By Tony Attwood
Here’s the premise. Fifa is a corrupt organisation which enables fraud and money laundering to be at the very centre of international football. Pathetically, national organisations such as the Football Assocation bow down to Fifa, throw millions of pounds at it, and no matter how often they are humiliated continue to want to have a part of the action.
Fed up with the way the FA behave the House of Commons (the UK’s lower legislative chamber) passed a vote of no confidence in the FA, but still continue to fund it.
Large numbers of Fifa officials have been exposed in terms of fraudulant operations – and so stupid is Fifa that even after Untold published an article saying that a change in the Swiss law would allow the Americans to come in and arrest Fifa officials at their next congress, they still went ahead and held that congress in Switzerland. And lots of them were arrested.
Rabbits and headlights come to mind.
So what have the idiots, swindlers and fraudsters been up to of late you may ask, perhaps not daring to come out from behind the sofa to find the answer.
Well they had this idea that the World Cup had a problem. (You may agree that the World Cup has a problem – but maybe not the problem Fifa found).
For the problem Fifa came up with is the fact that that the World Cup is FAR TOO SMALL. Quite obvious really. What we need is a BIGGER WORLD CUP. So the idea is that the insanest of all world cups – the one in the boiling heat of Qatar – is going to a world cup for 48 finalists, not the measly 32 originally planned. That will mean 400 more players to get heat stroke and career ending injuries.
And, of course more TV coverage, which means more chance of fraud, money laundering and well, you know, all the things Fifa officials get up to.
Now one idea for the expanded WC is to share some of the games with neighbouring states as long as they are also in the desert and boiling hot. The only trouble is Qatar doesn’t have many friends. It isn’t friendly with Saudi Arabia, or Bahrain or Egypt or the Emirates.
So Mr Infantino, or Dr Death as he might be known, announced that the plan is going forward saying, “If it is possible, why not? We have to see if it is possible, if it is feasible. We are discussing with our Qatari friends, we are discussing with our many other friends in the region and we hope that this can happen. And, if not, we will have tried. We will have tried because we always have to try to do things in a better way.”
Of course it might not happen, but one thing that is certain is that the 2026 WC will include 48 nations, so countries are going to have to be pretty low down the list not to qualify. That one will happen in the USA, Canada and Mexico.
And of course there are some voices of sanity, although mostly shouting in the wilderness. Amnesty International has said Fifa should think about the human rights issues, raising the point once again of the exploitation of construction workers and the requirement that every country that holds a world cup should be a country in which there are basic rights and freedoms – such as the freedom of speech and assembly. But no, such matters are not on Fifa’s agenda. If they don’t make money, no one wants to know.
Meanwhile the plan to make the Club World Cup bigger, bigger and well, as it were, bigger, continues to proceed. Oh yes and tomorrow we are going to get a report into the hacking of Fifa’s IT systems. I can tell them it wasn’t me, but if I had the technical knowledge I might have been tempted.
Fifa put out a statement which said, “We condemn any attempt to compromise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data.” Which pretty much includes the entire existence of Fifa.
So having condemned itself, maybe it should vote itself out of existence.
Of course it should, but don’t hold your breath.
Rabbits in headlights? Really.
Around here, it is deer in the headlights. I wonder what else that statement morphs into?
PGMO in the headlights?
There was a blurb in the medja, from Hackett about who he thought was the best “Select” referee (Michael Oliver). He thought Martin Atkinson was very good. He also thought that Lee Mason and Simon Hooper should be retired.
Hooper has done 1 EPL game this year, which seen a single treatment. The game in question was Newcastle at home to Leicester, which Leicester won 0-2. The fouls in that game were 11:5 and no cards were issued. Leicester was given a penalty at 29 minutes, which was converted. Leicester did suffer a need for a treatment at 61 minutes.
Lee Mason has done 4 EPL games this season. The last 3 had treatments of 1:1, 1:0 and 0:0. The first game he did, had 11 treatments needed for the home team. This was Everton at home to Southampton. There were 28 fouls in the game (8:20), and 1 of those treatments resulted in a card to Southampton. Southampton picked up 4 other cards in that game.
Michael Oliver has only missed 1 Game Day so far this season, and has overseen the need for 18 treatments. The most in one game was 5.
Martin Atkinson has worked every Game Day this season? He has either overseen 18 treatments or 20 (there is an error in my records). Five times he has overseen games with the need for 3 treatments.
I would think the medical and physiotherapy people would agree that both Michael Oliver and Martin Atkinson are good for business. I guess that makes them good in the eye of Keith Hackett.