FIFA Math Means Reform After Sepp Blatter Might Not Come Easy

Tuesday’s shock announcement that Sepp Blatter would resign his post as President of FIFA was met with tap dancing across English-speaking social media. American soccer fans and John Oliver acolytes reveled in Blatter’s swift, sudden demise …. even if the 79-year old Swiss national had run FIFA as his own personal fiefdom for decades.

Changing FIFA? That will take more than 140 characters and or assorted memes.

Consider this, on Friday when Blatter won his fifth term, he specifically thanked the Oceania Football Confederation. Why wouldn’t he? In the world of FIFA, the OFC owns 14 of the 209 votes in elections. This means a federation that’s seen one current member — New Zealand — qualify for the World Cup finals twice in its history owns more voting bloc clout than CONMEBOL, the South American federation which has produced nine World Cup winners.

FIFA is a massive, layered, glad-handing bureaucracy. Chopping off the head in Blatter as Ty noted is getting rid of a cockroach. Plenty of bed bugs still remain, as 133 associations still voted for Blatter last week.

Fair or not, all 209 member associations get a vote. CONCACAF and its assortment of small Caribbean island nations total up to 41 votes. Aruba likely will never qualify for a World Cup, but its vote counts the same as the United State’s or Mexico’s.

Or take UEFA, which is reportedly the staunchest bastion of anti-Blatter sentiment. Tiny Andorra — population 79,000 — gets the same voting strength as four-time World Cup champion Germany among the European Federations votes. Meanwhile Asia (47) and Africa (56), which were Blatter’s power base own nearly half the total votes in elections.

FIFA is set up this way. Everyone — great or small, rich country or developing country — gets a vote. To say one association’s vote is more significant than another’s is patently undemocratic.

At the same time, as Lisk pointed out to me, if the United States worked this way — remember the U.S. legislature is split between the population-based House of Representatives and two-member from each state Senate — odds are the larger states would consider breaking away at some point. Then, consider that FIFA has several magnitudes more countries that would be the population equivalent of Wyoming, Vermont, or Alaska or forming a voting bloc. Without swerving further into the third rail of American politics, though, let’s instead veer into another lightning rod — Darren Rovell.

Forget for a second that Rovell is the easiest punching bag on social media and a person whose brain functions like some weird outsized version of a Skymall catalog. His idea of powerful nations breaking away from FIFA isn’t totally that far-flung.

If FIFA doesn't completely clean house, a rival organization could quickly step up, start from scratch & become the soccer power.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) June 2, 2015

Odds are this breakaway is never going to happen, there is too much name recognition with FIFA and the World Cup even if the hosts of the next two tournaments, Russia and Qatar, are filled with all sorts of questions pertaining to human rights. Consider the World Cup was the brainchild of Jules Rimet back in the late 1920s and the original tournament in 1930 lacked marquee nations such as England.

Starting a new world governing body for soccer and starting from scratch to wipe away the stench of FIFA is a thought, although one that would be viewed quite differently across the globe since Oliver’s low opinion of Blatter et al isn’t the worldwide consensus. Creating a non-FIFA tournament is one thing, but devising a world governing body to codify the rules for the sport across the globe — something FIFA does well — is another story, so yes, perhaps Rovell’s idea is as crazy as it reads at first glance.

Dumping Blatter is easy. Cleaning up FIFA and rooting out all the graft and backward thinking throughout its many tentacles will take time and more importantly votes along with viable reform candidates. U.S. Soccer Federation President Sunil Gulati issued a statement on Tuesday saying this is the first step of many. Let’s see if he’s right and the math accommodates that optimistic viewpoint.