EVENTS AT this week’s Fifa Congress in Zurich have left the “football family” as the organisation’s president, Sepp Blatter, likes to call it, looking more dysfunctional than ever. The fallout from the suspension of two members of its governing executive committee cast some light on the way the federation does its business. And little that was said by delegates from around the world in the days that followed did much to address the widely held suspicion that the problems Fifa faces are rather more endemic.
International football is a multibillion-euro business and revenues from the sponsorship and television deals related to the World Cup put Fifa’s leaders in a strong position to influence the votes of delegates, particularly those from poorer associations.
For the European affiliates, including the FAI, Uefa is a more important source of funding. Matters of power and influence were behind its advice to them that they should not rock the boat at this time.
The decision of the English Football Association to publicly challenge Blatter’s re-election badly misjudged the mood of an electorate which feared the consequences of publicly confronting a man whose skilful use of patronage has kept him in the game’s most powerful post for more than a decade now. The FA’s stand would have been easier to admire had it followed on from England’s withdrawal last year from the tainted process to decide the host nations for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
It is rather easy for Blatter and his supporters to portray this week’s belated attempt by the English to intervene in the presidential election as being motivated by their reluctance to accept the outcome of a democratic process.
For all the outside criticism, Blatter’s position appears to have been strengthened in the short-term by the clumsy challenge to his authority. The 75-year-old has actually had a largely positive influence on the way football is played with many of the rule changes he championed over the years helping to make it a more enjoyable spectacle. In terms of governance and transparency, however, he is damaged.
The hope, however vain, is that over the next four years he might be sufficiently concerned about his place in the history books to take the bolder decisions required in order to restore a damaged reputation and reassure football’s global following that the game must be transparent on and off the pitch.