Criticism of the Premier League’s farcical proposal to play competitive matches abroad continues apace:
It gives the impression that they just want to go on tour to make some money. This is something I cannot understand.
I could not agree more with the words of one Joseph Blatter of Switzerland, reported by the BBC. Well said, sir! After all, what kind of cretin would seek to sully the reputation of football by way of greed and avarice?
The most powerful figure in world football has been accused of bribery, corruption and buying his way into the game’s top job.
Sepp Blatter, president of soccer’s world governing body, is fighting claims that he paid colleagues $50,000 each to ensure that he landed the post as head of Fifa last year…
Blatter has hit back by threatening worldwide legal action against his accuser, the British investigative author David Yallop, in a bid to suppress an explosive new book he has written about dirty-dealing within Fifa .
Yallop’s book, How They Stole The Game, contains deeply damaging claims about Blatter, his predecessor Joao Havelange, and other leading Fifa officials.
It investigates what happened to the billions of dollars which Fifa has earned during football’s global explosion in popularity since the 1950s and reveals details of secret bank accounts held by Fifa officials.
Oh.
At Blatter’s Press conference, German reporter Jens Wienreich asked him about allegations that his campaign had been funded from the Gulf and he replied: ‘The match is over. The players have already gone to the dressing-room, I will not respond.’
That evening Blatter went to Le Meridien Hotel where most rank-and-file delegates were staying, some at the expense of their national associations, others on the largesse of Havelange and his backers in the Gulf.
Blatter schmoozed through the lobby, shaking a hand here, clasping a shoulder there. Later that night, the mood changed when Issa Hayatou, president of African soccer, arrived, roused from his bed at the Hotel Bristol by a call telling him that bundles of cash were being handed out to delegates who had voted for Blatter.
Ah.
Official Fifa business, always an opulent inter-continental affair, has spiralled to grotesque levels. The massively enlarged carbuncle of football bureaucrats, created by Blatter as a phalanx of kept support, have lived the high life. In addition to the five-star, business-class, black-Mercedes arrangements, all have been allowed a daily expenses rate of 500 euros, for which no receipts or accounts are required. Members of the executive committee were handed $50,000 honorariums. President Blatter’s salary and accounts remain, despite repeated requests, a matter of complete secrecy.
Er…
Mihir Bose: he gives it to you from a pretty straight kind of guy…