The voice came through crackly but clear on my phone as I trundled between two German cities.
“I backed [Sepp Blatter] in 1998 against [Lennart] Johansson and he won.
“I backed him in 2002 against [Issa] Hayatou and he won.
“At this point in time, I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t back him.”
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It would have been hard for the candidates in FIFA’s Presidential election to avoid the subject of World Cup vote reform.
And in fairness to Joseph Blatter, his latest proposals came as a direct response to an interviewer’s question.
Nonetheless, several points need to be made about the FIFA President’s “positive solution” for preventing a repetition of the “uncomfortable experience I had here in Zurich on 2 December”.
The race for the FIFA Presidency is turning out to be as dull as those for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were fascinating.
The incumbent, Joseph Blatter, is thus far adopting the wholly predictable strategy of emphasising the value of continuity in an unstable world while detailing the torrents of cash that have rained down on planet football over his 13-year tenure – and critically, he says, will continue to do so.
The link might not be immediately apparent.
But this week’s move by US businessman Stan Kroenke to take his stake in Arsenal, the underachieving English Premier League football club, to 63 percent while agreeing a mandatory offer for the rest of the shares could turn out to be good news for Russia’s underachieving Olympic athletes.
Why? Because Arsenal minority shareholder Alisher Usmanov may sooner or later be in line to receive a very large cheque.
“Let me tell you something: a few months ago, about seven or eight months ago, we were about to buy shares in Manchester United.
“We kept it secret because I thought we were going to do it, but now it’s impossible, so let’s talk about it.”
It was, quite simply, one of the most surreal moments of my journalistic career.
Hublot, the Swiss watchmaker, has some singular ideas about sports sponsorship.
You might expect a luxury brand whose products have an average retail price of SFr23,000 to take an interest in, say, polo. Or top-end sailing, or maybe Formula One.
And, indeed, Hublot is involved with some of these.
But football? Well, let’s just say it would not be at the top of my list.
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As members of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) made their way last week to Pago Pago to vote for a new President, word reached me of an idea that could transform their futures and send a shockwave through the murky world of global football politics.
The idea of a breakaway Asian confederation, embracing Oceania and several easterly members of the current Asian Football Confederation (AFC) is being actively discussed.
At present it is hard to assess the timescale,
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The imminent arrival of Wembley chairman David Bernstein in the same post at the English Football Association (FA) has sent me scurrying to the FA’s accounts.
The World Cup is gone. English football now needs some clear thinking about its future relations with the international game.
The disappointment of the Zurich vote that saw the 2018 World Cup awarded instead to Russia brought with it talk of breaking away from FIFA.
Such thoughts, moreover, were not confined to those whom one might easily write off as “extremists” in this context.
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In one corner of the room in one of Switzerland’s plushest hotels, the unmistakable figure of Chuck Blazer, FIFA’s Tweeting Executive Committee member, holds court.
On the other side of a large Christmas tree, a Boys’ Own triumvirate of David Beckham, Gary Lineker and Fabio Capello cluster around a small coffee table.
Nearby, English Premier League boss Richard Scudamore has been doing his bit, engaging the Asian Football Confederation chairman and Qatari ExCo member Mohamed Bin Hammam in earnest conversation for quite some time.
The BBC’s Panorama programme told us nothing new about the 2018-22 World Cup campaign.
But it underlined the need for a changing of the guard in FIFA’s upper echelons.
World football’s governing body plainly has no intention of further investigating the nature of links between football officials and the ISMM/ISL sports marketing organisation which collapsed nearly a decade ago.
Once the white smoke from FIFA’s conclave of cardinals has dissipated into the clear alpine air on Thursday (December 2), the way will be clear for an almighty inquest into the way English football is run.
The disappointing nature of the national team’s 2010 World Cup campaign in South Africa has ensured this inquest will happen whether or not England’s bid to stage world football’s flagship tournament in 2018 succeeds.
But,
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As we approach the final week of the contest to decide where the 2018 and 2022 World Cups will be played, in just the last day or so it has emerged that:
● British Prime Minister David Cameron is to spend the best part of three days in Zurich, lobbying for the England 2018 bid. This after inviting Jack Warner, one of the most influential FIFA Executive Committee members, to lunch.
● Russia’s Government are making final plans for a visit to the Swiss city by Vladimir Putin,
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So now we know. The conclave that will assemble next month in Zurich to decide where the 2018 and 2022 World Cups will be played will be at most 22 strong.
Though some might think this appropriate – it is after all the same as the number of players who take to the field for a game of football – the suspensions of Nigeria’s Amos Adamu and Tahiti’s Reynald Temarii will clearly reinforces the reputation for sleaze with which FIFA has long been saddled just as the attention of the world is once again about to descend upon it.
For Australia, Ben Buckley spoke about a “No Worries World Cup”.
Alexei Sorokin said Russia would be ready to show “the new country” it had become.
But, for my money, much the most interesting presentation of the three World Cup bidders that spoke at this week’s International Football Arena was that given by Yuuichiro Nakajima of Japan, the only one of the trio, by my judgment, with little chance of winning.