The Instant Historian: Sepp Blatter Predictably Outlasts Media Outrage
By Ty Duffy
This week’s sports media fixation: FIFA CORRUPTION. The DOJ handed down indictments. Swiss police rousted elderly gents from a luxury hotel. Sepp Blatter’s future was hanging in the balance, per the headlines. Oh wait… he was re-elected. The soccer cockroach lives on.
FIFA CORRUPTION has been great for the media. FIFA is an easy, foreign, consequence-free target. The public has little appreciation of the complexities. Strong thoughts with little expertise? Here’s a soapbox. And, of course, no one harangues black and white morality to an audience of the like-minded better than media Twitter. No one point out most of this has been in the public domain for years.
FIFA CORRUPTION has been great for soccer figures, the ones who haven’t been indicted. Run up that scoreboard with empty PR points! The United States didn’t vote for Sepp Blatter! Go Sunil! Ignore the fact the U.S. supported him in 2011, after the voting. UEFA could boycott the World Cup! Sounds great, in theory. Is that the UEFA headed by Michel Platini? Who lunched with Qatar, voted for Qatar and, coincidentally, saw a son get a lucrative job at a Qatari company shortly after the voting? Oh…
FIFA CORRUPTION has been great for American investigators. They can puff up their righteous chests and “hand FIFA a red card.” They can grant media access to their boss police raid. Apparently, FIFA officials weren’t quite corrupt enough for the pay a fine and suspend criminal prosecution with a promise to play nicely route. Ignore the more than faint whiff of the DOJ’s last foray into sports: spending tens of millions in taxpayer funding to nail Barry Bonds…for tainting a sports record.
The sober reality of FIFA CORRUPTION is it is manifest, complicated and intractable. Sepp Blatter, while odious and well connected, is a carbuncle. Lancing him, even if possible, would not cure the disease.
This isn’t a “24-year scheme” by a few individuals. Corruption oozes from FIFA’s pores. Corruption, having eaten away whatever virtue resided, forms FIFA’s structural integrity.Corruption within FIFA is systemic. It is the logical consequence of a small number of men controlling billions of dollars worth of contracts with minimal oversight.
Fixing FIFA isn’t reshuffling the deck at the top. It means comprehensive, diligent, painful restructuring. The sort of reform which member nations have little appetite for.
Under the status quo, small countries have an equal voice. Equality makes relative soccer backwaters in Africa and Oceania powerful voting blocks. Presidents from places such as Bahrain, Burundi and Papa New Guinea can get on the Executive Committee. They do well under Blatter’s patronage. These folks aren’t responsive to public opinion. They won’t rally when England and the United States rattle their sabers.
Perhaps the DOJ finds something concrete on Blatter. The Instant Historian expects they will find little beyond a taste for fine meals, five star accommodations and lapis lazuli flooring. It’s counterintuitive, but Sepp Blatter may now be soccer’s best bet for reform.
Blatter has one overriding interest: self-preservation. His finger is attuned to the wind (the true one, not the hot media one). He acts, when absolutely necessary. Blatter’s self-interest now coincides with reform, that at least sounds substantitve. Letting the DOJ kneecap rivals and proffer him with the requisite ammunition to be the hero who relocates the Qatar tournament he never wanted would be very Sepp Blatter.
That truth is uncomfortable. It’s unfit for a morality play. Thoughts about it may require more than 140 characters. But, that’s life. That’s FIFA. Fans will lament it. Fans will return in droves for 2018, with Sepp Blatter welcoming them.