If anyone seriously thought Mr Sepp Blatter had changed and was ready to clean up the mess that is FIFA, then he took less than twenty-four hours to show that he is still the same old arrogant, selfish and ignorant disaster of a man, he has always been.

After being re-elected for a fifth term as president of FIFA, Sepp Blatter gave his usual spiel during his acceptance speech. Including:

“I am the president now, the president of everybody.”

“I am not perfect, nobody is perfect, but we will do a good job together I am sure.”

“I take the responsibility to bring back Fifa where it should be… Let’s go Fifa! Let’s go Fifa!”

He’s hardly the president of everybody. Seventy-three associations voted against him and most of the footballing world on the outside looking in were against him.

Blatter is right nobody is perfect, but most of us don’t run a huge organisation and turn a blind eye to blatant corruption. Over a large period of time too!

If Sepp truly accepted his responsibilities then he wouldn’t have guided FIFA into this mess in the first place.

Football should be all about the fans but at FIFA they simply don’t care about the supporters.

Now Blatter, the man of all the people, has came out on Swiss TV and has blamed all of his organisations problems on three main enemies…

1. The US authorities for their timely act against FIFA (arresting seven high profile FIFA delegates on corruption charges this week).

Blatter said…

“Not only did they try to denigrate me but also they used the moment to say, “This is the time to go”. Then it was said, “We are going to boycott the congress”. But where are we? Where is the sportsmanship? There are signs that cannot be ignored. The Americans were the candidates for the World Cup of 2022 and they lost.”

In a classic move from Sepp Blatter, he clearly points to the US losing the World Cup in 2022 as a reason for their investigation into FIFA. He clearly doesn’t want to mention the Swiss investigation that has also begun.

The fact will always remain that Qatar should never have been awarded the World Cup hosting duties in 2022. The fact that the competition now has to be moved to the winter shows the complete ignorance FIFA had for awarding the country a World Cup. Qatar will still be boiling hot, will still be too small and still has extremely dodgy human rights records that cannot be ignored.

Sepp then said…

“The United States, it is the main sponsors of Hashemite kingdom [Jordan].”

Which is clearly disrespectful against his only presidential candidate; Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan. Who Blatter had spoken well of just hours beforehand.

Blatter’s attack against the US, will only anger their authorities more and have them committed against their battle with FIFA. It is a dangerous game-plan and one that cost Lance Armstrong his reputation and livelihood. The FBI will be extremely interested in turning one of those that they’ve arrested to point fingers in Sepp’s direction.

2. The British media have been blamed for their continued interest in his regime and FIFA’s running of world football.

He stated…

“The English were the candidates for 2018 and they lost, so it was really the English media and the American movement.”

Again he insinuates that the criticisms of FIFA all stem from sour grapes over hosting a World Cup.

Yes the crazy decision that led to Qatar getting the 2022 World Cup did highlight FIFA’s strange decision making processes but many in the game have been calling for this toxic FIFA regime to leave for sometime now.

3. The current FIFA president also had a go at UEFA for not supporting him.

“It is a hatred not only by one person at UEFA but by the organisation of UEFA that has not accepted that I have been president since 1998. I forgive everyone but I don’t forget.”

He then added…

“We cannot live without UEFA and UEFA cannot live without us.”

Importantly that is only true up to a point.

UEFA owe it to the European fans and their member associations to really push for change at FIFA.

If UEFA president Michel Platini can convince the majority of his members (Russia would never agree) to announce that they were intent on leaving FIFA by 2018, then we really could have a response.

It might just convince the other confederations to join them, you’d expect quite a few member associations from other confederations would join the breakaway group. That could then show Blatter that he needs to depart from office and give the whole footballing community a chance to freshen thing up at the top.

An announcement like that from Platini and UEFA, along with the continued unrest from football fans all over the globe, could spark the major sponsors of FIFA to act.

His attack on the US will already have alerted huge companies McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Budwieser.

Credit card company VISA have already said it ‘will reassess‘ it’s deal if FIFA can’t clean up its act, although they never mentioned Blatter by name!

Sports journalists will be swarming over companies like Adidas and Hyundai/Kia Motors interrogating unsuspecting people in suits about their thoughts on the FIFA crisis. It will be a press intrusion that these companies won’t want that’s for sure.

Major companies like SONY and Emirates have already had enough and departed but unfortunately others like Samsung and Qatar Airways are ready to fill the void.

The way Adidas, Visa and Budwieser’s deals were done were extremely suspicious to say the least, so can we really expect them to stand against Blatter?

Broadcasters are the next ones that need to come forward and make their voice heard. TV cash is paramount at the World Cup, so if huge media networks can all come together and question their continued involvement in backing FIFA. maybe then Blatter will listen.

Unfortunately one will be scared and could back down and the others will become paranoid and lose their will to fight this bent regime.

FIFA is rotten to the core, we need a change. We still know very little about the organisation and how it works.

As David Gill rejected the opportunity of joining the FIFA executive committee, the Englishman said:

“I do recognise that Mr Blatter has been democratically elected and wish Fifa every success in tackling the many troubling issues it faces.”

I disagree that Sepp was voted in democratically. FIFA is full of corruption stories and the public in each country association has no say on who represents them and until the fans are heard, then FIFA can never be seen as democratic.

It is led by a tyrant and until someone like UEFA’s Michel Platini or Coca-Cola’s CEO Muhtar Kent steps forward and openly defies Blatter and his cronies, we’ll simply have another term of mistrust and bad feeling towards our football’s biggest governing body but with no real meaningful change!

Posted on May 30th, 2015 by scott
Filed under: Article