Blatter. surprise surprise

The thing people don't understand about Blatter is that the reason he is able to get away with all of this is because he's a very effective football politician who has delivered spectacularly for his core constituencies - which are the smaller associations in Africa, Asia and North America.  People often bang on about Blatter and Platini as if they are in cahoots - this is absolutely not true.  Politically they are opponents in World Football because Blatter, despite being Swiss, has made his name in football and powerbase by smashing the old cartel power-base of European and South American Associations who used to stitch everything up.  Platini wants to win a huge chunk of that power back.  Blatter can claim (with some justification) that he has made football a truly global game and distributed resources and opportunities much more fairly than previous heads of FIFA have done.  That is the main reason he keeps getting elected and people turn a blind eye to the outrageous corruption; he has delivered for the people who vote for him (irrespective of the very dodgy stuff that goes on he would not have been able to sustain his position had he not done so).  Europe and South America has no interest whatsoever in forming alliances with other associations or in developing the game outside of their areas.  Until they wake up to the reality that the power in FIFA is genuinely global and you need to build proper alliances that recognise the global reach of the game their influence will continue to decline and the next person to lead FIFA will simply be a Blatter protege.

Blatter is the only person in world football with a genuinely global vision (and, yes, he pushes it for entirely immoral reasons of personal power and wealth) - everybody else is just protecting their patches and that is what has allowed him to be so successful.  Havelange (who was Blatter's mentor) realised all of this decades ago when he broke the British strangle hold on the game by, rightly, pointing out the extent to which British interests were deliberately holding back football in other parts of the World.  The FIFA of Stanley Rouse (and the FA) had no interest in growing the game in Africa, in Asia and in anywhere outside of its powerbase and was obsessed with protecting British control of FIFA.  We've never adapted to the fact we don't run the game anymore or the fact that it is a global game now.  All we do is carp on the sidelines about beastly corrupt foreigners - which other nations laugh at because for the 60-70 years we ran the global game we gobbled up all the cash, prevented it fulfilling its potential and stitched up every competition going in our own interest (we poo-pood the idea of both the World Cup and the European Cup for crying outloud); urgo for people like Blatter (who would have been around at the tail end of this) British football has no moral high ground to stand on.  The point is though that until we change our attitudes and tactics rather than just the sulking 'it's our ball and we'll take it and go home' kind of position then we'll never be able to do anything about the likes of Blatter other than bluster ineffectually on the sidelines while choosing to selectively ignore our own major historic contribution to the moral cesspit that is FIFA.

Blatter is just one of hundreds of dishonest, bent, vile people in football. The heads of so many associations stink of corruption, even England's FA are not excluded in this, we have premiership chairmen embezzling foreign wealth, players ransoming the emotional connection of football to squeeze money before diverting this offshore, sky and BT squeezing the consumer, agents removing any sense of loyalty and clubs just taking the piss in exploiting fans through ticket, merchandise and share schemes. Blather stinks of fraud but everyone in football seems at it .

and Surprise, surprise it's the FA that will get a slap on the wrist for being naughty boys

No surprise there whatsoever.... any one of us could have written that script!!

But the FA did cosy up to Jack Warner in a pretty abysmal way - remember those pointless friendlies v Trinidad? We did play the same game as everyone else - we just did it very badly.  There is no high ground for the FA to stand on, that's the problem.  You can't enter into the business, play the dodgy game get beaten at it and then cry about ethics when you were also in it up to your knees.  Of course you are going to get hammered by those that won for ridiculous double standards because it is double standards.  We only started banging on about FIFA ethics when it became clear we were going to lose the World Cup bid - before that we were busy hawking our votes, money and soul around as much as anyone else.

It's the classic English 'these 'beastly foreigners are ruining our game' narrative and is why we are perceived as being the biggest hypocrits in World football and have no influence anymore.  We created FIFA, we created the system and we completely gamed it in our favour for 70 years - we are entirely responsible for the existence of Sepp Blatter; he'd never have had any base from which to operate from if we'd run the game properly when we had the chance. 

This is about corruption, it is about a total whitewash, it is about FIFA hypocrisy and it is about an insitutionally corrupt organisation but it's also about where the power lies in World football and it isn't with us anymore; so as far as most of the world is concerned we are just an irrelevant bunch of bitter losers and they will not take a lecture on ethics from us.  The English perspective on FIFA seems to completely lack both any sense of history (and acknowledgment of our own key role in all of this - particularly the appalling governance rules which we originally invented in order to benefit ourselves!) and any sense of the political reality - the more we jump up and down and raise ourselves onto a distinctly shaky looking moral pedestal the less influence we actually have.  Apparently we don't like Michael Platini either (who is the only realistic opponent Blatter has and definitely the only one who might do anything at all about ethics) because he said a few things about our top clubs being too rich and powerful that most English football fans agree with if said by an English football fan - so what exactly is it that we do want here? Because at the moment we are doing no good whatsoever and are completely isolated.

Oh yeah absolutely it's a total disgrace and I can't imagine anyone is suprised by that but the FA had this coming and I have no sympathy for them at all.

Normally agree with most things you say Irish but sorry now you are barking up the wrong tree. Yes the game probably was run in for the first 70 odd years to favour the Home Nations but that was a different time when different ethics & morals applied. And today is the 21st century and those in charge of FIFA try to hold it up as some bastion of fair play whilst it is still the most corrupt organisation going, or just inept. If your argument is that it was just as bad when it was run by the Home Nations then we may as well agree that it's okay to go back to calling people Pakis & ********, the worlds changed but FIFA hasn't.

I suppose what disappoints me most is that one of the major FIFA sponsors hasn't taken the bull by the horns & demanded to be involved in the investigation. In this regard I would've thought that Mastercard would've been ideally equipped to investigate & report independently. But alas no.

It's interesting that the German FA are demanding that the full report be published. They have indicated they would be prepared to take some form of action if it is not. Should the major European countries get together to change things? After all, what would the World Cup be worth if England, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Holland etc decided to boycott it?