rolling lol FIFA thread

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."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/may/30/sepp-blatter-fifa-great-survivor

On Sunday, Joseph S Blatter attended a ceremony on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius to celebrate the renaming of the country's FA headquarters in his honour.

They added the middle initial to make him sound like a n@zi war criminal

Blatter, who left the tournament last week as the protests reached their peak, hit back at Brazilian media which suggested he had fled the country without warning, saying he had to be present at the world under-20 championship in Turkey which overlaps with the Confederations Cup.

"In no way can it be said I escaped my responsibilities, on the contrary I assumed two responsibilities at the same time," he said.

Behind-the-scenes international intrigue, cronyism and allegations of vast corruption schemes: the story of Fifa, football's governing body, is surely ripe for a dramatic Hollywood retelling.

But a film in the works, starring Tim Roth and Gerard Depardieu, looks likely instead to be a sanitised version of Fifa's history and a hagiography of Sepp Blatter, its controversial president.

wtf, am I wrong to expect better from Roth than this? (he is to play Blatter)

LOL cannot wait

[heat exhausted footballer crawls towards blatter during qatar test match. he dies at his flip flops]

"be cool honey bunny!"

[curtains roll]

It is unclear who is funding the project

I wonder

Sepp Blatter: Fifa president hints at increased term

"Anything Mugabe can do I can do better..."

http://i.guim.co.uk/n/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/12/6/1386343964233/fadc4fa0-91e7-45ba-8dc8-2d18b174be8b-460x276.jpeg

It's actually morbidly impressive what a cushy nest this con-artist has been able to feather for himself. I mean, how does one go about becoming this sort of gravy-train grandee? I might apply for some work experience with him

start here

In the early 1970s, Blatter was elected president of the World Society of Friends of Suspenders, an organisation which tried to stop women replacing suspender belts with pantyhose.

Is Michael Garcia, who led the investigation into corruption in the Qatar bid, appealing against his own report?

His position seems to be that the findings (which he didn't write up) clear Qatar but are a distortion of what the committee actually reported.

I'm not sure if it's his report, but he is definitely claiming that the report itself doesn't correspond with his findings.

I'm sure FIFA were very relieved that their own investigation cleared them of any wrongdoing, anyway.

Appeals committee:

Larry MUSSENDEN Bermuda
Fernando MITJANS Argentina
AHMAD Madagascar
Édgar PEÑA GUTIÉRREZ Bolivia
F Randall CUNLIFFE Guam
Abdul Rahman LOOTAH United Arab Emirates
Leo WINDTNER Austria
Christian ANDREASEN Faroe Islands
Laureano GONZALEZ Venezuela
Dan KAKARAYA Papua New Guinea
Tourqui SALIM Comoros
Victor GARZA Mexico
Samuel RAM Fiji
Oliver SMITH Turks and Caicos Islands

He seems to have written a full report that someone else has summarised so there'll be pressure to publish both.

all the Russian documents got destroyed in a computer fire

I understand it that Garcia is disputing the summary made by FIFA of his report, claiming it's a false or inaccurate summary.

Dude should just put the whole thing online right now tbh

am loving - LOVING - the implication of the English FA as corrupt, but the clearing of Russia and Qatar. magnificent, magnificent stuff

1 out of 3 is something i guess

They had to leave the Spain / Portugal bid out of the report as nobody at the Spanish or Portuguese FAs was willing to discuss it with them.

Although low-level, the English FA's pandering to Uncle Jack was so brazen it makes you wonder how they thought they would get away with it. At least Russia and Qatar had the sense to burn the evidence.

exactly. too quaint and chummy by half. proper corruption escaping our fevered imperialist imagination

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFYv6sixE0g

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-sepp-blatter-fifa/img/bw_cover_fifa.jpg

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-sepp-blatter-fifa/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/27/sports/soccer/fifa-officials-face-corruption-charges-in-us.html

HERE we go.

warner indicted!

loving this @MichaelSSchmidt: FIFA execs not being led out in handcuffs. Very peaceful. Hotel staff meanwhile is freaking out.

i go past that hotel on my bus to work...so posh

I wouldn't put the chances of Jack Warner facing US justice at more than about 30%.

His son Daryan was meant to be the star witness in the FBI case against FIFA and, as far as i know, hasn't been able to leave Florida for two years. Ever since this came out, Jack hasn't left T&T, to the best of my knowledge. There's some confusion over exactly what the domestic laws mean but there's a belief that his status as an MP may give him immunity from extradition.

The complication is that he has started to burn bridges with the government over corruption. He was national security minister until 2013, when the story about Daryan broke, and had kept quiet about decades of domestic corruption. When he was turfed out of the ruling party, he started to release some of the historical allegations to the press. I'd suspect that he has far more on both FIFA and the T&T government in reserve, for exactly this eventuality, but if not then they might want him shipped out ASAP.

It looks like Chuck Blazer (who famously had a separate apartment in Trump Towers for his cats) is the one who cut a deal for immunity. All the people arrested are CONCACAF and he is the one missing.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/soccer/soccer-rat-ex-u-s-soccer-exec-chuck-blazer-fbi-informant-article-1.1995761

wd love to believe a few of these guys (warner especially) will end up in prison... but I guess it's never going to happen is it?

Some of them probably will. You generally don't get to be head of a football association without political ties but some governments might want to disassociate themselves. It will be interesting to see how this plays out politically in some countries given that this is an independent prosecution brought by a CONCACAF competitor. FIFA isn't popular anywhere but i don't know how well the idea of the Costa Rican FA being dismantled by the US government will go down, for example, when the two countries have had public disagreements on various football-related things in the past.

any hope this will lead to a proper investigation of qatar?

The legal ramifications of pulling Qatar would be gigantic given that they've already started building infrastructure in anticipation of the World Cup, with people already dying in their hundreds. But they will continue to do so the longer preparations continue, the right thing to do would be to halt everything now and give 2022 to a country already reasonably well placed to hold it, but the size of the lawsuits that FIFA would open themselves up (and the likelihood of this clusterfuck continuing for years) will probably enough to ensure they bottle doing that.

Also if the Qatar process was corrupt (lol) then the likelihood is the Russian one was too and that's five years closer (although I'd guess FIFA would dearly love to take the WC away from Russia for other reasons).

Four years closer, even.

Guardian now reporting that Swiss authorities are holding a criminal inquiry into the awarding of both 2018 and 2022.

Due to air this evening: There's Only One Sepp Blatter http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05w8ftq