adminFreedom Mutanda
Sepp Blatter had always looked indestructible since he became the FIFA boss in 1998 following the retirement of Joao Havelange, the Brazilian soccer supremo, who worked with the current world football don as boss and Secretary General for many years. I remember him vividly as the man who made the Lyon World Cup qualifier rematch between Zimbabwe and Egypt to be played in the wake of skirmishes and subsequent bloodying of the late Reinhard Fabisch, the German soccer mentor, in an Egyptian stadium. To me, he was a fair minded individual who was a paragon of justice as little Zimbabwe faced mighty Egypt for the right to go to the last qualifying round for the 1994 World Cup that the USA hosted amid pomp and fun-fair.
For that justice personified trait, Joseph Blatter endeared himself to Africa, Asia and Latin American countries who voted for him days before his shock resignation.
It is this man that US and Swiss authorities say, allowed his subordinates to put their grubby fingers in the cookie jar.
While his predecessor retired, the Swiss, Joseph Blatter, suffered the ignominy of resigning under a cloud and in a huff yet he had received an overwhelming mandate from member associations at the FIFA congress in May 2015. Could he be a victim of a proxy war being fought by the United States of America and its friends in Western Europe who could not stomach the World Cup going to its erstwhile Cold War foe, Russia, and the other one going to Qatar, a far flung country in the Middle East, which may be the first futbol Mondial to be held in winter?
There is an insinuation that South Africa bribed her way into hosting the World Cup in 2010; the media talks of a paper trail that links the former FIFA Vice President, Jack Warner, and the $10 million purportedly send by SAFA, the South African football controlling body, to the area under his jurisdiction.
Granted, comparative speaking, the Carribean and Central American countries, that were set to receive the ten million dollar donation, as a fund to help in football development, are not as rich as South Africa, which makes perfect sense that the Legacy Fund must be channelled to those countries after the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa.
The only problem is, Mr Jack Warner, personally benefited from the South African largesse. Where does South Africa come into the picture now?
For its part, the government of South Africa, through its Sports Minister, Fikile Mbalula, has denied any wrong doing. Molife Oliphaant, the SAFA boss at the time and Danny Jordaan, the 2010 World Cup bid and SAFA head now, have strenuously denied any wrong doing.
If Germany donated military hardware to Saudi Arabia ostensibly as a gesture of gratitude for the one vote that may have gone to a fellow Arab nation, Morocco, then it is unfortunate. But then, Berlin will tell you that the two countries have bilateral relations that stretch centuries. Unravelling the truth is not quite easy given the secrecy that surrounds the murky and surreal world of corruption, be it in football, espionage or the Sicilian Mafia.
At the risk of being labelled an alarmist by my detractors, I would like to go back to our failed Cup of African Nations bid in the 2000 edition. Despite the fact that the government gave the guarantee needed by CAF, we were never allowed to host the tournament.
If we could peek at the behind the scenes on the bidding process, perhaps, we should have been granted the right to host the finals.
Other countries with half our capacity have hosted before us and will host again in the future. We were denied the chance to host yet our stadia compare favourably with those in countries that hosted before us.
It’s politics, stupid and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
I thinks, this corruption scandal may expose more unwanted secrets.
The France and Ireland saga is a pitiful story even though it happened some years ago and some of us are addicted to the Premier League and we would rather watch those stars at the World Cup than an Ireland team which does not have super stars. Word reaching us that five million euros found their way to Ireland to help out in one way or another makes interesting but sad reading.
It takes two to tango. Ireland must have quickly come out into the open if she felt something untoward was afoot. Maybe, the world may not have seen the ugly scenes at the world cup in South Africa where Domenech, the French coach suffered an insurrection from the players’ camp.
I am not a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination but hey, Sepp Blatter must have known about this exchanging of the brown envelope under the table. He has extensive information contact; look, he has been at FIFA for 40 years and during that time ‘’the old boys’ network’’ was in existence which would tell him to run if the time came for him to do so.
Online Reporter