rolling lol FIFA thread

no short corners is saying Chuck Blazer's been fired. Warner re-asserting control in concacaf?

http://theoriginalwinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/concacaf_chuck_blazer.jpg

And so the attacks on the FA continue; this time it's Julio Grondona, the long-time head of the Argentina FA, throwing the punches: "It looks like England is always complaining so please I say will you leave the Fifa family alone!" he says to strong applause. "We always have attacks from England," he adds. "Their journalism is more busy lying than telling the truth."

That liveblog is some depressing reading.

a julio grondona primer:

According to a former employee of the Qatar bid team, at least one adviser recommended that the Qatar Football Association make a payment of $78.4 million to help the Argentina Football Association, or AFA, dig out of a financial crisis that threatened the country's domestic league. This person said the payment was meant to help Qatar's relationship with AFA President Julio Grondona, who is a member of FIFA's executive committee.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703377504575651103941330246.html

grondona denied that the argentine fa was in debt. but that's not exactly what the WSJ is claiming - they're saying the league was under threat because of a financial crisis. and indeed, the year before the vote, the AFA had to postpone the start of the season because the first division clubs couldn't pay their players' wages - which led to riots and argentina's president calling for grondona to lose his job. there was no repeat of the problems last august, after the vote for qatar. hmm.

other grondona highlights:

Julio Grondona, Sepp's vice-president and head of Argentina's FA denies threatening a referee who alleged "systemic corruption" in Argentina. Javier Ruiz: "I pointed out how whole championships are being rigged for cash. Grondona told me: 'Pal, watch out for your family.'" Grondona: "I hardly know Ruiz. I only met him once or twice. Nothing can be proven."

Fifa senior vice-president and head of Argentina's FA Julio Grondona forced to apologise after telling a live TV audience: "I do not believe a Jew can ever be a referee. It's hard work and, you know, Jews don't like hard work." ("He's a monumental man!" says Sepp. "We are friends for ever!")

New from Argentina FA head Julio Grondona: answers government questions about his efforts to end violence in football. "I have no responsibility for violence in football. Football is the people's salvation." Grondona dismissed reports that 235 gang members had their trips to the World Cup paid for by cash extorted from his FA officials. "We cannot help who travels with us."

£50m: total amount lost on 'financial mismanagement' this year - a new Fifa best. £3.6m of it went to ex-general secretary Urs Linsi: handed a new contract by finance director Julio Grondona, two months after Sepp Blatter had privately decided to sack him.

etc.

That's the English media for you, making up lies again to distract people from the real issue here - las Malvinas

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Football/Pix/pictures/2011/6/1/1306919741004/Sepp-Blatter-007.jpg

someone else want to make the gif or shall I

closing an attempt at exoneration with "nothing can be proven" is a bit like aiming for verisimilitude by ending your sentences with "I tellsya".

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/06UZ4Z829ueLj/610x.jpg

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/073u3MCeoe2CC/610x.jpg

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/03Ob9qv88p5nq/610x.jpg

FIFA president Joseph Blatter, right, welcomes FIFA Executive Committe member Chuck Blazer prior to the 61st FIFA Congress held at the Hallenstadion in Zurich, Switzerland, Wednesday, June 1, 2011.

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haha, right now they're making each of the 208 delegates cast their vote one after the other, which at the current rate of progress should take over an hour, for a contest with one candidate. the suspense is killing me.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/SPORT/Pix/pictures/2011/6/1/1306941116767/Fifa-ballot-form-007.jpg

joseph sblatter

wow

Rummenigge, the Bayern Munich chief executive, said: "The recent happenings have once more proven that FIFA needs a change in its whole structure. As chairman of the European Club Association, I request FIFA to immediately introduce democratic and transparent structures and procedures.
"European clubs will no longer accept that they do not participate in the decision-making when it comes to club related matters.
"We will closely follow FIFA's development in this respect in the future and take appropriate measures, if there is no improvement."

^ most significant development of the day imo

are the clubs just going to use this as leverage against fifa to protect players from being used in international friendlies or whatever? i presume they don't really care about transparency and probity all of a sudden, given their own routine dealings with agents.

They'd rather be without the international game altogether is my feeling. Handily, fifa seem bent on giving every reason for it to be marginalised.

totally xxp.

not sure of the role of the ECA, but my impression is bayern are seen as (1) a technocratic, well run club (2) not english.

At his victory press conference, Blatter announced that a key member of the new internal structure to clean up the governance of Fifa will be the former US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. His precise role is as yet unclear.

presumably dispensing advice like: "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer."

http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/06/british-and-corruption

"We" think "they" are too tolerant of corruption. They think we are revolting hypocrites.

both otm

The article's OTM about the perception that England's complaints look hypocritical. There's certainly a sense that England tried to 'play the game' but weren't as clever or well-resourced as the rival bids.

All the stuff about integrity and decency also sits ill in the light of the FA's decision to roll out the red carpet for people like Abramovich, Usmanov, Shinawatra and al Mubarak at the domestic level. For a start, two of them provided the bankroll for the bid that actually beat England. Fixing a World Cup bid is hardly the greatest of Abramovich's crimes but the English game has been more than happy to swim in his money.

true. i've been surprised the extent to which the british press have rallied round the fa. it's been held in total contempt (incompetent, likely corrupt) basically throughout the premier league era afaict.

that's just their xenophobic instinct over-riding

4 reals tho blatter out

He's not cheating, he's just being "clever". The other team's going to do it, so why shouldn't we etc...

Not sure it is 'rallying round the FA' so much as 'we've got a story and we're going to run it'. The dear, hapless FA just happen to be the only ones putting themselves up to be shot down - it'd be a lot more effective if it was someone else.

i suspect the FA would not be sticking their neck out without the UK press. the press/attention made it untenable for them not to at least abstain.

do we know how many abstentions there were for the presidency vote btw?

i suspect the FA would not be sticking their neck out without the UK press. the press/attention made it untenable for them not to at least abstain.

Then Prince William stuck his oar in. Has Cameron jumped on the bandwagon yet?

sport secretary was giving it all that last week iirc

I think Blatter got 186 out 203 votes cast, out of 208 possible votes in total.

oh yeah, that was in the economist thing. lol vietnam.

Call me gullible, but could Blatter actually be the best of a bad lot? Is that possible?

oh yeah, that was in the economist thing. lol vietnam.

― caek, Thursday, 2 June 2011 14:30 (1 minute ago) Bookmark

if vietnam accidentally voted for blatter, then he appointed kissinger... it's almost too perfect.

fifa hammers another nail into own coffin, announces plan to increase friendlies to 17 per year

jack warner resigns, fifa closes its investigations and says "the presumption of innocence is maintained". that should silence the doubters!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/jun/20/fifa-jack-warner-resigns

nothing to see here, move along

great bunch of lads

loool http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/13878161.stm

it's kind of amazing, but bigsoccer actually has a blogger churning out good stuff on this

http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/blog.php?u=20531

Fifa could allow matches at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar to be played over three 30-minute periods if temperatures in the stadiums became dangerously high for the players.

Michael Beavon, a director of Arup Associates who helped to develop the zero-carbon solar technology that will cool the 12 stadiums, told delegates at the Qatar Infrastructure Conference in London that the air-cooling would maintain a comfortable temperature of around 24 degrees Celsius in the stadiums.

"There is a moderate risk of heat injury to the players between 24C-29C but if you go above that you have high and extreme risk of injury. The one thing Fifa do say, although it is for guidance, is if it's 32C they will stop a match and play three 30-minute thirds rather than two 45-minute halves.

The one thing Fifa do say, although it is for guidance, is if it's 32C they will stop a match and play three 30-minute thirds rather than two 45-minute halves.

Even though it was quite a bit hotter than this at many games in 94?

They should have the next WC on the moon. Of course circumstances there will be very different than on earth, and not perfect for the actual players of the game. But nothing some tinkering with the game's fundamental rules won't solve.

It's easy to see FIFA as unimportant in part because, as the Blatter-bin Hammam wrangle illustrates, there's something deeply silly about many of the organization's Machiavellian twists. One of the common misconceptions about FIFA corruption is that it flourishes because the organization is rolling in money. In fact, if FIFA were a corporation, its revenue of just more than $1 billion a year wouldn't get it within a Tim Howard goal kick of the Fortune 500. In 2010, ExxonMobil raked in $284.6 billion; Blockbuster Video, the 500th company on the list, had revenues more than four times the average for world soccer's governing body. By the global scale on which it operates, FIFA is at best a medium-sized outfit. And it's the organization's middlingness, combined with its exposure to much larger economic powers, that determines the peculiar character of its scandals.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/nov/16/sepp-blatter-fifa-race-rows-handshakes

love this guy

Blatter reveals his ambition to work as a television pundit

• Fifa president wants analyst's role in 2015

http://www.whoateallthepies.tv/international_football/154784/france-football-claim-to-have-proof-that-qatar-rigged-2022-world-cup-vote.html#NoSurprise

Sepp Blatter, 77, the current Fifa president, was not found guilty of any misconduct but was branded as "clumsy" in his handling of the case.

Blatter has taken the report as vindication. "I note with satisfaction that this report confirms that: 'President Blatter's conduct could not be classified in any way as misconduct with regard to any ethics rules'. I have no doubt that Fifa, thanks to the governance reform process that I proposed, now has the means to ensure that such an issue does not happen again."