Martin Samuel's views...spot on as always
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.’
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.
No, 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.
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.
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.
