By Paul Nicholson
June 1 – “If you are elected and don’t come to the first meeting that’s not taking responsibility.” And with these words Sepp Blatter abruptly ended the press conference following FIFA’s first executive committee after his dramatic election to a fifth term as FIFA president. Blatter exited the auditorium chased Keystone Kops-style by the media with the English press and their cameramen in the vanguard.
Visibly irritated, Blatter was referring to the non-appearance of England’s FIFA vice president David Gill, the former Manchester United chief executive turned upwardly mobile football politician.
Blatter had prior to his exit fielded a number of consecutive questions asking him how he could lead FIFA with the latest arrests, investigations and allegations of corruption that had rocked the world of football in Zurich last week.
Rhetorical questions were met with Blatter’s now stock answers that FIFA can’t monitor everyone; the arrests concerned individuals and incentives offered by marketing companies in the Americas; and that he had been elected by the world’s football federations (with a substantial majority) to lead FIFA’s fight against corruption and that is what he was going to do.
The Gill question was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
As Blatter left, presumably realising he was about to lose the plot, the press had unfortunately missed the opportunity to explore a wider point which only started to become clearer Sunday when English FA president Greg Dyke, backed by the UK government, said that he would be talking to European federations this week at the Champions League final in Berlin and encouraging them to join with England in a boycott of the World Cup.
Gill’s failure to attend the exco suddenly started to make more sense.
The assumption is that Gill was acting after discussion with (and orders from?) his England federation and presumably English politicians, chief among them sports minister John Whittingdale who was busy re-iterating a previous statements that the British federations should pull out of FIFA.
Gill had said earlier in the week said that if Blatter was re-elected he would not sit on the committee. The talk the night before in the Zurich hotels and bars when it came to Gill was that failure to turn up would be a foolish move as it would lose a UEFA vote in a crucial debate on World Cup slots where UEFA’s 13 automatic finals places were expected to come under attack.
With Gill having thus failed to fulfill a duty for UEFA the knock-on effect for England’s influence in the corridors of power could similarly be emaciated, just when it looked like they might be on the verge of making a political breakthrough after years of being a social pariah. Even UEFA president Michel Platini said he was trying to persuade Gill to attend, doubtless mindful of the pressure on UEFA and the need for all his votes after UEFA’s spectacular failure to unseat Blatter.
The response from Gill was a curiously worded statement about how “my professional reputation is critical to me”. Manchester United fans might have something to say on this as Gill was one of the big winners in the Glazer’s controversial takeover of the club. News was also emerging that Gill had signed a deal for the club with disgraced marketing agency Traffic Sports who were at the centre of the corruption scandals surrounding the seven arrests in dawn raids on Zurich’s Baur au Lac Hotel on Wednesday morning.
As it turned out, Gill’s non-attendance didn’t matter for UEFA as the FIFA exco decided to keep the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to 32 team tournaments with the qualifications places for each confederation for the finals tournament remaining unchanged. UEFA kept their 13 finals slots.
For Platini that would have been a huge relief, and perhaps a considerable achievement, particularly in light of the lobbying from CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) for more automatic qualification places, something that Blatter had supported at their confederation congresses.
For CONCACAF, what was meant to be another triumphant stride forward with the addition of an automatic World Cup finals place to crown the week, turned into a week of disaster. The failure to gain more World Cup representation (coupled with the arrest of its president Jeffrey Webb and FIFA exco member Ricardo Li from Costa Rica on corruption charges) would have hurt a group that has worked hard to come out of the shadow of its past only to find that the bright new future wasn’t being lead by people as shiny as their image.
For the US federation, whose national legal authorities had instigated the Swiss arrests, there was also a double whammy with the decision that for the hosting of the 2026 World Cup, any federation outside the confederation that hosts the 2022 World Cup, may bid – ie anyone outside the AFC.
Prior to this it was expected that the exco would mandate 2026 to be hosted in the CONCACAF region, and that the US were nailed on to get the gig if they wanted it. Ironically Webb had been a persistent and insistent promoter of the US, the country that now wants him locked up
Back on their island, England, with their usual political lead feet, do not seem to have been looking long term and may have made a fatal error with their rapid decision to engineer a World Cup boycott. Under the new procedure England can bid for 2026, and with the hunger within fans in the country for the tournament would have been expected to do so.
And with the vote for the 2026 host being taken by the whole of FIFA’s Congress (rather than just the executive committee), England with its globally powerful Premier League and globetrotting clubs would be a strong favourite with many federations.
Instead the English are once again looking a little green round the gills in the world of football politics, and could once again end up the laughing stock of Europe in football’s (un)diplomatic circles as they plead with Europe’s football giants to join their boycott, but of whom at least three – France, Italy and Spain – are reported to have voted for Blatter.
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