There are some games that are far larger than just a sporting competition. There was that game in 1936 in Berlin when the England team were forced to raise their arms in Nazi salutes. There was that game in Belgrade between Red Star and Manchester United on February 6, 1958. It was to be the last footballing appearance of the Busby Babes. After the match, many of them flew off into the skies of football immortality in a crash at Munich...
Qatar 2022 is about to start with massive labour and human rights challenges. The sports integrity industry has had little effective effect. Sports integrity is, now, an industry. It needs clear rules of disclosure.
There are all kinds of examples of inappropriate blindness. There was Captain Smith of the SS Titanic not seeing the iceberg. There was Admiral Nelson putting the telescope to his eye patch not to see the signal to retreat. There was Johnny Papalia the mafia thug who beat up the head of Toronto’s illegal gambling racket in front of two-hundred people in a crowded restaurant and when the police arrived none of the patrons said they saw anything. Then there...
So he is gone. Michel Platini's drink at the last chance legal saloon of the Council for the Arbitration of Sport (CAS - the supreme court for sports) just ended. Here is the background. Michel Platini “advised” Sepp Blatter, the former president of FIFA, between 1999-2002. Just before the 2011 FIFA Presidential election, where Michel Platini chose not to run against Blatter, he received a payment of 2 million Swiss Francs from Blatter. Their story was that this payment was in recompense...
The FIFA presidential election was about covert campaigning, geo-politics, arrests for racketeering, corruption, fraud and sex: it did not have much to do with soccer. There were two FIFA Presidential elections happening here in Zurich. The public one with fine sounding statements and pronouncements of public morality made by the five presidential candidates. Their speeches featured all the clichés mentioning “accountability”, “transparency” or “a few bad apples ruining it for the honest majority”, etc, etc. Then there was a second campaign...
https://www.declanhill.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/X-Fifa-vice-president-Jack-Warner-is-caught-on-tape-offering-_gifts-of-25_000-to-Caribbean.flv.mp4 There are two unresolved questions here in Zurich with days to go before the biggest election in FIFA's history. The two front runners are Gianni Infantino and Sheikh Salman. They both have the official support of two confederations: Salman his own Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and the African Confederation (CAF). Infantino – Europe (UEFA) and Latin America (CONMEBOL). Most of the discussions, media spinning, rumours, etc in this city is about whether Salman's support is declining and Infantino is gaining: or,...
Crikey – the arrests of FIFA executives is getting so routine at the five-star Hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich the management should build it into their daily schedule: 5 p.m. - High Tea 6 p.m. - Cocktails & Happy Hour 6 a.m. - FBI & Swiss Organized Crime Police arrests of FIFA executives 7.15 a.m. - Continental breakfast Possibly the hotel has, like chocolates on the pillows, turn-down service and concierges, criminal lawyers standing around...
On the eve of FIFA’s executive committee meeting that is expected to rubber-stamp the decision of their ‘ethics committee’ (sic) to ban Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini from the international football world, four points: 1) Is the internal FIFA reform - a believable process? No. It is a Potemkin village of a battle against corruption. From far away, it seems good. Once you get close, the obvious conflicts of interests emerge. What is occurring now is a frantic effort by FIFA...
Now that Sepp Blatter has been driven off into the sunset from FIFA, it is time to reflect on the long-sorry, scandal ridden years of his reign. Seven things then that we have learned: 1) The Watergate of Sports Stories: It was not ESPN, nor any of the other big sports channels or well-established sports journalists who broke the FIFA story. The real heroes are a small collection of journalists who are largely outsiders. As the big sports media empires frantically...
Get Richard Pound in there asap. The news today of Sepp Blatter’s suspension shows the power of the sponsors. Forget any police charges. Forget any bad publicity. The reason why he is being shown the door is that some of the rich sponsors - finally, finally - came forward last week and asked for him to leave. If they had done it years ago we might not be in this position. The question is what to do now? FIFA is still an...
