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“You may think you know what FIFA is, what it does... A
faceless machine, printing money at the expense of the beautiful game
with me pulling the strings and laughing all the way to the bank. It’s
not exactly that.”
Sepp Blatter is not renowned for choosing his words
carefully. But the middle part of that quote, from a speech at the
Oxford Union in 2013, neatly captures the sentiment of many towards his
presidency of FIFA.
Next Friday at the FIFA Congress meeting, the 79-year-old
will stand for another four-year term at the helm of football’s
international governing body. Under his tenure, FIFA has been marred by
controversy and dogged by allegations of corruption – most recently
around the decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. Blatter has
scattered his reign with ham-fisted moments, such as the pronouncement
that female footballers should wear tighter shorts, and unpopular rule
changes, such as automatic bookings for taking off your shirt.
Blatter joined FIFA in 1975, when it had just 12 employees.
By 1998 he was its president, defeating UEFA supremo Lennart Johansson
in an election that soon found itself party to allegations of
corruption; but, while tales of envelopes of cash being passed under
hotel doors at the FIFA congress in Paris did the rounds, Blatter and
his camp denied all knowledge of any vote-buying – and a 1999 book by
the investigative journalist David Yallop, How They Stole The Game,
never directly claimed Blatter knew of or had any part in the alleged
corruption.
Claims made in an ESPN E60 documentary shown this month
suggested Blatter thinks it would be unwise to set foot in the United
States because of an ongoing FBI investigation. But a FIFA spokeswoman
dismissed this as “absolutely untrue” and the man himself says he plans
to visit next year. “I know in the US there is an investigation against
former people who have been in my government,” he said. “There is
nothing against me.”
In the UK, however, Blatter is a hate figure. The Sun ran a
front page likening him to Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi, painting a
picture of a despot clinging to power. A poll of more than 11,000
football
fans across Europe by campaign group #NewFIFANow found that only 0.4
per cent want him to win next week’s election – although 84.9 per cent
think he will.
And then there is the issue of transparency. In July 2012,
an ethics committee led by former US attorney Michael Garcia was asked
to produce a report into allegations of corruption in world football.
FIFA declined to publish the report, instead releasing only a summary
that Garcia insists does not reflect its contents. He resigned in
protest.
Passionate propaganda
Blatter remains unmoved, however, and determined to stay in
charge. Perhaps nothing gives a greater insight into how he sees his own
role in football than United Passions, an extraordinary film released
last year.
Starring Gerard Depardieu as World Cup founder Jules Rimet,
Sam Neill as former FIFA president Joao Havelange, and Tim Roth as
Blatter, it was almost wholly funded by a £16m grant from FIFA.
It is, to many, an astonishing piece of propaganda,
portraying Blatter only as hero. He argues on the side of human rights
when the 1978 World Cup is held under a dictatorship in Argentina. He
delivers on promises to the African delegations when Havelange is found
wanting. And it is Blatter who shouts down the other members of FIFA and
calls for more transparency.
“I am the president now,” bellows a portly Roth in an accent
that sounds like he came up with it in the car on the way to the shoot.
Stand and deliver
But maybe this version of events is not quite so ridiculous.
Outside Europe, Blatter is not seen as the source of football’s ills.
“He has spread football far beyond the European centre,
tapping into the unhappiness in the rest of the world and the perceived
arrogance of the European countries,” says football journalist James
Montague. “That’s how football was run until Havelange came in, in the
1970s. The power and money and control was in Europe, which dished out
what it felt the rest of the world deserved.”
Montague travelled across the globe following World Cup
qualification for his book Thirty-One Nil, and has seen first-hand the
benefits Blatter’s reign has brought to FIFA’s smaller members.
“Under his watch there has been a huge increase in the money
generated by FIFA, largely through television, and that has been passed
down to the federations,” he explains. “They have massively invested in
grassroots football, in facilities. Almost everywhere I went, whether
Haiti or American Samoa or Yemen, you see fantastic next-generation
all-weather pitches. I’ve just been to Bhutan and they had three
all-weather pitches built from money given to them by FIFA.”
Outside Britain, Germany and Switzerland, says Montague,
Blatter is perceived differently: “He is not seen as the evil emperor,
but as a guy who has delivered on his promise and delivered real,
tangible visible things for football in that country.”
Crucially, the FIFA Congress – comprised of representatives
of all 209 member associations that will choose from the four
presidential candidates (see below) – is one member, one vote. So
appeasing the smaller nations is also a shrewd political move.
Four more years
FIFA’s problem is not just bad PR – there are serious issues at the heart of the organisation.
“There has to be an understanding that you can’t run FIFA like it’s a 1970s British
golf
club,” says Montague. “There is too much at stake. It’s too important
to people and there’s too much money involved. You have to have
transparency – absolute transparency.”
The other presidential candidates, in particular Prince Ali
bin al-Hussein, have made greater transparency a key pillar of their
platforms. When Blatter was asked to make his case for re-election, he
simply shrugged his shoulders and said: “My manifesto is the work that I
have done.”
Despite that, Montague thinks there is hope for a better
FIFA, even if Blatter does serve another term. “The final term of a
presidency is about legacy,” he says. “And he won’t want to be
remembered for the mess over 2010 and the World Cup nominations over
Qatar and Russia, or for the secrecy. So I think we might see a FIFA
presidency that’s more in line with what Western Europe expects.”
There’s a scene in United Passions that sees Blatter
visiting Angola in 1979, in the company of Horst Dassler, then president
of adidas. The pair pace around the outskirts of a lush football pitch,
where children in sparkling new adidas boots and socks play an
organised game. The half-time whistle blows, and the children head for
the touchline, where two crates of Coca-Cola are waiting for them.
It encapsulates Blatter’s view of how he has been able to
take football to new territories and fund facilities in the developing
world, while simultaneously giving the sponsors what they want. That’s
why, despite the voices of protest from football’s first world, there
are unlikely to be any surprises at this election.
Option 2:
Option 3:
