The Matter of Blatter

“I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield.”

Orwell might have been surprised, though not necessarily encouraged, by the changes in the nature of sports rivalry that have taken place since his article, The Sporting Spirit, was published in 1945.

Granted, outbreaks of barbarism and violence still occur – the aftermath of Egypt’s defeat to Algeria in 2009 sticks in the mind as an example of sport as war with the shooting – but the animosity surrounding such fixtures as England vs. India, Brazil vs. Argentina, England vs. Ireland and Italy vs. any country formerly identified as a part of Yugoslavia is not displayed now in the way that it was seven decades ago.

But rightly is Orwell lauded for his prescience. In The Sporting Spirit, he devoted as much time to the treatment and lack of regard for the ‘rules of the game’ as he did the base, sadistic nature of many of its supporters. (It is always worth remembering that the word ‘fan’ shares its roots with the word ‘fanatic’).

FIFA, the governing body of the world’s most popular sport, is a bastion of foul play. An Orwellian supranational organisation and a Kafkaesque labyrinth of bureaucracy and statecraft in equal measure, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association is controlled, and has been for decades, by an incestuous cabal of crooks, mobsters and Chaucerian frauds. Their sole concern is profit (or, as they would have us believe, billions of ‘non-profit’ dollars) and they pursue it with fewer scruples than Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov.

A certain Joseph ‘Sepp’ Blatter has been sitting at the head of the organisation, stroking his white cat, since 1998. His longevity is, in part, an explanation for itself. During his sixteen year tenure, Blatter has continued the work of his disgraced predecessor, Joáo Havelange, creating a Byzantine obscenity with an almost impenetrable system of layers through which money may flow and trouble may be filtered out. Havelange, once Blatter’s chief sponsor, was himself finally cast out of the organisation by the very means he had helped to design, punished for his flagrant disregard for the democratic process whilst Blatter used his creation to render that same process redundant.

That Havelange lasted in his position as honorary president until 2012, and was then compelled to resign only after the ethics committee produced its exceptionally vague report on bribery, is testimony to the efficacy of his own work. This is a man who, during his tenure as FIFA president, was on very good terms with the head of the Argentine Junta and the Brazilian fraudster Castor de Andrade.

That report also led to the resignation and expulsion of a number of prominent FIFA members, such as Havelange’s one-time son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira. One of the few members of Havelange’s clique to emerge unscathed from the process was the general secretary at the time of the alleged offenses; Havelange’s anointed successor, Sepp Blatter.

But this is not the only occasion on which Blatter has remained erect whilst the layers beneath him shift and turn. Just before the last FIFA ‘election’, Blatter’s ally turned rival Mohammed bin Hammam was banned for life, along with Jack Warner and other members of his faction, by FIFA’s ethics committee. He abandoned his bid to become president in order to fight the ban – Blatter ran unopposed and, when asked, stated that this was not a problem – which was lifted due to a lack of evidence. Bin Hammam was then banned again on a second set of charges.

Despite the furious press and public reaction to the scandal, Blatter has escaped any serious indictment, and the tainted World Cup bids of Russia and Qatar have not yet been overturned.

Much of the attention has, quite rightly, been focussed on Qatar. Current estimates place the number of construction workers killed in the country into the hundreds, with the ITUC predicting that that number could be over four thousand by the time the tournament begins. These are mostly migrant workers from countries like India and Nepal who arrive in Qatar, have their passports confiscated and their wages withheld, and who are made to work in intolerable conditions until they drop.

Blatter has suggested that the decision to award the tournament to Qatar was a mistake, but not because of the human cost. Nor is because there are obvious difficulties to holding the world’s biggest sporting tournament in a country which bans alcohol, executes homosexuals, isn't particularly fond of women, and in which summer temperatures are between 40 and 50 degrees. The problem is the negative publicity.

Russia, too, is not proving a popular choice. This is a country run by an ex-KGB thug who imprisons his opponents, imprisons homosexuals, imprisons journalists, censors free speech, makes corruption a government policy and annexes the territory of neighbouring countries.

In Blatter, Putin and his oleaginous friends have found a staunch supporter.

"A boycott will never give any positive effect. We trust the country, its government. Russia is in the eye of the international media. Football can not only unite Russia but show the whole world that it is stronger that any protest movement."

Blatter has conceded that Russia and Ukraine will have to be kept apart during the tournament, which is the only concession he has thus far made to the advocates of common sense. But he has placed himself firmly in opposition to those who do not want the Russian government to triumph over the protest movements. His advice to those concerned by the attitude of the Russian and Qatari governments toward homosexuality is to suggest that our gay brothers and sisters should “refrain from any sexual activities." (This was supposed to be a joke. He might as well have advocated a policy of “no ball games.”)

FIFA holds a great deal of power. It insists on the right to challenge, change or ignore the rules and laws of the countries hosting its tournaments. It grants itself exemption from all forms of tax, it controls the security of stadiums and related territories, it demands the creation of FIFA courts to try those selling unofficial merchandise, and it demands that national governments relocate thousands of undesirable citizens. One might hope that FIFA will exercise this enormous power to temper the authoritarian nature of the Russian and Qatari rulers, as indeed it might, in the case of alcohol.

But FIFA’s record is uniformly bad. It chooses fledgling democracies – countries that have recently thrown off dictatorships – and revives the totalitarian spirit. Without the kind of reform which Blatter opposes, I doubt this record will have improved by 2022.

(“Illustrating how constrained our rights are, I asked one police superintendent (name withheld), “What if I say ‘Viva Argentina!’ in the fan park? No problem? What if I say ‘Phansi Fifa phansi!’?” (Down with Fifa!) ”Then you’re wrong,” the policeman answered. “You can’t say, ‘Phansi Fifa phansi’.” – Patrick Bond, Counterpunch.)