As a judge
of ethics and presumed man of principle, Hans-Joachim Eckert should be
ashamed. So should Michael Garcia, who is supposed to be a smart guy and
has allowed himself to be used, then publicly humiliated. FIFA,
obviously, are beyond shaming and have been for several decades now. One
could shame them as easily as one could the Nixon-era Republican party;
or North Korea.
And
the Football Association? Yes, they should be ashamed. They should hang
their heads for ever getting involved with a man as corrupt as Jack
Warner, no matter his power or promises. They should be ashamed for
playing the game as it was back then, no matter the worth of the prize.
They
sold out English football, they sold out those who tried to expose
FIFA’s corruption, and they got their just deserts — sold out
themselves by the very people they were trying to schmooze and impress.
Lord
Triesman and his sorry band, far from being the shrewd political movers
and shakers of their imaginations, were left as the hapless patsies in
the latest FIFA sting — a despicable whitewash and score-settling
exercise masquerading as a far-reaching investigation.
The
tragedy for football’s cynics is how often they are proved right.
Sceptics expected nothing from the investigation into FIFA corruption,
and got precisely that; pessimists expected the report to make no
difference to the travesty that is Qatar 2022, and it did not;
misanthropists said those making the greatest noise about wrongdoing in
the bidding process — England and Australia — were likely to fare worst,
and that is how the news unfolded.
Reading Eckert’s appraisal of Garcia’s report felt like an echo of final scenes of Roman Polanski’s film Chinatown.
The girl is shot dead, the incestuous rapist monster gets away with it,
and the private detective is left looking on, horrified and powerless.
‘Forget it, Jake,’ he is told. ‘It’s Chinatown.’
David Beckham shakes hands with Blatter and hands over England's ill-fated World Cup 2018 bid book
CHARGES AGAINST QATAR
The following accusations were all made by The Sunday Times in June:
- Using slush funds controlled by Mohamed bin Hammam’s company to make payments into accounts of presidents of African football associations.
- Meeting delegates across Africa to offer further payments.
- Paying €305,000 in legal and private detective fees for Oceania executive committee member Reynald Temarii.
- Funnelling over $1.6m into bank accounts controlled by Jack Warner, executive member for Trinidad and Tobago.
- Channelling $800,000 to the Ivory Coast FA, whose executive member Jacques Anouma agreed to ‘push very hard the bid of Qatar’.
- Lobbying Confederation of African Football delegates over the 2022 bid. Qatar then sponsored the Confederation of African Football’s (CAF) annual congress, thereby preventing bid rivals lobbying CAF officials.
And FIFA is Chinatown,
too. The monsters get away with it, the good guys get offed or rendered
impotent. The FA were wrong to get into bed with Warner, but never
forget who tucked him in every night. Sepp Blatter could have addressed
the corruption and corrupt individuals in his midst years ago. He
didn’t. He promoted them, served beside them, was told of their crimes
and turned a blind eye.
Warner
was as good as his right-hand man. And he didn’t know? Hell, everyone
knew. Warner couldn’t have looked like more of a crook had he worn a
mask, a hooped shirt and carried a bag full of money marked ‘Swag’.
And
the Qatar World Cup has never appeared more bent than it does now,
despite the existence of a report that exonerates it of wrongdoing. FIFA
wish to move on and consider the matter closed.
According
to CNN, the Federal Bureau of Investigation may have something to say
about that. Maybe Garcia will do his duty and assist them. He will be no
better than those, like Russia, Spain and Lord Triesman, who failed to
co-operate with the investigation if he does not.
Here
is the complication: if Eckert’s reading of Garcia’s report is to be
believed, FIFA’s executive committee members voted for Qatar without
inducement because it was the best bid. Yet we know it wasn’t the best
bid. It was the worst bid. FIFA’s technical assessment committee rated
it high-risk and football’s entire calendar is now in turmoil trying to
accommodate it. This is even before Qatar’s abysmal treatment of workers
and its well-documented links with terror came to light.
FIFA'S PATHETIC VERDICT
No case to answer
So,
however slick the presentation, and notwithstanding the possibility
that Michel Platini voted on behalf of the French economy, there is no
way Qatar should win by a landslide, as happened, after any realistic
appraisal of its qualities.
UEFA president Michel Platini openly admitted to voting for Qatar to stage the 2022 World Cup
The
yes vote only makes sense if it is corrupt; and if FIFA say it wasn’t
corrupt, then we are left with a continuing absence of logic. We are no
nearer to understanding why Qatar was regarded as football’s best option
in 2022 than we were before Garcia’s investigation began: and it was
this mystery it was intended to clear up.
Garcia
is now appealing FIFA’s report of his report, claiming it is incomplete
and erroneous. Why the surprise? The very procedure he must now undergo
encapsulates all that is wrong with FIFA’s processes. Garcia’s case
will be heard by FIFA’s appeals committee, which is in turn appointed by
the FIFA executive committee — this being the executive committee whose
shady business Garcia wishes to disclose.
One
member of the appeals committee is Ahmad Darw of the Madagascan FA,
who, it is alleged, solicited an illicit payment from a Qatari official
to help with his re-election. Other members hail from the Turks and
Caicos Islands, Guam, Comoros, Papua New Guinea and Bermuda.
There
are two European representatives: one is from the Faroe Islands. Being
small does not make a nation corrupt, but a place on FIFA’s appeals
committee probably beats the day-to-day organisation of football on the
Comoros archipelago (Africa’s third smallest country with a population
slightly bigger than Leeds), meaning many of the committee members might
not be inclined to rock the boat. Either way, this is FIFA
investigating itself and it would not take a cynic to see the inherent
danger.
Of
course there are some, like David Dein, who think English football
should work its way inside FIFA, see the good in the organisation,
acknowledge the desire for change.
Dein is an outstanding football executive, a politician yes, but also a genuine lover of the game. Yet, on this, he is wrong.
The
FIFA he fondly believes in doesn’t exist. This is a corrupt, diseased
body, in reality no nearer to reform now than it was when Warner stalked
its corridors.
Yes,
they have hunted down the odd bogeyman, usually ones who oppose
Blatter, as Mohamed bin Hammam of Qatar did, but bigger villains remain.
All FIFA’s reading of Garcia’s report proves is that football’s rulers
are disgustingly complacent about wrongdoing, still. Even the edited
42-page summary contains some pretty alarming examples of attempts to
buy the votes and favour of committee members, but none is considered to
have harmed the process or the integrity of FIFA.
Russia
and Spain, meanwhile, are identified as less than co-operative but
escape lightly, as if their silence and subterfuge is of no consequence
to the process. Then again, Blatter was found in court to have known of
bribes to former executive committee members, yet sails on towards his
fifth term.
If
this is an organisation addressing corruption, an organisation that
deserves to be indulged by the FA, one shudders to think what passes for
acceptable behind football’s closed doors, what good men such as Dein
have witnessed before rationalising that football is like Polanski’s
Chinatown, and that we must learn to work within it, however obscene.
Garcia
wants the full report published, with sources redacted, but as a shrewd
legal mind he should have got that in writing before taking FIFA’s
coin.
HOW THE WORLD REACTED
‘The
FA being slammed for its ethics by FIFA is like being chastised by
Gordon Ramsay for bad language after uttering the word bloody.’
Gary Lineker
‘I cannot comment, I don’t know why he (Garcia) has said this. I need to speak to him.’
Judge Hans-Joachim Eckhart
‘I
think it’s a bit of a joke . . . if the person who did the
investigation said the report didn’t reflect what he believed then I’m a
bit shocked by it all.’
FA chairman Greg Dyke
‘You couldn’t make it up, could you? FIFA investigating themselves. To achieve credibility they must publish the full report.’
Labour shadow sports minister Clive Efford
‘It was pre-ordained to divert from the controversy around Qatar. . . we’re not going to take lessons in ethics from FIFA.’
Ex-England 2018 chief operating officer Simon Johnson
Ultimately,
Blatter didn’t commission Garcia’s investigation because he wanted to,
but because he had to, and it is impossible not to imagine his paw
prints over what we know of the conclusion, too — even the sentence that
supports term limits for a FIFA president and appears to fly in the
face of his wishes.
Blatter
can let this view leak because his congress already rejected it this
year so he knows it won’t happen. It gives Garcia’s report the illusion
of independence, while not influencing the fate of the president one
iota. It is a cunning, meaningless diversion, straight from the scripts
of Yes Minister. Sir Humphrey would be proud.
Yes,
the FA did wrong, but they did wrong because Blatter allowed football’s
hierarchy to become peopled with crooks and charlatans, and the hopeful
hosts then tried to play their game.
All
that was correct in the announcement was that this corrupt process did
not damage the image of FIFA. Quite simply: it is impossible to damage
the image of FIFA.
Football’s
governing body could have 48 tonnes of festering rhinoceros manure
dumped upon it, and all anyone would note was that the bouquet had
improved.
Beckham worked hard on behalf of the bid team to win support of Warne
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