The FIFA Fiasco - Sepp Blatter resigns!

Luis Figo and Van Der Pragg have both withdrawn from the race for Head Of FIFA.

@PortuGoal1: BREAKING: Luís Figo drops out of FIFA presidential. "I've witnessed events that shame those who want free, clean & democratic football."

@PortuGoal1: Luís Figo: "This process is anything but an election. It's the delivery of absolute power to one man - something I refuse to be part of."

@PortuGoal1: Luís Figo: "I've seen FA heads one day compare the FIFA leaders to the devil, then get on stage and compare them to Jesus Christ."

@PortuGoal1: Luís Figo: "What will happen on 29 May in Zurich is not a normal electoral act, so don't count on me."

Disappointing that neither continued to the end. Looks like the only way to get rid of Blatter will be in a coffin.

 

* off

 

Horrible little man.He actually just suggested that Palestine v Israel in a so-called 'peace match' in an attempt to have the PFA drop their bid to have Israel suspended from World football.Odious *.

 

Absolute * of a man

 

He must be handing out mad bribes to everycunt and promising meetings in the carribean in 5 star hotels to keep getting elected as nocunt seems to like him

 

He's a proper mafioso.

 

This was always going to happen. There would be some candidates to start some debate then two would pull out near the end leaving the one with the best chance of beating Blatter and unite the opposition. Figo was always going to go, so that left it as a battle between Al-Hussein and van Praag. Can't say I'm surprised an Arabian Prince won that battle.

The English FA said they would support Al-Hussein while the Scottish FA said van Praag. That example shows the clear problem for the opposition and everyone knew it. van Praag has already said he'll support Al-Hussein so its very clear what has happened.

 

They made a * movie about themselves

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCjeD-Jqd2s[/ame]

 

By Diego Maradona

For decades I have lived and breathed football every single day. It is my passion. I am deeply proud of my career and the wonderful support I have known in Argentina and abroad from fans, friends and colleagues on the field. That is why I am writing today.

In the last few decades, football has changed – and not for the better. Once, it was a sport you could be proud of, a sport that united the world. But Fifa, its governing body, has turned into a playground for the corrupt.

Most football fans can predict what I am about to say next: Under Sepp Blatter, Fifa has become a disgrace and a painful embarrassment to those of us who care about football deeply.

When I speak with football enthusiasts these days the conversation inevitably turns to the Fifa elections. While I find almost no one openly supporting Blatter, many think he will win a fifth term. Why? The whole notion of a fifth term is an absurdity in 2015 – it is not acceptable in democratic countries anywhere. Nor is it acceptable in the United Nations or most international organisations today.

But somehow it is OK for Fifa. We have a dictator for life.

I call Blatter “the man of ice” because he lacks the inspiration and passion that are at the very heart of football. If this is the face of international football, we are in a very bad place.

Football is an intense world, filled with conflict and it has always had its problems, but the head of Fifa should not be one of them.

The media is filled with stories on the string of scandals that have surrounded Blatter for well over a decade. There are so many, it has almost become boring to repeat them.

Who would be surprised by another bit of Fifa intrigue and larceny, another accusation of bribery?

When I ask why so many people think Blatter will make it yet again, the answer is always the same: He has won support with years of unethical patronage, favours and handouts.

No one has argued that he is the best man for the job and deserves to win. They “praise” him for keeping one step ahead of the investigators – whether they are auditors or the FBI – and ignore how Fifa finances have turned into a shambles with losses over $100 million (£65 million) alone at ISL, the Swiss marketing company closely associated to Fifa.

There is a sick admiration for Blatter much like that accorded to an old Mafia boss who has somehow managed to stay out of jail.

Blatter’s political history is one of promoting division and hiding failures.
Recently he pledged to follow through in addressing racism in football and promoting women in the sport. That made me laugh. My question is: “Sepp, what were you doing in your last four terms?”

We all know the answer to that: surrounding himself with crooks who lined their pockets at the expense of the sport. If he were an honest man, surely he would not have spent half his time blocking outside investigations into Fifa finances?

Why is this dodgy 79-year-old running for a fifth term at Fifa anyway? His cronies have stolen everything but the furniture in his office and he has claimed to know nothing. Perhaps we should call him Saint Sepp the Innocent. What a joke.

If leadership matters, then no national football association could, in good conscience, support Blatter for a fifth term. He is incompetent. When you are knee deep in massive financial losses and bribes and notice nothing, you are a fool or a thief.

All these corruption investigations are bleeding the life out of Fifa, and international football is drowning in a sea of contempt. Few sports in history have suffered the bad press football has faced in recent years and much of that press is owed to Blatter.

Key sponsors like Continental, Castrol and Johnson & Johnson are running away from Fifa. The Council of Europe has condemned Blatter’s handling of the collapse of ISL and over $100 million in losses. The FBI is looking at the handling of the US bid for 2022. There have been hundreds of media articles on massive financial losses, mismanagement and bribery.

We need young and creative leadership at Fifa – the kind of leadership that is inclusive and open to new ideas. We need a football culture, not a mafia culture.

Why are we all just passively accepting this corruption? Enough is enough.
We want our game back.

 

Love Diego.

 

The problem is they are all dodgy * including Platini and Prince Bin or whatever his name is are hardly whiter than white. The game is * with these sort of people running things and that will continue when there is just so much money involved.

 

The clubs too. If the clubs didn't want this then they wouldn't have it.

They put up with it because it suits them too.

The big clubs that is.

 

Game is up for a few of them

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/27/football/fifa-corruption-charges-justice-department/index.html

 

Blatter is so corrupt and evil that Putin looks up to him








http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-plans-to-use-prison-labor-for-the-2018-world-cup-2015-5

 

The FIFA Fiasco - Sepp Blatter re-elected!

This could interesting. They are facing extradition to the USA.

http://www.espnfc.com/world-cup-soccer/story/2468193/fifa-officials-arrested-over-corruption-charges


Swiss authorities have arrested several top FIFA officials on federal corruption charges in Zurich and plan to extradite them to the United States, according to reports.

The New York Times says that more than a dozen plain-clothed Swiss law enforcement officials arrived unannounced at the Baur au Lac hotel in the early hours of Wednesday morning as leaders of FIFA gathered for their annual meeting.

The charges allege that there has been widespread corruption throughout football's governing body over the past 20 years, involving bids for World Cups as well as marketing and broadcast deals.

More to come...

 

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/2...cials-face-corruption-charges-in-us.html?_r=0

MAY 26, 2015
ZURICH — Swiss authorities began an extraordinary early-morning operation here Wednesday to arrest several top soccer officials and extradite them to the United States on federal corruption charges.

As leaders of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, gathered for their annual meeting, more than a dozen plain-clothed Swiss law enforcement officials arrived unannounced at the Baur au Lac hotel, an elegant five-star property with views of the Alps and Lake Zurich.

The officers went to the registration desk to get keys, then headed upstairs toward the hotel rooms. One FIFA official was led by the authorities from his room to a side-door exit of the hotel. He was allowed to bring his luggage.

The charges allege widespread corruption in FIFA over the past two decades, involving bids for World Cups as well as marketing and broadcast deals, according to three law enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the case. The charges include wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering, and officials said they targeted members of FIFA’s powerful executive committee, which wields enormous power and does its business largely in secret.


Jack Warner, a former FIFA vice president, is among those expected to face charges in the United States.
LUIS ACOSTA / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
The arrests were a startling blow to FIFA, a multibillion-dollar organization that governs the world’s most popular sport but has been plagued by accusations of bribery for decades.

The inquiry is also a major threat to Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s longtime president who is generally recognized as the most powerful person in sports, though he was not charged. An election, seemingly pre-ordained to give him a fifth term as president, is scheduled for Friday.

Prosecutors planned to unseal an indictment against more than 10 officials, not all of whom are in Zurich, law enforcement officials said. Among them are Jeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands, a vice president of the executive committee; Eugenio Figueredo of Uruguay, who is also an executive committee vice president and until recently was the president of South America’s soccer association; and Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago, a former member of the executive committee who has been accused of numerous ethical violations.

“We’re struck by just how long this went on for and how it touched nearly every part of what FIFA did,” said a law enforcement official. “It just seemed to permeate every element of the federation and was just their way of doing business. It seems like this corruption was institutionalized.”


Jeffrey Webb, left, the president of Concacaf, with FIFA’s president, Sepp Blatter, during the Concacaf U-17 championships in 2013.
ARNULFO FRANCO / ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Justice Department, the F.B.I. and FIFA did not have any immediate comment.

The case is the most significant yet for United States Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, who took office last month. She previously served as the United States attorney in Brooklyn, where she supervised the FIFA investigation. Ms. Lynch and F.B.I. Director James Comey were expected to hold a news conference on Wednesday morning in New York.

With more than $1.5 billion in reserves, FIFA is as much a global financial conglomerate as a sports organization. With countries around the world competing aggressively to win the bid to host the World Cup, Mr. Blatter has commanded the fealty of anyone who wanted a piece of that revenue stream. He and FIFA have weathered corruption controversies in the past, but none involved charges of federal crimes in United States court.

United States law gives the Justice Department wide authority to bring cases against foreign nationals living abroad, an authority that prosecutors have used repeatedly in international terrorism cases. Those cases can hinge on the slightest connection to the United States, like the use of an American bank or Internet service provider.

Switzerland’s treaty with the United States is unusual in that it gives Swiss authorities the power to refuse extradition for tax crimes, but on matters of general criminal law, the Swiss have agreed to turn people over for prosecution in American courts.

The case further mars the reputation of FIFA’s leader, Mr. Blatter, who has for years acted as a de facto head of state. Politicians, star players, national soccer officials and global corporations that want their brands attached to the sport have long genuflected before him.

Critics of FIFA point to the lack of transparency regarding executive salaries and resource allocations for an organization that, by its own admission, had revenue of $5.7 billion from 2011 to 2014. Policy decisions are also often taken without debate or explanation, and a small group of officials — known as the executive committee — operates with outsize power. FIFA has for years operated with little oversight and even less transparency. Alexandra Wrage, a governance consultant who once unsuccessfully attempted to help overhaul FIFA’s methods, famously labeled the organization “byzantine and impenetrable.”

Law enforcement officials said much of the inquiry involves Concacaf, one of the six regional confederations that compose FIFA. Concacaf — which stands for Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football — includes major countries like the United States and Mexico, and also tiny ones like Barbados and Montserrat.

Concacaf was led from 1990 to 2011 by Mr. Warner, the longtime head of Trinidad & Tobago’s federation. A key powerbroker in FIFA’s governing executive committee, Mr. Warner had been dogged by accusations of corruption. He was accused of illegally profiting from the resale of tickets to the 2006 World Cup, and of withholding the bonuses of the Trinidad players who participated in that tournament.

Mr. Warner resigned his positions in FIFA, Concacaf and his national association in 2011 amid mounting evidence that he had been part of an attempt to buy the votes of Caribbean federation officials in the 2010 FIFA presidential election. A 2013 Concacaf report also found that he had received tens of millions of dollars in misappropriated funds.

But according to the rules of FIFA at the time, Mr. Warner’s resignation led to the immediate closure of all ethics committee cases against him. “The presumption of innocence is maintained,” FIFA said in a short statement announcing his departure.

No recent incident better encapsulated FIFA’s unusual power dynamic than the bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments, which many observers found to be flawed from the start: the decision to award two tournaments at once, critics said, would invite vote-trading and other inducements.

Since only the 24 members of the executive committee would decide on the hosts, persuading even a few of them might be enough to swing the vote. Even before the vote took place, two committee members — Amos Adamu of Nigeria and Reynald Temarii of Tahiti — were suspended after an investigation by The Sunday Times caught both men on tape asking for payments in exchange for their support. It was later revealed by England’s bid chief that four ExCo members had solicited bribes from him for their votes; one asked for $2.5 million, while another, Nicolas Leoz of Paraguay, requested a knighthood.

As new accounts of bribery continued to emerge — a whistleblower who worked for the Qatar bid team claimed that several African officials were paid $1.5 million each to support Qatar — FIFA in 2012 started an investigation of the bid process. It was led by a former United States attorney, Michael J. Garcia, who spent nearly two years compiling a report. That report, however, has never been made public; instead, the top judge on the ethics committee, the German Joachim Eckert, released a summary of the report. In it, he declared that while violations of the code of ethics had occurred, they had not affected the integrity of the vote.

Within hours, Garcia had criticised Eckert’s summary as incorrect and incomplete, charging that it contained “numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts.” Nonetheless, FIFA moved quickly to embrace the report’s absolution of the bid process. Qatar World Cup officials said the review had upheld “the integrity and quality of our bid,” And Russia’s sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, told reporters, “I hope we will not have talk about this again.”

 

* bless 'Merica

 

This also means that some of the Charges or more than Financial if the Swiss were so willing to arrest and extradite

 

It's the best news I've heard in years. Great way to start the day, hope they get Blatter too