By Tony Attwood
The latest word on Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini is that they are likely to receive suspensions of at least seven years from football related activity in the hearings happening Thursday (Blatter) and Friday (Platini).
The specific issue that will cause the ban is the £1.3m payment made to Platini by Fifa in 2011 and signed off by Blatter.
It appears that Fifa are charging the two with corruption, conflict of interest and non-cooperation but they don’t expect to get the corruption charge accepted. Corruption would lead to a lifetime ban, but even so, seven years ought to be enough to get the men out of football. The decisions may not be known until next week.
The issue relates to a 2m Swiss franc payment was made to Platini by Blatter in 2011 for work carried out between 1998 and 2002 under a verbal agreement – which in Swiss law as in English law, is perfectly legal.
But it took nine years for Blatter to ask for the cash, and he got it when Blatter was trying to become president of Fifa for the fourth time. A couple of weeks later Uefa endorsed Blatter’s candidacy.
The excuse for the delay was at the time of the “work” Fifa was short of cash.
Although we are still waiting for the big cases to happen, we should not forget that South Korea’s Fifa vice-president Chung Mong-Joon was banned for six years in October for conflict of interest and non-cooperation. Interestingly non-cooperation includes making a negative public statement about the Fifa ethics committee!
Platini’s lawyers had said in a statement: “Michel Platini … has decided not to attend his hearing at the Fifa ethics committee on 18 December 2015 as the verdict of this ethics committee has been announced in the press last weekend by one of its spokespersons, Mr Andreas Bantel, in disregard of all fundamental rights, starting with the presumption of innocence.
“By this decision Michel Platini means to express his deepest indignation with a process he regards as solely political and intended to prevent him from standing for the Fifa presidency.”
Fifa ethics committee in response promised Platini a fair trial, saying: “We would like to clearly stress that the adjudicatory chamber of the ethics committee will deal with the present case in the same way as with any other procedure independently and in an unbiased manner.”
It is more than likely that both men will then appeal to the Court of Arbitration in Sport. These tend to be quite shady affairs with only limited information then made available to the public. It was the CAS that Barcelona turned to when it sought to overthrow its year long ban from buying players after the child trafficking affair. The CAS threw out Barcelona’s appeals, despite many predictions by Barca supporters that the fact that Barca had done nothing wrong would immediately come to light.
In fact that CAS hearing was very short since Barcelona’s defence was, “We are Barcelona, our youth academy is world famous.” Quite possibly the Platini and Blatter appeals will be much the same. “Fifa is not corrupt; it just as a few corrupt individuals, but not us.”
The case is of course not the main issue that is facing Blatter, nor Fifa. Fifa officials still insist that Fifa is not corrupt, but that it has had a few corrupt people within it, as many organisations do.
Meanwhile the FA continues to support Fifa and all its doings and will play a team in the next two world cups despite serious concerns about corruption in the bidding process and human rights violations in the building of the stadia.
With the FA morally bankrupt and heading towards financial ruin (over a third of its staff have been made redundant this year) it looks as if they could be the next organisation to begin the process of unravelling.
- 18 December 2001: League match 17 of the third Double season. Arsenal’s final defeat of the season. Arsenal 1 Newcastle 3. All three defeats were at home – the other two being to Leeds and Charlton. Arsenal won 18 and drew three of the remaining games.
- 18 December 2005: Arsenal 0 Chelsea 2. Arsenal’s third consecutive defeat. In the run, Arsenal had scored nil and let in five, being beaten also by Bolton and Newcastle. 10 years on, Bolton, facing relegation to the 3rd tier announced they were insolvent and struggling to continue.
I don’t know what the 2 Fifa’s super elites of, Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini are still doing at Fifa or want to still be doing at Fifa. Haven they seen the handwriting on the wall enough?
The handwriting is so bold and clear that no one that cares about football ethics can miss reading it. Going by the heavy incriminating charges the duo super executives have been charged with, I can’t see any reason that will make Mr Blatter and Mr Platini to have any hopes they can escape punishments by Fifa. Talkless of Mr Platini still nursing a very unethical hope of contesting for the glamorous and lucrative Fifa President office.
Would it not be a big redicule to football world wide, if Fifa ethics committee and adjudicatory chamber absolved these 2 super executives from all incriminating charges that includes official corruption in office which they were charge with?
What is the consequence of Platini been punished by Fifa’s punishments office, say a ban for a lengthy time or even a ban for a life time have on his office as Uefa President? To step down immediately from his office as the Uefa President? Does any Fifa ban of him immediately invalidates his Presidency at Uefa. That’s why I commented last time that these 2 super duo should have resigned from their offices immediately the chips were down to save themselves from these distresses they are currently going through and the ignomity they will carry with themselves after leaving office. In particular, Platini who knows that he has a big office of Uefa to continue to head should have resigned from Fifa immediately the incriminating story busted.
I don’t know what the 2 Fifa’s super elites of, Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini are still doing at Fifa or want to still be doing at Fifa. Haven they seen the handwriting on the wall enough?
The handwriting is so bold and clear that no one that cares about football ethics can miss reading it. Going by the heavy incriminating charges the duo super executives have been charged with, I can’t see any reason that will make Mr Blatter and Mr Platini to have any hope they can escape punishments by Fifa. Talkless of Mr Platini still nursing a very unethical hope of contesting for the glamorous and lucrative Fifa President office.
Would it not be a big redicule to football world wide, if Fifa ethics committee and adjudicatory chamber absolved these 2 super executives from all incriminating charges that includes official corruption in office which they were charge with?
What is the consequence of Platini been punished by Fifa’s punishments office, say a ban for a lengthy time or even a ban for a life time have on his office as Uefa President? To step down immediately from his office as the Uefa President? Does any Fifa ban of him immediately invalidates his Presidency at Uefa. That’s why I commented last time that these 2 super duo should have resigned from their offices immediately the chips were down to save themselves from these distresses they are currently going through and the ignomity they will carry with themselves after leaving office. In particular, Platini who knows that he has a big office of Uefa to continue to head should have resigned from Fifa immediately the incriminating story busted.
I don’t want to go off topic as this is an important one.
However on Thursday with all the hype on the dismissal of Mourino there was also the news that spuds have the OK for their stadium plans and will need a new home for at least one season. The stadium is to have 61 000 seats.
No doubt FIFA will do its best to save itself and carry on in the corrupt way it knows best.
The hope is that it has made too many enemies to allow it to do this.
If so, good riddance to Blatter, Platini and the FA, hopefully they can take the PGMOL, or as it is under Riley with them
I am with you Mandy.
FIFA was a smart organisation; they way it gave all the nations an equal vote, irrespective of the size of it’s footballing community. A clever way to ensure Sceptic remained in the hot seat and all the cronies could continue looking after their own interests. Money spread around the underdeveloped regions, half of which was syphoned off into personal bank accounts. Incredible really that they could be so blaise and obvious about it.
But the FA has its own issues to address – it most certainly is not fit for purpose, in my opinion.
The FA has for a very long period been a dickension organisation. Probably since the sixties there has been little progress. My views on our backwards culture is well documented. The FA and the old school suits and ties still beleive the fact we invented the game gives us some kind of privelidge. It doesn’t, it’s totally arrogant to even think so.
Instead of moving on, as other nations have, we have stuck our heads in the ground. Long ball,strong arm tactics and an ability to stop flair players playing by kicking them is still very much in our DNA. We know the FA have chosen to interpret the rules of the game to follow a different path to the rest of Europe, putting us at a disadvantage – worsened by their refusal to address the geographical inbalance in their own Country!
This is why the National team has been an embarrassment, the football boring and why very average players who ‘run around a lot’ are getting more than 50 caps. How the top Nations must laugh when they see some of the players we have wearing our shirt.
The FA needs a complete overhaul – but don’t hold your breath. As far as arrogance is concerend, they could give Jose Mourinho a run for his money.
For those of you who live outside the UK, or who just didn’t know, there was a TV docu about FUFA recently. Besides the revelations, I enjoyed the musical clips throughout:
Fifa, Sepp Blatter and Me
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OUpNw0z7Eb0
I watched the Brighton v Middlesbrough at lunch time. The FA deemed the game worthy of an “elite” referee, and in Craig Pawson, they managed to ruin what should have been a very good game. Countless foul missed, cards not issued for thuggery, Brighton not awarded a blatant penalty – the list goes on.
I’m pretty sure we have Mr Pawson for one of our next 4 games and it will be interesting to see if he is just as effective as he was today. Unfortunately, my guess is that his decisions may well cost us dearly.
We’ll see