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| Their actions evidently seem contradictory to their motto. |
Very often, you’d find that inside a
totalitarian state, like that of China, Syria, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Belarus or
even Russia, there are so many things about it that are so good but it is
because of the regime, the outside world in general has a very poor opinion on the
countries. This need not be just in politics, there is politics everywhere and
even though it is always said that sport should be independent from politics,
we still can’t separate the two, can we?
Well, with the conclusion of the 65th
Congress of FIFA, it was inevitable that the public was going to go gaga
following the re-election of the controversial president Sepp Blatter despite
the wake of the recent corruption scandal that has hit the headlines, yet
another time, where FIFA has been in the headline for all the wrong reasons
with the previous prominent one being four years ago where the World Cup for
2018 and 2022 was unexpectedly awarded to Russia and Qatar respectively, making
it very clear that the organisation was being taken over by oligarchs and
sheikhs. This re-election from the outside simply implies Blatter would have
ruled the beautiful game for nearly twenty years, since 1998.
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| Too many similarities in the picture? |
Why Belarus is called a totalitarian state?
It does have elections, but then, the elections aren’t exactly fair, there is
only one person (Lukashenko, in this case) who gets a thumping victory every
time such elections are held and Belarus hasn’t seen any other president till
date. But in comparison, Blatter doesn’t seem to be much different from
Lukashenko, barring the fact that his reign started four years after that of
the latter, but then, their tactics aren’t a lot different, like in 2011, how
Blatter abused his presidential powers to get both his nearest rivals
suspended, being Mohammed bin Hammam (AFC) and Jack Warner (CONCACAF) just
before the 61st Congress. I believe FIFA has seen more presidents
only because it has lasted longer than Belarus, so far. The recent one goes without
saying, Blatter lobbied enough to get enough support for his re-election
despite the fierce opposition from the all-powerful UEFA; who were vocal about their
support for the Hashemite Prince Ali (ignore the irony of a Hashemite running
for power, they normally just get it). As far as the lobbying is concerned, I’d
just take the example of my own country of residence, the president of All
India Football Federation (AIFF) – Praful Patel, gave a press interview
declaring India’s support for Blatter and didn’t offer any valid justification
as to why he was rooting for Blatter rather the fact that he had been at the
helm for too long. It’d be interesting to know that Patel actually happens to
be a politician from a party called the NCP, expanded as Naturally Corrupt Party by the current Prime Minister in one of his
rallies (not entirely unsubstantiated) and so, I guess Blatter couldn’t have
asked for a better ally. But jokes apart, to think of it a little seriously,
the larger question arises, is FIFA really the democratic organisation acting
in the best interests of the beautiful game?
The misfortune about FIFA’s democratic
structure is that, the presidential candidate, in most cases just needs to gain
the favour of one person from each country to become the guardian of the most
followed sport in the world and taking my own Praful Patel example, as far as I
know, a significant ardent football fans whom I have spoken to in India were
absolutely against the re-election of Blatter but still, it absolutely doesn’t
matter, you get a headline in BBC World News saying that ‘India supports
Blatter’ as that man has managed to lobby enough to gain the support of ONE
person in the country.
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| The Ghost Goal |
To go on with the other shortcomings, FIFA
have been holding on to their archaic rules in the name of holding on to
antiquity and have not taken any step to develop the game in anyway whatsoever
and amongst all the sports that I follow, football uses technology the least,
thanks to FIFA. While other sports voluntarily implemented technology, it took
Frank Lampard’s ghost goal in the 2010 World Cup (can’t believe it is more than
five years, the frustration is felt to this date) for Blatter and his congress
of loons to realise the importance of goal line technology. So, here you find
the next feature of a typical totalitarian state in FIFA, that there is no step
voluntarily taken towards development unless you’re forced to and you
ingratiate only those whom you’re close to and I’d come to that in the next
paragraph.
Ingratiating the people whom you want,
another typical feature you’d find in any totalitarian state, shrunk to a
single word – ‘cronyism’. The incident that could be immediately recalled is
the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, where alcohol is prohibited inside stadiums to
curtail violence. But then, Budweiser was a chief sponsor of the FIFA and
hence, even before Brazil raised any talk of amending the laws to make an
exception for the world cup, FIFA released a statement saying that Budweiser
would be allowed to sell and eventually, Brazil had to budge by passing a bill,
colloquially termed as the Budweiser
Bill. See, here you go, you’ve the next feature – suppression of the
interests of citizens (members in this case) to support the interests of a
select few large corporations.
Coming back to what I stated in my first
paragraph, take the case of, say, Syria, said to have so many excellent relics
of the Mesopotamian civilisation, the early Roman structures, Islamic
structures in Aleppo, etc. and most tourists have narrated very positive
experiences with the people of Syria but still, people had a negative opinion
from the outside because of the Al-Assad regime (although, considering the
alternatives after the break out of the civil war, Al-Assad seems the best
option available) and similarly, the headlines that the guardian of the
beautiful game is grabbing is doing the game more harm than good and the game
is going to make no inroads into countries where the game isn’t very popular
when an organisation like FIFA is promoting the same.
To conclude, I’d say that FIFA isn’t doing
the game any good, corruption is so deep rooted, and it is akin to an absolute
totalitarian state as substantiated above. This means, to protect the game,
only two things could be done – either a complete overhaul is required in FIFA
to correct the mess that they’re in and the recent scandal wasn’t a revelation
in anyway, but just something known to everyone and it took a lot of time to
come out. The second alternative is a complete boycott of the organisation and
I’m happy that UEFA is taking the courageous step and I hope they carry it
forward. The latter seems the only option at the moment as with the re-election
of Blatter, things certainly don’t seem to change for the better and as such,
he is someone who has the audacity to say, ‘I’d forgive but not forget’ while
referring to Platini’s critical comments. I read some positive headlines that
England is willing to boycott 2018 if more join the movement and I hope the
movement gains the momentum and hopefully, sooner rather than later, FIFA, the
way we know it today no longer exists and what we see is a reformed guardian of the sport whose priority is the welfare of the sport.
Have a nice day,
Andy
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