Sepp’s Big Show Starts Badly
Posted on May 25, 2012 2:30 pm
Reportedly, Sepp Blatter was as close to furious as his fat and happy little Swiss self ever gets.
After an entire year’s worth of maneuvering, and literally millions of dollars wasted spent, today’s FIFA Congress was supposed to be all about Sepp the Reformer, a sort of Roman Triumph celebrating his valiant, dogged and lonely battle against the forces of “corruption” in world football.
What he got in place of the carefully (and expensively) managed stories about FIFA Reform and FIFA Unity and FIFA Progress was headlines – all around the globe – about a veritable revolt in CONCACAF, a former close ally (“No one can ever separate Jack Warner and I; this is impossible”) stealing and then hocking a $20 million building and a confederation standing accused of dodging the tax man.
Peter Hargitay – the very pricey World Class SuperFixer who steered Union Carbide through the Bhopal disaster unscathed, among other charming achievements – saw a year’s worth of careful image building leading up to Sepp’s coveted Nobel Peace Prize performance later today – blow up in his face.
So FIFA’s most senior executives were sent forth to blanket the beautifully ornate Boscolo Hotel, track down every single Caribbean FA representative and pass along a succinct message:
Shut the Hell Up.
No more pithy quotes given to a gleeful media about an Executive Committee member being a “thief with a white collar”.
No more angry complaints about how CONCACAF is “sitting on a bomb”.
And most of all, no one better even think about leaping to their feet during “other business” and demanding that the Congress debate and vote the question of whether a senior executive is a crook who should be deposed.
The message was straight out of any Mafia movie you’ve ever seen:
“Nice little Center of Excellence you’ve got planned there. Be a shame if something happened to make the funding dry up.”
Scott Gleba, CONCACAF’s new Communications Director (H/T to Blue Lou), whose job had previously been limited to explaining simple stuff like Cuban players lambing it out of hotels hastily issued a statement to the AP saying “We’ve been alerted that the deadline has passed.”
He put it this way because “Jerome Valcke threatened to line us all up and cut off our balls with a dull jacknife” just doesn’t have the appropriate tone.
The whole problem here, of course – and don’t think for a minute that Blatter hasn’t noticed – is that Jack Warner isn’t running CONCACAF.
When he was in charge nobody took a good healthy morning dump without clearing it with him first. No federation President anywhere in the zone would have dared to even consider speaking out of turn to a reporter let alone standing up in a FIFA Congress and making a motion that Warner had not just approved but written himself.
It would have been unthinkable.
So the first day of Jeff Webb’s reign served mostly to demonstrate that, to paraphrase a former candidate for Vice President of the US: “You’re no Jack Warner”.
Just as a footnote (I mentioned this in a comment thread yesterday but it was late in the day and so I thought I’d repeat it):
When they voted on asking FIFA to expel Chuck Blazer yesterday, two delegates voted no and three more abstained.
It’s probably safe to assume that Sunil Gulati was one of those five voters; Blazer is a former USSF Vice President and an old, old friend and ally.
So the question is: who were the other four. Nobody is saying.
And I don’t know whether this is surprising or not but reportedly the man who rose to make the motion was Anton Sealey of the Bahamas.
Time for the UNAFF(Union of North American Football Federations) to be created and send the island nations packing.
With the Elimination of CONCACAF, the new UNAFF would get 3 guaranteed World Cup Spots and a half spot that plays against the winner of the Oceania/Caribbean winner.
Make the UNAFF Confederation all Mainland countries of North and Central America. Relegate the island countries to fight amongst themselves on how divide the money they make from qualifying & Regional Cup competition, if they even end up having one.
End of story..
Dan, you’d kill Caribbean football, in one fell swoop. More productive options exist (membership on the CONCACAF ExCo being determined by registered players; punishing criminals also comes to mind). Yeah, it sucks that the CFU runs CONCACAF, but asking them to run their own Fed is simply crazy for the growth of the World’s sport.
Hmmm. Is it ok that I don’t really care what happens to Carribean football?
When it comes to international sports in the Caribbean, the sport I think has the right idea is cricket. Instead of countless tiny countries putting out teams that are hopelessly overmatched in almost every competition, they have one: West Indies. A large group of island nations contributes players to this team, which has from time to time been a world power. If soccer had taken this route, CONCACAF wouldn’t be dominated by the votes of practical non-entities, and the one team they created might actually have made a splash on the world stage.
Certainly, but the powers that be in the CFU have just once again done their utmost to make absolute certain that exactly what you’re saying never, ever happens. (Because most of them would of course be cut out of the loop.) Look at the composition of CFU’s newly-elected Ex-Co. There’s no Jamaica, T&T, Cuba, or Haiti on there. It’s all teeny little statelets.
I guess we can agree to disagree. For whatever bad comes from breaking up CONCACAF, the ultimate end is that our own corrupt a-holes won’t be dictated to by their corrupt a-holes.
It’s that same old adage, only I can berate my abusive oppressor! LOL
It’s not like their FED is going to die…It still gives them a chance to qualify and prosper..just not on our dime, or a smaller portion of our dime! Or at the very least, be gracious enough to know and appreciate who actually built your Center of Excellence and sodded your fields. Ungrateful “Bastids”..! =)
Amen. I wouldn’t even mind if they kept their Centers of Excellence as long as we could dump them from the proposed UNAFF. Sort of a termination fee
The last thing FIFA wants is another confederation on life-support like the OFC.
Then FIFA can figure out how to solve that on their dime if it’s that important to them.
A scene from HBO’s new series, “The Swiss Sopranos”
A large man stands in front of a hotel room door at the Boscolo Hotel in Budapest:
KNOCK, KNOCK
Small man opens door,looks surprised and tries to hide the fear in his voice, “Hey, Joey Bag-o-Donuts! To what do I owe the pleasure…”
Large man standing in hallway doesn’t wait for man at door to finish before placing meathook of hand on the shoulder of the much smaller man and says,”The boss has got two words for you…Shut The F**k Up!”
Small man replies, “What? I didn’t say nuthin! I was just…”
Large man palms smaller man’s face with huge hand and says, “Shut It!”
Small man nods in agreement after large man peels his hand slowly off the small man’s face, steps back and quietly shuts door.
Large man lumbers down the hall to the next room.
KNOCK KNOCK.
Bill, it strikes me that everyone seems to have missed what I consider the most important piece of news to come out of this whole cycle. While the press was busy reporting on the “CONCACAF wants to oust Blazer” story and you were lambasting for minimizing the “Warner stole lots of money” angle (in other news, dog bites man), nobody has commented on the most interesting tidbit: CONCACAF may be required to file a US tax return.
Admittely, Blazer could be right about the tax requirements, and if I were making $5 million per year in legal sweetheart deals just for turning the other way while my good friend and the man who signed my checks robbed the poor children of Trinidad and the rest of the world blind, I would be damn certain I paid enough lawyers and accountants to make sure I was right. But if there’s even a chance he’s not, the fact that CONCACAF may be required to file a US tax return and what that would mean for transparency and public disclsure, not to mention actually proving that CONCACAF meets the requirements for being a non-profit, is too much to ignore. Frankly, I find the prospect of the possibility of at least some public disclosure of CONCACAF’s financial records too great to ignore. That’s the real story here.
Now, my guess is that Blazer did every damn thing in his power to make sure CONCACAF made no money in the US and therefore allegedly had no requirement to file a tax return. (If you’re trying to keep your $5 million per year gravy train going while administrating what’s probably one of the most corrupt business organizations in North America for the past two decades, isn’t that exactly what you’d do?** But this is apparently the IRS we’re talking about, and if your claim is that you don’t have to file a tax return because you didn’t make enough money, they’re usually happy to believe you, so long as you prove that you made no money–by filing a tax return.
**As an aside, how Bill managed to call Blazer a “wildly competent administrator” in a recent comment is, frankly, beyond me. It’s beyond dispute that for the past two decades, CONCACAF has been a hopelessly corrupt organization. Chuck Blazer has been the general secretary of that organization during that period. I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again: I would let Blazer “administer” the passing out of orange slices to a u-6 rec league team. It’s no wonder that the man who finally ratted out Warner, the one who Bill has praised for his honestly in the midst of hopeless corruption, made motion to oust Blazer. I second.
In case it wasn’t clear, I meant to say that I would *NOT* let Blazer administer the passing out of orange slices to a u-6 rec league team.
Brilliant response. Thank you for it.
Naturally, I agree with a good bit of it, particularly the part about Blazer being way too smart and careful to have skipped filing US returns without consulting competent counsel.
As far as the rest, you apparently missed – as many people did – the pieces I wrote about Blazer going back to 2007.
In point of fact, I give him exactly no slack as far as ethics are concerned. For years he turned a blind eye to a whole bunch of stuff that, frankly, I find repulsive, and I hold him entirely accountable.
He certainly knew the kind of stuff that Warner was doing and simply saying “it wasn’t me” is not enough in civilized society. The fact that most of it went on in the CFU and involved stuff that he was not directly involved in does not, in my opinion, exonerate him. As the GenSec of the umbrella organization, CONCACAF, he had a moral (if not indeed legal) obligation to speak up.
Not to over dramatize it, but the stench was overwhelming and he chose to ignore it because he stood to lose an incredibly lucrative and cushy job that you and I and most everybody else would kill for.It was the greatest gig in the world.
I would argue, however, that contrary to your statement, Blazer has proven to be an amazingly competent football administrator. Your contention that CONCACAF is corrupt does not serve to contradict that fact.
When he took over CONCACAF it had revenues of $40,000 a year. Now it’s 100 times that and the future is nothing but rosy. FIFA itself picks him to run it’s most important tournaments and, during World Cups, it’s most important venues.
This doesn’t make him an ethical paragon. It does show, however, his business acumen.
I will also say that, in my opinion (which, in the end, is nothing more than that) the sweetheart contract which pays him 10% of TV revenues (and I’m sure it’s more complicated than that) was nothing short of outrageous.
As an employee of CONCACAF, he as paid a salary to do this kind of thing. If someone felt a commission arrangement for certain duties was called for then an outside firm should have been hired to avoid the painfully obvious conflict of interest.
All I have said – and all I’m likely to say – is that no one has ever shown me one dollar that he stole, or a bribe that he took, or anything of the sort.
That’s not the same thing as saying he deserves a spot in heaven or even that he did nothing wrong.
It only means that he’s not a criminal. In FIFA, sadly, that’s not always easy to say.
Ah, I finally get it Bill….”It only means that he’s not a criminal”. Everyone is arguing that Blazer is corrupt and you’re saying he is not a criminal. Semantics, who woulda thunk it?
Yes, you can be corrupt w/o actually breaking the law. See definition of “corrupt” below. See the part about “lacking integrity”?
Also, you say that ‘FIFA itself picks him to run it’s most important tournaments and…’ and you attribute that to great business acumen. However, FIFA is well known for favoritism and nepotism. I think those qualities played a much larger role in Blazer’s appt by FIFA for him to run the tournaments. Usually, an organization overpays for favoritism/nepotism contracts…which equates to stealing. There’s your dollar (sort of). I don’t have any proof that favoritism actually played any role in his appt, but I digress
cor·rupt
[kuh-ruhpt] Show IPA
adjective
1.
guilty of dishonest practices, as bribery; lacking integrity; crooked: a corrupt judge.
2.
debased in character; depraved; perverted; wicked; evil: a corrupt society.
3.
made inferior by errors or alterations, as a text.
4.
infected; tainted.
5.
decayed; putrid.
I almost always regret writing a long and thoughtful response in the comment section.
Who’d have thunk?
But think of all the readers who appreciate the long and thoughtful response, not the one knee-jerk critic.
Please, don’t let that stop you from continuing to do so.
Another interesting aside to this story: if there end up being hefty payments to be made (to Blazer, lawyers, the IRS, etc), then the USSF has CONCACAF over a barrel.
How does the confederation make most of its money? The biennial Gold Cups. All of a sudden, any suggestion that the USSF may pass on hosting the tournament would send even stronger chills throughout the region.
But this, as well as the dead-horse beating about leaving the confederation, is mostly moot; as Martín del Palacio pointed out in the comments of another post, as long as Gulati, Compeán, Alvarado and Hawit remain united, they hold the power.
That’s true as far as it goes.
At the end of the day the dichotomy between the areas is very easily defined: those whose goal is to compete successfully at the world level and those whose goal is to suck in as much of someone else’s money as possible.
We, along with a handful of other countries, want no interference with our pursuit of our football goals, and as long as all the others want is money then the only debate is over exactly how much it will take to shut them up.
Someone once said that the problem with the Pahlavi monarchy in Iran wasn’t that they were stealing the oil money. Everybody in the middle east expects the royals to steal.
The problem was that they weren’t satisfied with 60 or 70 or 80 percent of the money; they insisted on stealing it all.
In the end I think that was Jack Warner’s problem. Everybody knew he was stealing, and everybody more or less accepted it. The problem only begun when he decided every single dime he could grab was rightfully his.
At the end of the day, buying off most of the Caribbean feds for a reasonable sum is probably an equitable deal.
The alternative is to have to fight our way out of a dog eat dog confederation like South America or Europe.
Does the USSF have that option? I’ve been under the impression that the Gold Cup is “hosted” by CONCACAF, in association with a local promoter (currently SUM, previously the infamous Interforever). They just happen to play it in the US.
Maybe SUM could do something but Traffic probably wouldn’t mind filling that void.
Don’t international games have to be sanctioned by the FA of the country in which they’re played?
In other countries, yes. In the U.S. whether the USSF has that power or not could fill whole threads of discussion.
What are they going to do, complain to CONCACAF that CONCACAF is organizing unauthorized games in the US?
Complain to FIFA, I would have assumed. But Whitecloud has doubts about whether they have authority in this area, so maybe I’m wrong.
Complain to whoever they want but it seems incredibly unlikely that the USSF has the power to prevent their own rulers from organizing matches in the US. Even without considering the question of whether the USSF’s power to block unauthorized matches would stand up to a legal challenge.
From the FIFA regulations concerning international matches on the FIFA website, Article 7, part 1: “All International Matches must be authorized by the Members to which the participating teams are affiliated and by the Member on whose territory the match is to occur.”
Don’t know if I’m any good at posting links or not, but I’ll try below. If that doesn’t work, on the FIFA website, this is under About FIFA, then Official Documents, then Laws and Regulations, then Regulations Governing International Matches.
http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/tournament/competition/01/49/00/38/regulations_gov_international_matches_2011.pdf1111111
I know that, but the case we’re talking about would be extremely unusual, where the organizer of the match would be CONCACAF rather than two other national associations. It just seems extremely unrealistic that FIFA would prevent CONCACAF from organizing matches in one of its own member states.
CONCACAF wasn’t supposed to have a Congress until 2013, but in an unusual situation FIFA arranged one anyway.
If FIFA decided to partner with Traffic Sports and te Qatar Foundation to hold the World Cup in the US without USSF involvement, do you think the USSF would be able to block that too?
No, I don’t think the USSF would be able to block that too, because it could not appeal to FIFA in order to stop FIFA itself from doing something. Well, I suppose it could appeal, but the appeal would be useless, because in that case, FIFA’s mind would already have been made up.
And in the admittedly unusual case we are discussing, I don’t think that the USSF would be able to block CONCACAF from organizing the matches. But wouldn’t two federations who were scheduled to play a game on a third federation’s territory without that federation’s permission face penalties from FIFA that might make them decide not to play the game after all.
You aren’t wrong. More like its a gray area. The Stevens Act of 1998 which gives the USSF its power never intended Olympic sports federations to exercise regulatory authority over professional games and leagues. Asserted rights by sports federations outside the mandate of the Stevens Act have come under some judicial scrutiny in recent years, particularly in sailing. And this one involving USSF:
http://www.pryorcashman.com/news-592.html
Whether that includes competitions involving national teams, who knows.
Not really, as long as they have Mexico they can still make a lot of money.
That extraordinary Congress that CONCACAF scheduled for later this year to review the completed financial audit is going to be good times. They have to behave in Budapest with the assembled world media and FIFA leaders in attendance. But, in the showdown at Grand Cayman(assuming the extraordinary Congress will be in the Cayman Islands) the gloves come off.
The idea that what they’ve been doing the last two days qualifies as behaving is frightening. Grand Cayman is going to be wild.
Creating a North and Central American Federation and dumping the CFU would be great for soccer in the US and I wish it would happen. However, Blatter or whoever may get the FIFA Presidency in the future wants those 35 votes and in order to control them has to give the CFU what it wants and of course the CFU wants to be in charge of CONCACAF. I just dont see us being allowed to create a new regional breakaway Federation.
Hello
Fourth time lucky?
http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/2012-05-27/warner-i-won%E2%80%99t-be-destroyed-fifa
“They have all the records, they can check it and see who owns it and who doesn’t own it, what they have paid and what they haven’t paid.
“What I do know is that I don’t own it, so what is all the fuss about?
“For over one year Blatter and his minions are trying their utmost to destroy me and I would not in anyway be remotely perturbed by the foolishness taking place in FIFA. “Blatter believes that he is a god and no one should oppose him at anytime and once you oppose him you pay the ultimate price.
“I will be the exception and I wish to advise him and his cohorts that in no way he can tarnish my image.”
Ironic quote from Warner regarding the upcoming T&T cabinet shuffle:
“I think it is the correct thing to do. Nobody must feel secure. Far too often when you stay in a ministry for too long, you begin to feel it is yours”
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