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FIFA Fiasco



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FIFA's ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert announced last week that there was no reason to strip either Russia or Qatar of the 20118 and 2022 World Cup. He was summarising an as yet unpublished report by Michael Garcia. European media, particularly in England, quickly moved to express shock at the supposed findings of the report. But, this was to all to be expected. FIFA are an intrinsically clandestine organisation and it is no surprise that they have not seen fit to question their previous decisions.

The interest however, arose later in the day, as Michael Garcia, the man leading the report, publicly criticised FIFA’s summary of his report. He claims that the summary does not accurately reflect his findings; with the inference of course being that perhaps Russia and Qatar are not fit to host World Cups. Eckert and Garcia are now due to meet later this week to thrash out their differences and then produce a coherent report of what they have investigated.

The question must be asked however, that even if Garcia and Eckert do manage to agree on the contents of the report and then make them freely available to the media, how much validity does the investigation carry. The investigation into FIFA dealings was made by the FIFA ethics committee – can an organisation as vast and powerful as FIFA be expected to police itself fairly and justly?

Furthermore, it is believed that the report itself heavily criticises the FA and their attempt to win the rights to host the 2018 World Cup. The FA have refuted these allegations of wrong doing and have been quick to criticise FIFA and their methods. Former FA chairman David Bernstein has called for UEFA to boycott the next World Cup in response to the inadequacy of the report and the widespread corruption believed to be on going within FIFA. His threat has also been followed through by Reinhard Rauball (President of the German League), who has called on all 54 UEFA members to boycott the World Cup if the report is not published in full.

The FA cannot be singled out to be entirely blameless. Greg Dyke admitted as much when he confirmed on Newsnight that the FA had offered a work placement to an associate of Jack Warner’s son. The Caribbean FIFA delegate was holding a crucial vote in the process to select the World Cup hosts and the FA certainly pushed the laws to the limit to attempt to secure his vote.

While the FIFA fiasco continues to rumble on, we must not overlook the extent to which the FA has not offered a serious enough rebuttal. Sure, we all know that FIFA is a far from wholesome organisation and that many countries national boards are far more corrupt and disorganised than the FA. But the FA’s response has simply been to point out that FIFA is a terrible organisation and that nobody can be as bad at them. This response is basically identical to the kid in the playground who is insulted and just responds with ‘at least I’m not as bad as you!’. Well done to the FA, they’re certainly not as bad as FIFA, but that doesn’t mean they’re blameless.

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Jack is a Masters student at Cardiff University studying Media. Jack produces betting previews for Howtobet4free as well running the popular @howtobet4free_ Twitter account for major sporting events.

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