Call me innocent but isn't it as dispiriting as it is distasteful that it took $150 million to kick off this rampant indignation at Fifa and its haemorrhoid of a president, Sepp Blatter.
That’s how much it took to get the Americans energised enough to purposefully assemble evidence of years of corruption, something that might reasonably have been previously expected of countries actually interested in football.
Only the most pea-green innocents buy into Fifa’s mission statement of promoting football through its “unifying, educational, cultural and humanitarian values” but still, it’s depressing that only the buck could produce such a big political bang within the sport’s governing body.
The misery of migrant unfortunates losing their lives every day building the infrastructure for Qatar 2022 certainly hadn't cut it. Neither did blatant human rights violations in Russia, although since annexing sovereign territory wasn't enough to check Putin, bringing the posturing poltroon to account over how he treats his own people was never really a runner. Despots, disease and death are trifles in the great strategic game, like when governments dutifully trotted out their inclusive, fair-play, joy-to-the-world cant during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, a country beset by chronic social problems, not least how millions are condemned to abject poverty.
The US department of justice says it has evidence of corruption about the selection of South Africa for that World Cup, evidence which it’s hard not to suspect was available to plenty others at the time but which didn’t chime with the political and economic consensus: no one, at least no one with the power to do something, appears to have wanted to know.
Reform
Now everyone, supposedly, wants to know. Officialdom throughout Europe and the Americas is jumping on the outrage train like a Bombay rush-hour, whistling about change and reform and clean slates and removing the ugly face of the beautiful game.
David Cameron was especially quick off the mark, calling for Blatter to step down, just a few years after "poo-pooing" a BBC programme outlining Fifa corruption for interfering with England's 2018 World Cup bid. If the England team had a striker with its PM's opportunist instincts they might make an impact.
The wild card in all of this is the FBI which has helped kick over the Fifa rock, sending football’s suits scurrying for shade, although behind all the posturing it’s hard not to suspect they’re not the only ones wishing the Yanks had just left things alone. For in political capitals throughout the world where football does matter, strategic implications that go far beyond football are now being forensically examined, and it’s not change that’s on the agenda but containment. And their biggest trump card in the optics of all this will actually be Blatter.
He must realise his days are numbered. As capable as he is of his own florid patter, Blatter’s flinty Swiss soul knows better than most how it’s the money that counts. Last week proved that. Ethics didn’t cut it in the justice and retribution stakes. $150 million did.
No amount of hubris can prevent Blatter from recognising the game is up. The money has turned against him. The world can decline your credibility but when Visa does, you’re finished. It’s hard to dollop out grants to Africa when your personal PIN has expired.
So Blatter will leave the stage, probably before FBI investigations into the bidding process for 2018 and 2022 get too serious, or if the world’s leading broadcasters need to be seen to get an attack of the morality vapours. And with the popular baddie gone, a lid can be put back on burbling diplomatic uncertainty.
Convenient fall
guy Putting Blatter on a platter provides those desperate not to upset the political and financial applecart with an appearance of decisive action, something controllable. Without such a convenient fall
guy, who knows what might happen: morality rather than money might even enter the equation and that really would be a nightmare. It helps that Putin knows that better than most.
The former Uefa President Lennart Johansson has said Russia should be stripped of the 2018 World Cup and the tournament awarded to England. And he's right, in the way that everyone should live happily ever after. If Johannson really believes this is a runner it is little wonder Blatter beat him to the Fifa gig in 1998.
The last thing Cameron wants is the 2018 World Cup. He’s got enough problems with Putin as it is, as does most of a western hemisphere in thrall to all that Siberian oil yet nervous of just how much of a nut the Russian leader actually might be.
Qatar losing 2022 is apparently a runner. And of course it should lose it. The fundamental premise of a World Cup there was always ludicrous. But there are an awful lot of agendas outside football’s narrow boundaries for there to be any confidence of that actually happening. Even little old Ireland has an economic stake in keeping Qatar onside.
The beautiful game’s poisonous politics are only part of a greater game, the one where there’s no interest like self-interest and talk of fair play is just cliché. In reality there’s too much of everything invested in Russia and Qatar for simplistic right and wrong to apply.
So investigations by the Americans and Swiss will proceed, a lot of shapes will be thrown and ultimately Blatter will go, a popular and convenient move which will probably be sufficient to avoid having to make really big calls. The lid will be put firmly back on, and everything will continue to be all about the money.
