Blatter is an impetuous child, sneers honorary FIFA vice-president

By Andrew Warshaw

September 7 – One of FIFA’s former powerbrokers is the latest figure to pour scorn over the way the organisation is handled under Sepp Blatter’s Presidency.

South Korea’s Chung Mong-joon, a former FIFA vice-President, says in a memoir published in his homeland that Blatter runs FIFA like a dictator and should have far more transparency and credibility.

In the wake of the recent bribery scandal, Blatter will announce his eagerly awaited reforms for cleaning up FIFA next month, but Chung questions his tactics, particularly as Blatter’s so-called Solutions Committee is believed by some to have been unilaterally set up without the approval of his Executive Committee.

In his memoirs, a passage from which was published in the New York Times, Chung describes Blatter as “an articulate and intelligent man but more like an impetuous child than a gentleman.”

Worse still, he writes, Blatter is power mad.

“The Executive Committee is meant to provide checks and balances when its President goes beyond his authority and mandate,” writes the former President of the Korea Football Association.

“Blatter is trying to take away the power of the executive committee and thereby neutralise any efforts to check his power.”

Just like Mohamed Bin Hammam, banned for life by FIFA over the bribery scandal, Chung uses the word “dictator” when describing Blatter’s modus operandi.

“A lot of dictators on this planet have used similar methods,” he writes.

Chung also refers to the infamous legal dispute involving rival firms MasterCard and Visa, which FIFA lost in 2007 and was ordered to pay $90 million (£56 million/€64 million) to the former.

“In a ruling full of contempt for FIFA,” writes Chung, “the presiding judge mentioned the word ‘lie’ 13 times in reference to FIFA.

“Blatter shifted all the responsibility to Jérôme Valcke, then marketing director.

“Six months later, he not only reinstated Valcke, but also promoted him to general secretary.

“This only reinforced the suspicion that Blatter himself and Valcke were behind the whole thing.”

Chung’s highly controversial comments should be put into context in terms of his likely agenda.

It is no secret that he would have backed Bin Hammam against Blatter for the FIFA presidency in June but never got a chance since he was ousted as Asia’s FIFA vice-president by Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan six months earlier in a stunning upset.

The Prince, a self-confessed Blatter supporter, won by 25 votes to 20, ending Chung’s 17-year spell on the Executive Committee.

Ironically, it was Chung’s own alleged obsession with power that was cited in some quarters as one reason for the more moderate and modernist Prince Ali’s victory.

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