Sepp Blatter

Insideworldfootball.biz

Could 2012 be the year when football finally begins to accept that it can longer disregard the wider world?

2011 has been the year of the great “no”. The game tried hard to carry on with the fiction that all of football’s problems can be solved behind the front door of the family mansion irrespective of what the outside world may expect.

It has always been curious that the world’s most popular game is so conservative and resistant to change. Witness its enduring hostility to using technology for controversial decisions. This is despite the fact that it brings the game into disrepute. The result is that millions, who watch the game at home or in pubs, often know a referee has made a mistake, even a game changing mistake, while the referee is blissfully unaware.

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Insideworldfootball.biz

Sepp Blatter may believe the furore he provoked by his comments on racism in football is behind him. He could not be more mistaken. He will have to live with the consequences of his absurd comment that if there is racism on the field of play it can be got rid of by a post-match hand shake.

Worse still, the damage he has done to FIFA, when the organisation is already so beleaguered, cannot be overestimated.

If proof of this was needed it came in the most unlikely setting. Let me sketch the scene for you.

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PlayUp

Power is key in the fight against racism

Yes, Sepp Blatter is a 75-year old Swiss who does not know what he is talking about and it is high time he spend more time with the grandchildren rather than run world football.

Such a reaction to his grotesque remarks that there is no racism in football and it can all be dealt with by a gentlemanly handshake, is wholly understandable. A conclusion all the more tempting as these interviews came about as Blatter, rocked by Fifa’s corruption scandal, was trying to rehabilitate himself.

He has just acquired a new head of PR and the interviews were clearly part of a plan to promote the new Blatter cleaning up Fifa. With the re-launch now going so badly wrong, you must doubt if the product is worth bothering about. But to think Blatter’s departure, which I don’t think is likely, will help deal with the enormous problems of racism in the game is almost as absurd as his remarks.

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CNN International

Mihir discusses a call for Sepp Blatter to quit FIFA over his remarks on racism.

Insideworldfootball

Mohammed Bin Hammam may have been self-serving in accusing FIFA of racism and alleging that, had he been an European, he would not have suffered the punishment he has – banished for life from world football for having been found guilty of vote buying during the FIFA presidential race.

He could not have put it more clearly in a letter to Petrus Damaseb, the deputy chairman of the Ethics Committee: “Were I a European, or were the Caribbean part of Europe, neither [Sepp] Blatter nor [Jérôme] Valcke will dare lay a finger on us. Were we Europeans, you [a reference to Damaseb] would have never been given the opportunity to chair this ethics committee panel and slaughter people left and right, as you have done.”

Race, of course, is always a very emotive issue and it is not uncommon for people who feel victimised, as Bin Hammam clearly does, to raise the race issue. It is interesting that, in his reference to race, he has drawn in the Caribbean where this issue has not only aggravated racial feelings, but also made some of them feel that this is all a North American plot. The choice of language by Bin Hammam has a touch of the street about it with reference to “brothers” and how FIFA has damaged their reputation.

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