Someone has to stop Fifa. Now!

Posted on by WalterBroeckx

By Walter Broeckx

Look who’s talking.

Joseph Blatter the big boss of the organisation that is out there in order  to make as much money as possible out of football, uses all means including overloading players as much as possible with meaningless games on every occasion, (also known as Fifa) has spoken.

He has said a few things about the world cup in Qatar. First of all let me remind you that it is the same Mr. Blatter who is responsible for the fact that the world cup in 2022 will be organised in Qatar.

And let me also start with the fact that I don’t know Qatar at all. OK, I know it is a country in the Middle East, that it has no parliament and no political parties and that it is a unitary absolute monarchy. And who am I to dispute the Qatari right to organise their state in the way they do. For your information I am against monarchies and would like each country to have a democratically chosen parliament and government, but that is my personal opinion.  I have nothing against the Qatari leaders in person as I know none of them in person.

But the fact that the world cup will be hosted in a country that has a temperature well above conditions that could be found acceptable to perform a football match is beyond me. Not much Qatar can do about the normal weather conditions in that time of the year of course but why didn’t Blatter think about that fact before they accepted the Qatar bid for the world cup.

Now if I can believe the media (and I do admit I do have trouble in believing them most of the time) there seems to be something wrong in Qatar.

We have for example the case of the French football player Zahir Belounis. He played for a club in Qatar with the name El Jaish since 2007. He signed a new contract over there with the club in 2011 and then they wanted to loan him out to a second division club. And since that moment he didn’t get paid.

He then started a court case against his club and the club El Jaish then retracted his passport and so Belounis cannot leave Qatar. He is a prisoner in Qatar. The club El Jaish said that he could get his passport back if the drops his court case against them.

Belounis wants his contract to be honoured and refuses to drop the court case. And so he, his wife and two children are sitting their with no income and as a prisoner that cannot leave the country. Mr. Blatter from Fifa has said nothing about this. Why Mr. Blatter? Why your silence? Mr. Belounis is as a player a member of Fifa and so you should care about him. Or do you just care about the big boys? The boys with money?

I will not write about the particular shape of one of the stadiums that are being build for the world cup. I’m no stranger to that part of the female body to be honest so I’m not that shocked easily. What shocks me more is the working conditions that the workers have to face in Qatar to build those stadiums. Whatever their shape may look like.

International workers unions have protested for a while about the working conditions of the workers in Qatar. Most of those workers are not from Qatar but come from other countries to do the hard work. And they have to work in horrible conditions. Unsafe conditions. Living and working  like slaves for low wages. Admittedly wages they probably couldn’t earn in their own home countries but the wages and the working conditions are not really what one could expect from a country that claims to be well developed. And many of them have died on the building sites. So given the form of that one already famous stadium one could say that there will be blood on the walls of the stadiums.

But now after a meeting with Michael Sommer, president of the international trade union, Mr. Blatter has opened his mouth. And what he said was in fact shocking.

Mr. Blatter said, and I quote the media in this : “The companies and political leaders should make moves to improve the working conditions” and he added “I am sure that Qatar takes this situation serious”.

I don’t know if I am quickly offended or shocked (not by shapes of stadiums) but I must say that these few lines shocked me. So it is up to the companies (who owns these companies Mr. Blatter?) and the Qatar government to take action. A Qatar government that has no problem in allowing the conditions in the first place and is also not really bothered by keeping persons in the country against their will.

This statement of Blatter is somewhat akin to that of Pontius Pilate: Washing his hands in innocence. This is saying: it is not a problem for Fifa. It is their problem. And I couldn’t give a f*ck about it to be honest. That is what these sentences are saying.

Tens, hundreds, who knows – maybe thousand people dying just to be able for me to put on the world cup: I don’t care. That is what Pontius Blatter is saying. As long as I got my money in my bank account, as long as the bank accounts of the other members of Fifa and as long as the bank accounts of Fifa are filled I couldn’t give a f*ck about some poor people well being.

But in order to cover up the real meaning he said that they will sent another big Fifa boy over there. The German Theo Zwanziger will listen to the trade unions. And he has talked to the Emir also. See they are not as bad as you thought Walter. Well let me kill that hope then right away. As he also said that that in a next meeting they will be able to say which measures will be taken. The meeting will take place in March by the way. March next year. So let us fill our Fifa glass with some more champagne and celebrate this huge step forward in the working and living conditions of the slave-workers in Qatar.

At the best it will only be another 5 or 6 months before the conditions will change. Now isn’t that a nice prospect? Forgive me the interruption while I go to the toilet to throw up my breakfast.

If Mr. Blatter wants to keep any credibility in himself and in Fifa they should bang their fist on the table in Qatar and tell them: NOW is the moment to change it and if not you will not host the world cup. But of course they cannot because maybe that would be the moment that some people might open the box with little secrets about how the world cup was given to Qatar in the first place.

And the final result of all this is that Fifa allows terrible conditions and slave work for the poor lads who are working in Qatar. He allows people to get killed. I love football a lot, but people getting killed in order for the big Fifa boys to fill their pockets is a bridge too far. How can any decent person enjoy the world cup when it will be played in Qatar?

Shame on you Mr. Blatter and your acolytes. Shame on you Fifa.

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11 Replies to “Someone has to stop Fifa. Now!”

  1. It’s even worse than that in Qatar, immigrant workers are promised lucrative wages to entice them to come & work in Qatar but when they get there they are payed far less than that & in some cases not payed at all. When these workers inevitably want to leave their passports are taken away, most of them live in overcrowded barracks, (like jails) & the working conditions are extremely dangerous. It’s no exaggeration to say thousands have died. This is basically state led exploitation & slavery.

    Fifa president Sepp Blatter is in a unique position to make the situation better by making it explicit that slavery or such exploitation will not be tolerated & if it continues the World Cup will be taken away. But we all know oil money corrupts brains & morals.

  2. Ah yez , wat elze can ve do zen to laff at ze antiks of Herr Septic Bladder and ze dummkopfen at ze fifi fufu fafa ?

    Non stop slapstick comedic turns , falls and fails – never a dull moment. Makes the Keystone cops seem efficient by comparison .

    My take on their ‘awarding’ the 2022 WC to Qatar is this –

    a) The world was to come to an end in 2012 , so they decided to the money anyway ! According my research ,the Chinese and the Mayans had miscalculated it by 10 years – damn those solar calenders – so they still may get away with it !

    b) FIFA may have had inside scientific knowledge about global warming and the glaziers melting and moving down to cool the Middle East .Hint – invest in companies that will be soon be opening winter wear stores and skiing gear in Qatar. Remember the “selling of refrigerators to Eskimos ”
    analogy ? AHHH !
    c) Hell freezes over ! This would of course depend on where your own personal hell is or where you think hell should be!

  3. Qatar holding the World Cup. Crazy. But if you’re arguing against holding it there due to the state’s mistreatment of its imported workers and various other despicable practices perhaps we should consider Russia’s injustices too. Putin is a jumped-up little tyrant who we should be lambasting daily rather than gifting his nation the biggest tournament on the planet.

  5. Accetptable to perform for whom ??
    Qatar has a football league and lets find a few players who found it acceptable to play there – http://www.thebesteleven.com/2008/02/famous-players-from-qatari-league.html
    Recognize any ??

    Simply saying Qatar is not at the right temperature to play football for some countries does not mean it shouldnt hold the WC, after all its the “world cup”. If football can be played at altitude in bolivia, or the freezing cold in Russia by africans/south americans then europeans can play in the Qatar heat.

    Yes Qatar workd cup is not the brightest idea and how they got it remains a mystery to many, but stating conditions as ONE of the reason is laughable.

    They already own your land , your shops, your banks sea and air, jealous much

  7. Wlater you are anarchist :). Kidding, anyway. Well it is political decision, aimed a) to show “Muslim world” open hand, b) To promote Football in areas not well known for footballing.
    So reasons behind it are quite understandable. I don’t agree with it, but understand it. Of course I didn’t forgot financial background of it as well.
    As someone who has been in Qatar, I must say it is more liberal country than most surrounding ones, what is not such hard to achieve (slug is much faster than rock).

  8. FIFA are out of control – It’s all about power hungry mean in suits making money off the back of the world game. It’s gone too far now for anything to be done as any country pulling out of FIFA would effectively be cast out of world football. The only chance is if the bigger countries formed a breakaway, but I suspect that would end up the same in the end.
    At least if they keep expanding the number of countries in the World Cup Finals we may no longer have to play those dreary qualifiers.
    http://www.notanotherarsenalblog.wordpress.com

  9. Walter,

    I think the point of view here depends on whether you feel sport should be held to a higher standard than the rest of society. FIFA is simply doing what all other entities do. Looking after itself. The EU trade with Qatar stands at around a billion euros I believe. A lot of that is used to directly or indirectly finance the system of production, including labour exploitation there.

    Do we take the issue of FIFA more seriously? It is a known fact that many countries in the middle east rely on cheap, imported labour, especially for menial tasks, and they obviously do all they can to preserve this ‘competitive advantage’. Yet, the world does business with them. Should football be different? Maybe it should. But realistically, it’s just another form of business. We all know it. The game isn’t just a game anymore. It’s big business.

    However, the case of the footballer trapped there really does deserve some intervention from FIFA. Urging nations to follow human rights and proper economics is not FIFA’s job. But honouring football contracts comes under FIFA’s jurisdiction quite clearly. The fact that they aren’t doing anything about that shows them up as negligent towards their duty. There is no moral condition attached to that.

    Also, agree with you about the weather. It was initially argued that the stadia would be completely air conditioned and the temperatures would be controlled. Suddenly that seems to have disappeared and it’s talk of a winter world cup. That is deceitful and not right. If it needs that, then the world cup should be shifted out of Qatar, or a fresh bidding process be initiated with a clear schedule.

  10. rupert

    The world cup is not your’s to ‘gift’ to anyone. Both Russia and the UK bid under the same process. That you lost is not a sign that the process is any more corrupt than it was before you entered it.

    Putin is the president of his country. He’s as legitimate as Cameron or Obama. You may not like it. You may not agree with his policies. You may feel his standing is illegal or his country’s excesses are wrong, but he’s as legitimate as any other head of state. It’s this wonderful world we live in. But only certain nations’ press propagate the view they have the ‘responsibility’ to intervene and control how the rest of the world works. It’s the white man’s burden all over again. Russia is an independent, powerful nation that doesn’t need sermonizing, especially from nations whose own track record is hardly without blemish. In fact, the reason they sermonize is because Russia is a powerful nation. If it were weak, Putin would be a good guy trying to do good in a tough situation. As long as he toed the line, and took care of the UK’s interests, of course. Russia’s problems exist. But they are just that. Russia’s problems. None of it precludes them from hosting a sporting tournament.

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