Sepp Blatter Speaks Sense… But Really Not For Very Long

I call this "Idiot With An Envelope"

I’m just as shocked, really. His comments today about the World Cup 2018 and 2022 decisions, in the face of overwhelming slaughter by the media and observers around the world, were rather quite appropriate. I felt a chill travel down my spine as he actually made some sense.

Not much, mind you. As soon as it came, it was quickly replaced by yet more garbage, but give the man his due for a moment.

To wit: “To be honest, I was surprised by all the English complaining after the defeat. England, of all people, the motherland of fairplay ideas. Now some of them are showing themselves to be bad losers. You can’t come afterwards and say so and so promised to vote for England. The results are known. The outcome came out clearly.”

You shouldn’t be so surprised, Sepp, as us Brits are Kings of Moaning, but he’s right: there are a lot of bad losers all over the place.

We all wanted World Cups in our back yard, soccer come home or come to roost, whatever, and honestly, it was hard to read things like Paul Hayward’s brain-searing op-ed for The Observer without imagining Richard the Lionheart suiting up for a crusade. (On Twitter, where opinions are more immediate and less-censored, the xenophobia and chauvinism towards either nation, particularly Qatar, was even more faint-inducing. But that’s Twitter.)

England and the USA presented the most sensible bids, but we knew a long time ago that sensible wasn’t in FIFA’s vocabulary. Heck, it wasn’t even in their language: any country with the resources of Qatar should be half-capable of drumming up a facade given 12 years in which to do it, and Russia’s petrodollars should also allow them to come good on all their potential and promise. And some are starting to accept that, ignoring the mess that is FIFA’s politics and money-hungry motives. (Not that FIFA ExCo members paid much attention to the meat of the bids, if you believe Viacheslav Koloskov)

To FIFA, World Cups in the US or England are safe, but also do little for their image. They’re boring. Functional. Safe. All the things that look good internally but do little to propel their new world explorations. We get that.

However, it doesn’t take Blatter long to veer off dangerously, because the sting of defeat is not at all what’s driving criticism of the World Cup decisions. Not even close.

From the same interview with Swiss magazine Weltwoche: “I really sense in some reactions a bit of the arrogance of the western world of Christian background. Some simply can’t bear it if others get a chance for a change. What can be wrong if we start football in regions where this sport demonstrates a potential which goes far beyond sport?”

Huh? That’s what you’re sensing?

It’s true that plenty have ragged on both winning nations for their less-than-stellar infrastructures and societies, and rightly so; there’s a lot to take umbrage with. However, it simply gives Blatter this idiotic shield to hide behind. To him, any criticism of either bid will simply be deflected with similar comments as that one above, accusing those fiercest opponents of myopia, bias, racism, cultural intolerance, and any other brush with which Sepp can sweep pesky journalists to one side.

To hammer home the point: Attacking Christianity, as if that’s the reason so many people are upset with the World Cup decisions, is indefensibly stupid, and is an act tantamount to digging his own grave.

We don’t doubt that in some way Blatter does take this expansionist philosophy seriously—as I droned on Dan Levy’s On the DL Podcast, FIFA is well and truly beholden to its own warm narrative*—but he’s flirting with disaster to harp on the arrogance of the West as his defense, for it’ll get shattered in due course.

While those were the easiest reactions to have once the World Cup hosts were announced in Zurich, there’s a lot more to scrutinize, like the obvious business element to either bid, and the fact that the closed-vote process might have engendered more backroom political pressure for various agendas than it may have as an entirely open ballot.

It’s easy to think that this is just about soccer, but in truth, with the money and power bundled up in such votes, the possibility for misdeed is quite obvious. And, knowing what we do thanks to the likes of Andrew Jennings and Foul!, it’s nigh-on impossible to prevent the mind from running off and unearthing a number of strong, plausible conspiracies. (I tossed out several in that chat with Mr. Levy)

Ultimately, we’ll get another decade-and-a-half in which to fully dissect and analyze the legacy of either World Cup, as there should be plenty of data flying around for our manipulation and study.

It’s this last line from Sepp that killed me, really: “There is no systematic corruption in Fifa. That is nonsense. We are financially clean and clear. We need to improve our image. We also need to clarify some things within Fifa.”

What are you trying to shout down? The use of systematic is endlessly fascinating, as if he’ll acquiesce to the smaller “If I put a bag of money here and it’s gone when I come back, I know nothing” wrongdoing and yet firmly denies any larger machinations of voting blocs, global alliances, and/or collusion.

Thanks to the rise of ire with FIFA—and make no mistake, Blatter’s announcements have caused plenty more interested parties to focus their gaze upon him and his “not-for-profit” organization—I’ve no doubt that over time, people will talk, heads will roll, and FIFA might emerge from all this smelling a tiny bit rosier than they currently do. Whatever he’s hiding—if anything—we’ll find it sooner or later, by which point he’ll need a better defense than the one he gave to a Swiss magazine.

*Funnily enough, a comment on that podcast runs off to exactly one such haven of outrage. It’s got tons of facts, but they’re quickly obscured by the subjective rage, and a commenter there points out that dissonance nicely about the US and UK having plenty of their own issues.