World Cups and FIFA – “For the Good of the Gain”?

The Only Way is Ethics?

I'm reviving this thread because now the FIFA Ethics Committee have issued a summary of the investigations into the World Cup bids for 2018 and 2022.

Unsurprisingly the nations of Qatar and Russia have been cleared to host the 2022 and 2018 World Cups. This is despite Russia withholding evidence by claiming computers holding emails requested had been destroyed.

As I thought the actions of Mohamed Bin Hammam were deemed to be acting independently of the Qatari bid.


The summary of the report even confirms Hammam made “several improper payments” to high-ranking African football officials and paid $1.2m to the former Fifa executive committee member Jack Warner to stop him testifying against him. But it insisted none of these payments were related to the bid for the World Cup.

The role of Mohamed bin Hammam is not linked to the bid, with the former AFC president’s payments to CAF officials described as unrelated to the Qatar team and instead connected to his ambitions to become Fifa president. Bin Hammam’s legal payments to Reynald Temarii, which resulted in the removal of one vote, are also dismissed as having “no direct link” to Qatar 2022.

Most alarmingly is that FIFA had the cheek to put a lot of weight behind heavy criticism of England and Australia's World Cup bids.

Warner “showered” the England bid team with “inappropriate requests” and they reportedly obliged, sponsoring a gala dinner in Trinidad, trying to help an associate of Warner find a job in the UK and providing benefits for a football club he owned in Trinidad. The attempts to indulge the Concacaf president “damaged the integrity” of the process according to the report, which criticised the former FA chairman and bid leader Lord Triesman for not cooperating with the investigation.

Australia did attempt to gain the support of a Fifa executive member. The OFC’s seeking of financial support from Australia also undermined the process’s integrity. Report highlights payments from the Football Federation of Australia to Concacaf which appear “co-mingled with personal funds of the then Concacaf president [Warner]”.

Whilst I have no doubt that our own FA tried to play FIFA's dirty little game to secure a World Cup and lost. Possibly the same goes for the Australian FAs it is still completely peculiar that the members of FIFA's executive committee chose a tiny desert nation where temperatures reach 50C in June & July. Qatar has achieved absolutely nothing in the sport but somehow wooed the FIFA executive members into voting for them. One has to wonder how Oil rich, cash rich Qataris convinced them that this was the best place on earth to host the tournament?

Of course most laughably of all the guy who conducted the report Michael Garcia, a former attorney for the southern district of New York, has now complained that FIFA's summary of his 430-page report contains “numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts”.

FIFA maintain that the full report will not be made public. Garcia can and will appeal but he has to appeal to a FIFA committee. And unfortunately the organisation is rotten to the core.

Maybe when Blatter dies and his old cronies go with him then FIFA can start afresh.

That all said not enough people have cared to do anything about it for forty years. Why should we expect anything to change now?

I dont think FIFA ever starts afresh, i think that the culture of that organisation is so embedded that the corruption will continue for as long as FIFA continues.

I suggested to someone the other day that the only way this ends is if the major leagues/nations decide to split from FIFA and form their own organisation. Essentially start fresh. I see today that UEFA is making such noises, demanding that the full report be made public. The only problem with this is that UEFA is essentially a FIFA-esque organisation and you essentially replace Blatter with Platini, who I feel is just as corrupt (if not more so...one just needs to investigate his links to the Qataris, including his son gaining a position with QSI).

It requires a genuinely new start and a structure that distributes the power throughout the various nations and leagues instead of concentrating it in an almighty ivory tower.

Football would be much, much better off without the cancer that is FIFA.

a reply to: mirageman

I heard about this yesterday and what it says is, essentially, is every bid was guilty of unethical behaviour so the playing field was equal. @@

Every bid cheated and was corrupt so no one was at a disadvantage. Got to love the logic.

Garcia's comments on the whole thing were just mind blowing. He plans to try and get the reports released in full and get any inconsistencies, particularly the ones his name would be attached to, corrected and changed.

The whole thing is a joke.

it is still completely peculiar that the members of FIFA's executive committee chose a tiny desert nation where temperatures reach 50C in June & July. Qatar has achieved absolutely nothing in the sport

Yup, and will use slave labour to build the stadia needed for the WC. The whole bloody thing is insane, imo. I am not sure I will be able to watch anymore WC's or Euros in good conscience

a reply to: GAOTU789

Speaking as someone who has been to Dubai in April and noted a) how hot it was and b) how many red and peeling rich Russians were about, I have to say that playing a World Cup in Qatar in July - August is literally insane. They are risking the players' lives.

The Germans are now muttering about leaving FIFA unless the full report is made public

Uefa will have to consider leaving Fifa if world football's governing body does not publish, in full, Michael J Garcia's report into bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, according to German Football League President Reinhard Rauball.
.............
Rauball warned if Garcia's findings are not published "and this crisis is not resolved in a credible manner, you have to maybe also talk about the question of whether you are actually still well-served by Fifa."



Asked about possible consequences, Rauball replied, "One option, which would have to be seriously considered, is certainly whether Uefa should leave Fifa."

He described Eckert's ruling as a "communicative meltdown," and said it "shakes the foundations of Fifa in a way I never experienced before."

Source : Daily Telegraph

The FBI appear to have also increased interest into the way FIFA handles it's business and sponsors are also considering their relationship with FIFA.

I don't consider UEFA and our own FA exactly whiter than white but a united threat by the Europeans to leave FIFA would surely make Blatter and his cronies sit up. It all depends how serious the major associations see this. If say Brazil, Argentina, the United States, Mexico, Australia, Japan, S.Korea and a number of high profile African nations were to side with UEFA in a breakaway action then the end would be nigh for FIFA.

Unfortunately the World Cup and FIFA is still one of the hands that feeds so I don't see this as being a serious threat at present.