•Blatter’s stand-down is welcome. But global football’s salvation lies in FIFA’s systemic revamp
In the army, there are no bad soldiers — only bad officers. So, even if Sepp Blatter, FIFA president, has not suffered a personal indictment in the alleged corruption swamping the organisation, he lacked the moral right to contest the May 29 election, in Zurich, Switzerland.
That he even contested and won, defeating Jordan’s Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, is a nauseating signal of how callously indifferent FIFA, as a body, had become to its thick whiff of alleged sleaze.
Pray, how can FBI investigators, in full glare, round up no less than six high ranking FIFA executives, making a total haul of 14 arrests, and yet Mr. Blatter still went on to win the election? If that had stood, FIFA would have been an eternal joke; and it would be only a matter of time before the bubble bursts on what the Brazilian Pele calls the “beautiful game”, as we know it today.
So, just as well, Mr. Blatter is offering to step down. But he should have made the offer immediate.
Still, will Mr. Blatter’s exit solve FIFA’s problem? Not a chance. Though sleaze appears the surface of the current intra-FIFA manoeuvres, what really is playing out is two dramatically conflicting world view: a Euro-centric FIFA of the pre-Joao Havalange (the Brazilian who was FIFA’s 7th president), years; and the more inclusive global FIFA, which the embattled Mr. Blatter has tried to maintain, in his 17 years as president, though he just won a futile four more years.
Pre-1974 FIFA was basically Europe and South America, in that order. But Post-1974 FIFA has been more inclusive, spreading what Mr. Blatter loves to call the “FIFA Family” (but which his European rivals scoff at as global football cronies) to Africa and Asia; and even to the football innocents of Oceania. Because every FIFA member-country has one vote at the Congress, this Havalange-Blatter innovation has whittled down the power and influence of the traditional football European powers, thus often setting Blatter’s FIFA against UEFA, the richest, most dynamic and most advanced of the FIFA continental affiliates.
What is more? Blatter, a former Swiss sports journalist who joined FIFA in 1975 as a marketing executive, is credited with radically growing the non-for-profit organisation’s financial chest, thus making it a humongous global mart, using football as enchanting and additive platform.
Indeed, FIFA is said, in the past four years, to gross some 3.7 billion British pounds in yearly revenue, boasted another one billion British pounds in cash reserves and a probable 100 million British pounds a year as salaries and emoluments, on its pampered executives. The FIFA president’s salary is however alleged to be a trade secret. These years of soggy cash has regrettably come with alleged wanton corruption.
So, at the May presidential election, the politics of football trumped the UEFA campaign for more transparency in FIFA. Despite the ooze of alleged corruption, the Third World affiliates of Africa, South America, Asia and Oceania still backed Blatter, who has spread FIFA’s cash their way. That left Europe, minus Russia which supported Blatter, in the lurch.
But with the high-profile arrests, the business of football simply fought back. With Visa and other top-rank sponsors threatening to pull the plug, Mr. Blatter’s victory was pyrrhic. That explains his offer to stand down.
Still, the stalemate subsists. FIFA may well be an alleged den of sleaze under Blatter, but no one is in a hurry to collapse that mega-mart — not FIFA, not the sponsors; not even the crusading UEFA, who all happily savour football’s global cash flakes.
What to do? FIFA, with or without Blatter, needs a systemic overhaul. To start with, the organisation should break its paternalistic culture, expressed in unusually long presidential terms. The French Jules Rimet, was president for 33 years (1921-1954). The Brazilian, Mr. Havalange, was president for 24 years (1974-1998). Mr. Blatter himself has served for 17, and was gunning for 20 years, before the present rupture.
FIFA should impose term-limits on its officials. That way, no single person would be in office long enough to be dysfunctional. We suggest a maximum of two four-year terms.
Then, FIFA stakeholders should embrace a new confidence-building protocol that would give Europe its due without necessarily alienating the confederations of Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania.
Such all-inclusive re-tinkering would give less reasons for alleged subversive favours, which could be injurious to football as we know it today: the largest and happiest family in the universe.