Sepp Blatter's FIFA Regime Has Football Rotting Like a Fish and Must Be Stopped

One thing that might surprise you about Sepp Blatter is that, underneath it all, there’s a real football man.

Actually, it wouldn’t surprise you if you’d been at the Oxford University Union on the night 13 months ago, when the FIFA president was asked which he preferred: Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo.

His eyes lit up and he spoke just as a fan would, leaping to his feet to lend extravagantly mimic support to the contention that, while both were great players, it was part of the game’s charm that Messi was a "good boy" while Ronaldo was the more determined "commander on the field." One of them spent more at the hairdresser’s than the other, Blatter added, ‘’but that doesn’t matter.’’

He subsequently had to apologise to Ronaldo, of course, because there’s nothing more pompous than a Ballon d’Or candidate spurned (as Ronaldo had been a couple of times). And Blatter had said he was a Messi fan. But it was nice to know that he still cared.

This, after all, was the man who once told me, in response to a question about linesmen ignoring the instruction to favour the attacker in marginal offside decisions (it was only a couple of years after the law amendment had been made): "Look, it would be better if they just kept their flag down every time—they’d make fewer mistakes then!"

There was a genuine passion about Blatter’s desire to improve the game as a spectacle. Just as there had been when—after the 1990 World Cup and in conjunction with Michel Platini—he set about having law changes devised that would keep play flowing (the back-pass law) while protecting creative players from cloggers (the ban on the so-called tackle from behind).

Yet somewhere along the line, the able administrator with a love of football turned into the Blatter we see today: the almost comically grandiloquent figure who has come to view the game as a world power with himself as head of state. Or so it seems. In charge, moreover, of an increasingly grotesque parody of democracy.

To list the FIFA scandals of recent years would be tedious and unnecessary. Suffice it to pluck out just one case, that of Amos Adamu, the Nigerian executive-committee member caught by a Sunday Times sting and found to have offered for sale his votes on the location of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. He was suspended for a mere three years, as if global football administration could involve less heinous offences.

The joint vote on these World Cups has brought to a head all the concerns about Blatter's administration (and, to be fair, his predecessor Joao Havelange). Although the English are often castigated for having an inordinately large bone to pick because they lost the 2018 ballot to Russia, many in Europe would tend to agree with former FA chairman David Bernstein’s reflection that the 2022 decision in favour of Qatar was perhaps the most ludicrous in sporting history (BBC).

In my view, what made it so was not the choice of Qatar itself—I can see great advantages in giving the Middle East a World Cup, and in holding the tournament in our winter, when the weather there is ideal and the Europe-based majority of players are in peak condition—but the procedure.

FIFA conducted the vote on the premise that air-conditioned stadiums would enable the tournament to be played in summer—then moved the goalposts six months. So far, although everyone is now agreed on a switch to winter, there is no sign of a second vote.

Meanwhile, the inquiry into alleged corruption in the lead-up to the vote has been conducted by lawyer Michael Garcia, but his report, running to more than 400 pages, remains secret. Even Blatter claims not to know its contents, and among those dismayed by this is Britain’s FIFA vice president, Jim Boyce, who asks what the point of the exercise was if those empowered to deal with the report cannot see it.

Current FA chief Greg Dyke calls the whole thing a "charade," as per Sky Sports, and he is right. FIFA under Blatter cannot be trusted—the president has even broken his promise not to stand for a further term—and it is time for the British and their growing band of European allies on this question to act.

There are two ways of going about it, and both, while not as unpalatable as the status quo, are far from ideal.

One is a breakaway, which would be dangerous without Qatari money and might lead to a horribly damaging split in the game, and the other is one last round of inducements to FIFA’s poorer members in return for a power structure that more accurately reflects the game as it is played—in other words, one weighted toward Europe and South America.

I mentioned democracy before, and that is really the problem. Rich and poor have a vote each in FIFA. Tiny countries have, at least notionally, the same sway as the likes of Germany and England.

Yet scrutiny of all associations’ affairs is not equal, and thus the discredited Jack Warner, who ruled Caribbean affairs from his base in Trinidad, was able to thrive.

To end this state of affairs, a once-and-for-all offer may be necessary. The big football nations should dangle the carrot of an increased share of revenue in return for reduced electoral power.

Democracy has been tried and proved unsuitable for football on a global basis. Football, whatever Blatter may think, is not a country, and many of those charged with governing it have proved unrepresentative, including Blatter. Something has to be done about his regime.

Otherwise, football will continue to rot, like a fish, from the head down.

Patrick Barclay is an award-winning football journalist and best-selling author, whose portfolio includes biographies on Jose Mourinho, Sir Alex Ferguson and Herbert Chapman.