It’s not an accident that the second keyword phrase when you look up “FIFA” in Google is “FIFA corruption.”
For those fans who are sick of the banana-republic governing body of the beautiful game, the announcement that US attorney general Loretta Lynch has finally blown the whistle on FIFA’s rampant corruption comes as welcome news.
Here’s a list of the FIFA officials involved. Like all competent crime-lords, Sep Blatter is too smart to have his name linked to anything.
According to the Guardian’s David Goldblatt:
In comedy, football and politics, timing is everything and today’s events in Zurich have brought all three together with quite exceptional synchronicity. Just two days before Fifa’s annual congress and a fiercely contested presidential election, the Swiss attorney general’s office and their American equivalent in the Eastern District of New York have done what much of the football world has been longing for and launched separate criminal investigations into bribery, corruption and money laundering in world football in general and into the allocation of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar in particular.
and:
Reform should not be confined to chucking out the bad apples – it’s too late for that. Instead, Fifa’s constitution should be rewritten, specifying and intensifying the democratic and social obligations of its constituent members, and transforming its mode and rationale for awarding World Cups. This is the bare minimum that the situation demands. That neither candidate for the presidential election is running on anything close to this agenda is testament to how badly political reform is needed and how hard it is going to be to achieve.
Well, well, well. It’s time to take back the beautiful game from Sepp Blatter and his minions.
The Independent reports:
Sepp Blatter could be questioned by Swiss police ‘in coming weeks’
And here are their latest updates:
Fifa officials arrested in corruption investigation
Separate probe launched into allocation of 2018 and 2022 World Cups
Fifa presidential candidate calls it ‘a sad day for football’
US DoJ names indicted officials, including Fifa vice president Jeffrey Webb
Blatter himself ‘quite relaxed’ in wake of arrests, ‘confident he is ‘not involved’
Meanwhile, in a secret, undisclosed location, the man who is “quite relaxed” thinks he will sidestep the entire controversy. But the Swiss do know how to track money, and if they so choose, the ecosystem of corruption that is Sepp Blatter’s FIFA may soon be a public spectacle.
USA Today offers up this bit of after-the-fact analysis: FIFA will remain corrupt until Sepp Blatter is gone.
Gary Lineker speaks up as well. Better late than never, I guess.
So where else does responsibility lie? With FIFA’s sponsors. Apparently NIKE is already on the corruption-radar. And what about Visa, adidas, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Gazprom, and Hyundai? As of this moment, we can send a message by boycotting all of them.
This is what happens when you sponsor Al Capone, guys.
The lame stream corporate media has done very little to investigate FIFA over the years. Could it be they’re busy investigating even bigger corruption stories like the U.N., the Koch Brothers, or perhaps the Too-Big-to-Jail banks? Naaah.
WTF was FIFA thinking in the first place? Qatar?
P.S. – Thank you John Oliver.
P.P.S. – It’s a red card, Sepp Blatter. Stand down before you embarrass football any further.