african cup of nations~~

Oh I don't know.  Fans get killed regularly at Italian and French games.  This kind of bottle throwing and suspension of games happens every weekend in Eastern Europe.  Racism is allowed to go pretty much unchecked in Russia and other parts.  You don't really hear anything much about it from UEFA or the press.

It's a pity this tournament ended this way because it looked like it had been a surprising success given the short notice (and completely disgraceful) cancellation by Morroco.  Equatorial Guinea is a horrible country run by a horrendous who is absolutely destroying his people and is at the bottom of about every freedom and human rights indicator on the planet; it is the absolute definition of the 'oil curse' country. It should absolutely not be hosting international tournaments but very few people in our press have made that argument - they prefer to judge its inhabitants instead rather than the hideous conditions they are living under.  In a place like that you don't even know what reality you are observing - it could be an honest reaction from a set up of extremely f**ked off people who have nothing else positive going on in their lives and are reacting against the only immediate target they can see or it could just be a cover by the for the fact his team has just folded and he doesn't want 15'000 pissed off people using a rare opportunity to take their anger out in him so you switch the target as has been none many times before.

Either way Blatter maybe many things but he isn't a fraud.  This is a European perspective - from the point of view of most of the world he is the guy who delivered a respect and parity that Europe and South America had spent the rest of football history trying to deny them.  He gets that football is a global game; people in Europe don't and it's not just words and backhanders; he's delivered for them.  More World Cup places - World Cups in Africa and Asia, a window for the African Nations Cup, a better share of the wealth and power of world football.  Blatter is best viewed as a clientalistic politician who has figured out that you have to represent the broadest number of interest groups to be successful and then reeped the personal rewards from that.  He recognised football is a global game; his opponents didn't.  Until our administrators stop the patronising attitude of 'the only reason he's successful is that he's corrupt' and recognise that actually the corruption is the byproduct and that the main reason he is successful is that he understand the politics of football better than his opponents then he, and whoever his protege turns out to be, will stay in power of world football.  I'm sure that comment played very well in a lot of the World that doesn't recognise Europe's right to lecture them.