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By Tony Attwood
When we see headlines such as “Fifa launches new attack on media over alleged ‘concerted effort’ to undermine Gianni Infantino” (that being in the Guardian) we know Fifa really has a problem. Since for almost all of its existence Fifa has acted with imperiousness, finding itself immune from media assault. Now finally they have noticed the media and next they might actually realise that there is a thing called a “supporter” – although I am not sure how long that will take them…
What makes all this so laughable is the follow up headline, “‘Insinuation should not be presented as fact’.” But this has been the essence of football journalism for as long as I have been reading newspapers and websites – insinuation is what football journalism is based on.
So people are accused of a “concerted and ongoing effort by some to undermine Fifa and its president.” Well yes just as for long parts of its existence Arsenal has been the subject of a concerned attack from the media.
But now have got something we agree on. I don’t think there should be a Fifa. Football is based on clubs – from the clubs in the lowest leagues where games are played on public pitches and the “crowd” is made up of a few mates who can’t play as they are injured, up to Arsenal playing at home. Fifa adds with its “internatiionals” adds an unnecessary extra layer that many people who watch football could happily do without. But Fifa has wheedled its way into the heart of the media, and now pretend they ARE the game.
You might recall we reported on an article in the Telegraph that Fifa had paid off a woman who had had a relationship with Infantino. Now it has been confirmed that was true, and then amazingly said the payment was made “in line” with regulations at the time!
Fifa has gone on to say that “any insinuation of inappropriate conduct or violation of statutes or regulations is defamatory”. But I don’t think anyone has said that. What we’ve said is that that regulations themselves are wrong, just as so much of what Fifa does is wrong. In short football does not need Fifa with its mega-spending and grandiose ideas of its own importance. It should be wound up and the money saved given to charity.
They go on to say, ” Fifa’s member associations should not seek to achieve through allegation, insinuation or misinformation what they cannot achieve through Fifa’s established democratic processes.” And I think Uefa is agreeing by pulling out of Fifa. The last thing we need is Uefa crumbling and going back into Fifa.
Meanwhile Fifa shows that even though it was formed 122 years ago it still has not grasped how football is run. It is run through allegation, insinuation and misinformation – much of it created by Fifa itself, the rest invented by football journalists. If Fifa has only just discovered that is how football works, then it is even more out of touch than I thought.
In relation to these comments the Guardian states that “Uefa’s threat that its 55 member countries could boycott Fifa competitions remains in place, with the European confederation saying on Thursday that the withdrawal of the scheme ‘changes nothing’.”
Meanwhile, staying with the Guardian, there is the headline, “Premier League managers have never been less English, title-winning or secure in their jobs”. This follows the fact that over half of the PL clubs this coming season will have a new manager. The only times when there were more new managers was the first league season ever (that’s rather obvious) and the first season after the second world war when there was no league football for seven years and of course tragically many managers died.
This season it is likely that more and more teams will follow what is known as the Tottenham Model of appointing a new manager and then replacing him during the season. Interestingly, Mikel Arteta is the only manager who has won the English league in the past and who will be starting this season with a chance to do it again as reported in the Guardian.
Only three managers this season will be English, although that might be because clubs have realized that two of the three teams that went down last season were managed by Englishmen. Indeed it could well be that because English newspapers demand instant success, which is very hard to achieve in PL football, few Englishmen bother with football management, knowing how rapidly they can be sacked.
Indeed I have not done the research in depth to prove this, but it looks to me as if Arsenal were unique among the top clubs, in allowing Arteta to stay, despite Arsenal coming 8th, 8th and 5th during his first three seasons. Indeed his subsequent run of three second place finishes led to some calls for him to be sacked for not having a “winning mentality”.
This could be yet another of those occasions in which the media lead the call for change, but then in writing up the history put the blame on the club for changing managers too often.
