4 Politics in sport: a football perspective

In 1998, Havelange bowed out at the top of his game. In his 24 years of autocratic rule, FIFA had become a much slicker and wealthier operation and in the world of global politics, a real player. It had ceased to be a club of amateurs and had become a political machine whose offices were worth fighting over.

The growing phase was so quick and so dramatic. And with the full cash boxes, I think they lost a little bit of track. FIFA started to be a multilingual, multi-international body all of a sudden with the lots of money falling in. It was more and more important to see who was in the executive committee, who was president, who was in the special committees. FIFA dictated its own political power, its own political way of life. And this was also a very interesting phase because it really became more and more important all over the world. And FIFA all of a sudden was a brand.

The global boom in football’s importance and wealth that began under Havelange reached new heights under Sepp Blatter.

Mr. Blatter very soon understood how FIFA worked and the mechanics of sports marketing and the chance what football has in the world and what the chance he had himself. He was the closest person to Joao Havelange. He was extremely close to him. He knew all the secrets and all what he was doing-- the man who really saw the chance maybe better than anybody else what football could mean for the world.

However, just as the boom gathered pace under Blatter, so FIFA’s problems escalated. ISL, which had appeared an invulnerable business with an extraordinary portfolio of sporting rights, went bankrupt. A victim of over-ambition and slack management. When the Swiss authorities started looking through the company’s files, another story began to emerge. Yann Sayre Andersen.

And this was when the massive corruption system was discovered. Later, there was a court case in Switzerland against six ISL directors for embezzlement of ISL money. These six ISL directors could freely talk about how bribes, secret personal commissions-- this was like paying wages. And if we did not pay those money, we could not work. And why could they tell that to only those noble business directors? Because until 2006, that kind of business practices was perfectly legal in Switzerland. Now it is no longer legal for FIFA leaders or any other with relation to FIFA to take money in return for selling the TV and sponsoring rights because, among other things, it is destroying fair competition. But with regard to internal procedures in sports organizations like the allocation of mega events, like election procedures and so on, the Swiss jurisdiction does not interfere if there are irregularities. This is still very much protected by the association status of FIFA, although FIFA has not been a typical bowling club for many, many, many years.

As an international organization, FIFA is legally and politically out of the reach of most national courts and governments. But now even their Swiss hosts have become impatient with FIFA’s behaviour. Swiss MP Roland Buechel.

People are just fed up to have this reputation problem with a body like FIFA. Sepp Blatter himself calls them now angels and devils. It explains much more than what we can explain. A few weeks ago, he said there was no corruption at all or at least no systematic corruption. Now he completely changes his mind. He says that he will solve the problems by June. I give him much more time. He shall solve the problems by the end of the year. But then this should be solved. We know what happened with the ISL. Nearly 100 pounds million of bribery. Clean up your act by the end of the year. And then we’ll see if more has to be done. One language they understand is the money. So if they have to pay full taxes, it will be much more than 100 million pounds.

Just as the IOC was blown open by the corruption around the Salt Lake City bid for the 2002 Winter Games, so FIFA is being blown open by the bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. An investigation by The Sunday Times saw two members of the executive committee suspended for allegedly soliciting payments for their votes. Lord Treisman, previously chairman of the FA and head of the England World Cup bid, told a parliamentary select committee that he had been personally asked for grace and favour by four other members. It is in this context that Mohammed bin Hammam launched his presidential bid against what appeared to be a fatally weakened Sepp Blatter. The vote is to be held on the 1st of June. However, the tale has a twist yet as both candidates must appear before FIFA’s own ethics committee on the eve of the vote. It’s clear that this organization lacks the legitimacy to fulfill its important global duties to hold football in trust as common property for the world and to serve the global public interest rather than its own FIFA was born of an era of amateurism of uncommercialized and unpoliticized international sport. The arrival of so much money and power in FIFA utterly unanticipated by its founders has broken it.