Sepp Blatter – the ugly face of the beautiful game
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SAO PAULO – The World Cup's biggest problem isn't diving or faking injury or that there's not enough goals or even that the thing still isn't completely ready less than a day before it begins.
Nope, the worst thing about the best thing in soccer is the man running the show, the beautiful game's ugly face and its most senior and powerful administrator – FIFA president Sepp Blatter.
While 32 teams have spent this week preparing for action on the grandest stage of all, Blatter has also been getting down to work, indulging in the kind of political glad-handing and ego-massaging that made him the sport's ruler 16 years ago and has kept him there ever since.
On Wednesday, barring a last-minute change of heart, Blatter will formalize his candidacy to run for a fifth term as president. And, in the absence of another runner likely to get enough support among FIFA's members, he will almost certainly win.
As incredible as it seems after more than a decade's worth of controversy and scandal, the 78-year-old Blatter appears more entrenched in soccer's primary seat of influence than ever.
At the FIFA Congress in Sao Paulo over the last few days – a mind-numbing concoction of meetings and sub-meetings, committees and cronyism – Blatter met with officials from soccer confederations representing every continent. He has been urged to stand down, criticized over his actions and comments, accused of tarnishing FIFA's reputation and begged not to pursue re-election once his term comes to an end later this year.
And none of it really matters.
Yes, Blatter's detractors are loud and strident and no longer prepared to keep mum over what they claim to be a litany of improper actions dating way back. Most of them hail from Europe, the sport's stronghold, where all of soccer's best leagues and many of its leading national teams operate.
Michael van Praag, president of the Dutch soccer federation told reporters that, during a closed meeting, he said the following to Blatter: "If you look at FIFA's reputation over the last seven or eight years, it is being linked to all kinds of corruption and all kinds of old boys' network things. FIFA has an executive president and you are not making things easy for yourself. I do not think you are the man for the job any longer."
Greg Dyke, chairman of England's Football Association, weighed in too, responding to Blatter's claim at the start of the week that an investigation by the London Sunday Times into impropriety surrounding the award of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar was borne out of racism.
But the structure of FIFA and its multitude of members mean that Blatter can be viewed with the utmost suspicion in one region yet survive thanks to support from another.
Among African nations, he is seen as the man who promised and delivered a World Cup to the continent – it was hosted in South Africa in 2010 – which guarantee him support even if there is more than a whiff of impropriety under his watch. Chief among those allegations, of course, is the decision to take soccer's biggest show to Qatar in 2022, a move that was so stunning in its ridiculousness that it defied belief when it was announced in 2010 and continues to do so.
You know the script by now: It is hot as a furnace in Qatar during summer and the country has a tiny population and nowhere near the necessary infrastructure. Also, Qatar has been accused of drastic human rights abuses involving migrant workers brought in to build the stadiums.
For Blatter, though, there is always someone else to blame, and, in truth, no one else either powerful enough or willing enough to take him to task.
He is the classy guy who said women soccer players needed to wear tighter shorts to boost their feminine appeal. He's the same guy who responded to questions about Qatar's law criminalizing homosexuality by telling potential gay visitors that they should "refrain from sexual activities."
He is also the brilliant administrator who ordered a gleaming new stadium to be built in Cape Town in time for South Africa 2010, at a cost of nearly $500 million, because he thought the backdrop of Table Mountain would be prettier than the infinitely more sensible option of renovating an existing venue.
Yep, he's something else. He has to go. But he's not going to willingly.
Blatter promised in 2011 that this would be his last go-around as FIFA president but at some point he changed his mind. The man who would stand the best chance of running against him is Michel Platini, chief of European confederation UEFA, but the Frenchman doesn't want to enter a race unless he is certain of winning it.
A typical Blatter scenario arose recently when he told an interviewer that the Qatar decision had been a mistake, then tried to backtrack and retract his statement in the following days claiming he had been taken out of context.
He'd like it if you believed him but he probably doesn't care too much if you don't. Soccer's most powerful man keeps on keeping on as the game's most immoveable force.
