Can you believe whats happened this week? World football’s greatest villain (unless you’re a Rangers fan, in which case that title remains firmly with Craig Whyte) has finally resigned!
As he leaves Fifa headquarters for the last time (in six months, during which time you have to imagine the shredders will be doing a shift like Steven Gerrard in his prime) all corruption will walk out with him, if you believe some of the press. Unfortunately for me, the idea that the removal of Blatter from FIFA will mean the end of corruption is as naïve as the idea that the recent closure of The Arches nightclub in Glasgow will solve my home city’s drug problem, or that banning games like Grand Theft Auto will end violence.
The beginning of the end came earlier in the week when seven FIFA officials were arrested by the FBI, one of those men being FIFA Vice president, Jeffrey Webb, now you might expect someone to have risen to such a high office to be a man with vast experience of football administration, coming from a footballing heartland like Brazil or Germany, but no, Jeffrey Webb is from the Cayman Islands (currently ranked 189 on the FIFA international rankings list… of 209 countries) and a country where the majority of the population are more familiar with offshore banking than the offside rule.
Since then the many lurid and disturbing headlines have followed, with former FIFA Vice President Jack Warner promising to reveal all (FHM has really gone downhill recently…), to the revelation that FIFA paid off the Irish FA following the Henry hand ball incident (a payment that the FAI happily accepted and declined to mention until today…).
Warner is of course doing what a lot of the people involved seem to be doing and singing like a canary now that the game appears to be up and the Feds are involved. No doubt they’ll all be seeking plea bargains like Ray Liotta in a gangster film.
Let’s be honest, who would be surprised if tomorrow’s news carried a story about Michel Platini shooting Blatter, Warner and Blazer with a gun hidden inside a toilet cistern at FIFA headquarters.
There is no doubt that Blatter had to go, a rule in football is the buck stops with the man in charge, the manager is always the one to be sacked so even if no charges are filed against him, it has happened on his watch. However the holier than thou reactions of some of the press (who seem more excited about the possibility that England might get the World Cup than they are condemning of corruption) have been laughable.
What has really amused me has been the reactions of the heads of the FA and SFA, Greg Dyke and Stuart Regan. Both hysterically threatened to boycott the World Cup, a threat with the gravitas of say, Maribor and Malmo threatening to boycott the Champions League. They also went out of their way to get on their high horses while Regan’s last major decision was passing a man with various tax convictions fit and proper to run a football club. To hear him and Dyke bemoan the awarding of World Cups amid the influence of wealthy Russian Oligarchs and Middle Eastern families at FIFA, as we look forward to another battle between Chelsea and Manchester City for the Premier League title next season is beyond parody.
Let’s be honest here, the next few weeks are going to be full of revelation after revelation as every player in this sorry tale tries to get themselves off the hook as much as possible, but the sad thing about it is, football will end up as corrupt as it is now and always has been.
