup. (He later said he’d been misinterpreted.) Last year The Sunday Times alleged that a Qatari, Mohamed bin Hammam, made payments totalling $5m to win support for Qatar’s bid.
Bin Hammam and Qatar have denied wrongdoing, with the country insisting Bin Hammam never had any official role supporting the bid and always acted independently.
Western countries, hopping mad to lose the World Cups, have cried “corruption!” But most non-western participants dismiss them (with some justification) as hypocritical, whining losers. Richard Attias, a French communications consultant who works with Qatar, told me: “Only a microcosm is interested in how World Cups are attributed — a very British microcosm.”
Fifa’s vote presciently recognised the geopolitical rise of Qatar and Russia. Fifteen days after the vote, a Tunisian fruit seller set himself on fire, and north Africans rose in revolt. Qatar, “flush with the success of winning the rights to host the . . . World Cup and with its international recognition soaring as a result,” then helped spark the Arab spring, writes Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Baker Institute fellow for the Middle East. Qatar funded Islamists across north Africa, and helped unseat Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi. In 2014, Russia’s naked power surprised the west again: Putin annexed Crimea. We live in a new world order.
It suits Blatter. Coming from a small country, he is skilled at accommodating big power brokers such as Putin. Moreover, he thinks like them: Blatter, too, likes legal immunity, motorcades on empty highways, and respectful underlings. The central American football officials who recently compared him with Jesus and Nelson Mandela presumably knew the comparisons were absurd. But the absurdity simply emphasised their loyalty.
Many non-western football officials admire the efficient Portier. Blatter is good at organising World Cups, admits Michael van Praag, a Dutchman who tried to run against him. And the Portier handles people well. “He is charming,” says Van Praag. “He knows the name of every national association’s chairman, even his wife’s name.” Better, Blatter dishes out perfectly legal gifts to national associations. True, he cannot charm western media. But, though their attacks wound his vanity, he knows that media scarcely matter in the new world order.
Western countries are powerless to change Fifa. They could boycott the World Cup but, characteristically, they won’t make sacrifices for their principles, says Roger Pielke Jr, political scientist at the University of Colorado.
Now some westerners are complaining about Blatter’s unfair advantages over any opponent in Friday’s vote. Many national football associations fear their supposedly secret ballots won’t stay secret. But Blatter isn’t even listening. At the concierge desk nowadays, we westerners are last in line. Given waning western power, asks Pielke, “how do you effect global change? It turns out it’s really difficult. If we can’t reform Fifa, my goodness, how can we deal with nuclear proliferation or carbon emissions or trade?”
simon.kuper@ft.com; Twitter @KuperSimon
Illustration by Luis Grañena
This article is full of sh*t! To connect now vote to award 2022 WC to Qatar with Arabic movement and some bloody coup d'etats in Africa is pathetic. Who was behind coup d'état in Libya for God's sake!
What Crimea status has with 2018 WC in Russia? One has to know European history to understand that situation, not simply side with his preferred side (no mater what side that is). When one nuclear superpower takes back what they think it is rightfully theirs it is a problem, it is a dictatorship, it is a blasphemy but when the other side does the same or even worse things it is a democracy! Really!?
Why is this NOW getting so political? How come it was never that political before? At least it was not as openly political as it is now.
That statement: "Western countries are powerless to change FIFA" is pathetic. What does that mean? Why cry now? Because Blatter did some favours to Asian and African nations so he does not depend on votes from western countries so he seems untouchable?
I do not like Blatter, I never did but the timing of all this speaks volumes. What do we know about the other candidate for FIFA's Presidency? Whose puppet is he?
- Admin
- #55
Sepp Blatter has been officially re-elected as Fifa’s president for a fifth term by the world governing body’s 209 member associations.
Blatter, 79, saw off the challenge of Jordan’s Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein at Fifa’s annual Congress in Zurich. In a secret ballot he was re-elected with 133 votes from the 209 voting members. The process was to go to a second round of voting, after Blatter failed to get the 139 votes needed in the first round to win; a two-thirds majority was necessary. Blatter received 133 votes Prince Ali 73 and three ballots were spoiled. However, Prince Ali conceded before the second round of voting took place – when a simple majority would have been enough for either contender to win.
Rangerforever
Well-Known Member
RL RCD:
I'm planning to take a trip to Eastern Europe in the next couple of years.
Any points of interest you can recommend other than the usual tourist spots in Moscow and St. Petersburg for when I go to your Mother Russia?
I'm planning to take a trip to Eastern Europe in the next couple of years.
Any points of interest you can recommend other than the usual tourist spots in Moscow and St. Petersburg for when I go to your Mother Russia?
trece verde
Well-Known Member
Haha...awesome...
It's pretty simple math...
FIFA is massive. I think the only spots governing body bigger MAY be the IOC, and at that I'm not sure. As always, I have the intraweb available, but can't be fcuked to research. Pretty safe assumption, though.
That being said, the regional representation looks like, well, the rest of the world. It's not shocking that the majority of the members, whom mostly come from countries where greasing a palm is a normal way of doing business, would choose to vote in someone that would be best suited for the status quo.
It's pretty simple math...
FIFA is massive. I think the only spots governing body bigger MAY be the IOC, and at that I'm not sure. As always, I have the intraweb available, but can't be fcuked to research. Pretty safe assumption, though.
That being said, the regional representation looks like, well, the rest of the world. It's not shocking that the majority of the members, whom mostly come from countries where greasing a palm is a normal way of doing business, would choose to vote in someone that would be best suited for the status quo.
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