Darlo Uncovered

al_quaker wrote:Meanwhile, despite 3 of the main sponsors calling for him to go, and also facing a criminal investigation, Blatter is still refusing to go

Just driven through the Swiss town where Blatter was born. The locals are really embarrassed that the High School is named after him.

al_quaker wrote:Meanwhile, despite 3 of the main sponsors calling for him to go, and also facing a criminal investigation, Blatter is still refusing to go

He must think he's King Canute, but the tide's definitely coming in.

joejaques wrote:

al_quaker wrote:Meanwhile, despite 3 of the main sponsors calling for him to go, and also facing a criminal investigation, Blatter is still refusing to go

He must think he's King Canute, but the tide's definitely coming in.

All the foundations of his empire are being washed away and the whole lot will collapse very soon.

Well, well, well.

Blatter, Valcke and Platini banned for 90 days, with Chung Moon Jong banned for six years.

Utter carnage at FIFA. If this was any normal organisation, with a senior leadership team so rotten, it would have been shut down.

There is no hope for FIFA, it cannot reform or ever recover from this. Its reputation is contaminated and can never be redeemed. It has to be dismantled and a new organisation set up to govern football.

Darlogramps wrote:There is no hope for FIFA, it cannot reform or ever recover from this. Its reputation is contaminated and can never be redeemed. It has to be dismantled and a new organisation set up to govern football.

You raise an interesting point - and one I hadn't thought about.

A new organisation, with new people and a clean transparent way of doing things - that would be amazing - but unlikely.

Right from the off FIFA was built on top of foundations of corruption and double dealing - these people think (or thought) things would never change - perhaps now things will change, but by how much? That's the question.

What interests me now is what happens if any dodgy stuff is uncovered re the next 2 World Cups?

theoriginalfatcat wrote:

Darlogramps wrote:There is no hope for FIFA, it cannot reform or ever recover from this. Its reputation is contaminated and can never be redeemed. It has to be dismantled and a new organisation set up to govern football.

You raise an interesting point - and one I hadn't thought about.

A new organisation, with new people and a clean transparent way of doing things - that would be amazing - but unlikely.

Right from the off FIFA was built on top of foundations of corruption and double dealing - these people think (or thought) things would never change - perhaps now things will change, but by how much? That's the question.

I know it's completely unlikely, but in my view, it's the only way any credibility can be regained in world football governance.

Just look at the people who are stepping in following Blatter and Platini's bans, to see how rotten FIFA is.

Issa Hayatou is the interim president. He's been named as allegedly having received millions of dollars' worth of bungs from sports marketing company ISL.

Angel Villar Llona is now the acting UEFA boss. He's under investigation over setting up a 'collusion pact' between Spain and Qatar's World Cup bids.

The whole management system stinks of corruption and not one of them can seriously be trusted to reform FIFA so it is clean, transparent and governs in the interests of the game, rather than for personal financial benefit.

If he cares about UEFA, then he should do the right thing and fall on his sword. Of course he clearly doesn't care, so that's not going to happen.

With todays happenings at FIFA, a dream team of Singh/Reynolds taking over would seem like a positive step.

theoriginalfatcat wrote:With todays happenings at FIFA, a dream team of Singh/Reynolds taking over would seem like a positive step.

But where can you relegate nations to when Singh f***ks off with the football shares?

joejaques wrote:

theoriginalfatcat wrote:With todays happenings at FIFA, a dream team of Singh/Reynolds taking over would seem like a positive step.

But where can you relegate nations to when Singh f***ks off with the football shares?

Hell.

Apparently the money paid by Blatter to Platini was verbally agreed, there was no documentation for it, he had already been paid for that work at the time (about £700,000), and they claim it was because FIFA couldn't afford it at the time, despite them making massive profits every single year from 2002 onwards, so why pay him in 2011 specifically?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/34507539

You can't keep a good man down -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/34657900

Suspended Fifa president Sepp Blatter has suggested there was an agreement in place for Russia to host the 2018 World Cup - before the vote took place.

The 79-year-old told Russian news agency Tass of a "discussion" in 2010 about future World Cups.

He added a late swing in voting that gave Qatar the 2022 World Cup undid a similar agreement to hand it to USA.

Surely this is really no more than what a chief whip does in the house of commons - I would probably be a little more surprised if there wasn't a consensus among FIFA members over who they would be voting for? If he'd just left it at generally we agreed that Russia was the best bid, and the USA was the best bid for 2022 that would have still been made a big story of...but probably a bit OTT.

The problem is the rationale he has given, if he wanted to spread it around the world should have just declared that and had closed bids from that region. His reason for not wanting the other bids is nothing about the quality of their bid it is where they are based in the world, to me there has to be a pretty good case for compensation for anyone bidding outside of that region.

Ultimately though, these statements almost give a bizarre suggestion that 'democracy has won', that people ignored what their leader was suggesting and went with what they felt was right. Unfortunately what they felt was right was potentially written on the back of a brown envelope.

It does sound massively like he is trying to get out of the bribes by saying "well if I was putting bribes down I would have put USA on the back so surely that proves..." well nothing.

lo36789 wrote:Surely this is really no more than what a chief whip does in the house of commons - I would probably be a little more surprised if there wasn't a consensus among FIFA members over who they would be voting for? If he'd just left it at generally we agreed that Russia was the best bid, and the USA was the best bid for 2022 that would have still been made a big story of...but probably a bit OTT.

No, no, no, no, no, no no, no, no, no. You've completely missed the point. You've missed it by miles.

This nothing like a chief whip, because the chief whip is part of a democratically-mandated government, implementing a manifesto voted for by the electorate.

No one mandated Sepp Blatter to choose Russia and the US, other than himself. He had no right to choose them beforehand.

This was advertised as a democratic, open bidding process. The voters should be going into it with an open-mind. What Blatter is saying is that this was a sham, a waste of time, because it had already been decided. Very different from a consensus on which is the best bid.

Yes in most votes people have an idea who they'll vote for. But there shouldn't be any actual agreement before the vote, which is what Blatter has said was in place.

When England, Spain/Portugal and Belgium/Holland were lobbying and making their pitches, they should be doing so with the Exco members having an open-mind, considering the merits of their bid and deciding which is best. This clearly wasn't the case.

lo36789 wrote:The problem is the rationale he has given, if he wanted to spread it around the world should have just declared that and had closed bids from that region. His reason for not wanting the other bids is nothing about the quality of their bid it is where they are based in the world, to me there has to be a pretty good case for compensation for anyone bidding outside of that region.

This has to be one of the most naive paragraphs ever written. Do you really think Blatter and the Exco gave a stuff about "taking football to new regions"? It's total BS. The US has already hosted the World Cup.

Russia and the US are two of the most populated countries. They have huge potential markets in terms of attendances, massive commercial (or in Russia's case, state-owned) companies to strike sponsorship deals with and the infrastructure to cope with getting hundreds of thousands of spectators into the country.

In other words, it was all down to money. FIFA picked before the vote the two countries they thought they could get the most billions from.

The fact Vladimir Putin is a key ally of Blatter will probably have also come into it.

Qatar got a late swing because of the millions of petro-dollars they were spunking around and bribing voters/supporters with (read The Ugly Game by Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert to see how it was done - the detail is staggering).

It was all money and politics.

This is on the basis what he says is true - which is clearly debatable.

I was saying it on the basis that this tacit agreement came after the bids were heard - not before (I have no idea whether it was before or after - but that is where the benefit of the doubt would lie). The fact that the reasoning is because of geographic means he is guilty of opening up bids to countries that he'd already decided weren't going to win prior to the bids - which is clearly wrong.

As I say I was making the point that even if what he says is true, and he was given benefit of the doubt from a translation/taken out of context there is still no way of this being classed as clean.

The rest, and the suspicions over what truly drove the voting...well that is for the US to discover.

lo36789 wrote: I was saying it on the basis that this tacit agreement came after the bids were heard - not before (I have no idea whether it was before or after - but that is where the benefit of the doubt would lie).

No, you're wrong. The agreement was made BEFORE the bids were "heard." (And by heard, I take that to mean once all information on the bids were submitted, including the suitability inspection reports - the last pieces of information to be reported). Technically, the bids were heard in presentations made on the day of voting - December 2nd, 2010.

Read the full interview with Tass (http://tass.ru/en/sport/832283) - Blatter says the agreement was made to give Russia and the US the tournaments, until Platini, under pressure from French president Nicolas Sarkozy, backed Qatar.

The Sarkozy/Platini support for Qatar happened months before the bids were "heard" (again read The Ugly Game for details on it).

So this Russia/US agreement must have come months before the vote.

Which was my point that any countries who bid are surely due compensation in this case.

There is always the case that Blatter says the word 'agreement' was taken out of context/lost in translation and what he meant it that the feel he got from other members is that is the way they would vote...but that would be clutching at straws.

Lo, I think you must get confused at times, you keep pressing "Submit" instead of "Cancel".

Part of the solution is being aware of the problem, so I hope this helps.

Haha - that is my prediction of his get out...

Apparently Newcastle and Sunderland Councils are trying to get money back from the FA, that they spent on trying to get World Cup games in Newcastle & Sunderland. Apparently they both spent over £400k each Well that was a good way to spend council tax payers money wasn't it?

theoriginalfatcat wrote: What interests me now is what happens if any dodgy stuff is uncovered re the next 2 World Cups?

What do you mean, if?

Darlogramps wrote:
There is no hope for FIFA, it cannot reform or ever recover from this. Its reputation is contaminated and can never be redeemed. It has to be dismantled and a new organisation set up to govern football.

Or we just do away with football altogether, seeing as there's no governing body to look after it. Can't we just say that whoever wins it this season has won the football and that's that? If that happens to be Leicester so be it.

Then we collect all the planet's footballs and put them in a museum. It would have to be quite a big museum. Maybe we could demolish Wales and build it there; kill two birds with one stone.

Hawkeye wrote:

Darlogramps wrote:
There is no hope for FIFA, it cannot reform or ever recover from this. Its reputation is contaminated and can never be redeemed. It has to be dismantled and a new organisation set up to govern football.

Or we just do away with football altogether, seeing as there's no governing body to look after it. Can't we just say that whoever wins it this season has won the football and that's that? If that happens to be Leicester so be it.

Then we collect all the planet's footballs and put them in a museum. It would have to be quite a big museum. Maybe we could demolish Wales and build it there; kill two birds with one stone.

Oi mush, check out my location <<<<<<<<

joejaques wrote:

Hawkeye wrote:

Darlogramps wrote:
There is no hope for FIFA, it cannot reform or ever recover from this. Its reputation is contaminated and can never be redeemed. It has to be dismantled and a new organisation set up to govern football.

Or we just do away with football altogether, seeing as there's no governing body to look after it. Can't we just say that whoever wins it this season has won the football and that's that? If that happens to be Leicester so be it.

Then we collect all the planet's footballs and put them in a museum. It would have to be quite a big museum. Maybe we could demolish Wales and build it there; kill two birds with one stone.

Oi mush, check out my location <<<<<<<<

You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

There was a good programme on Channel 5 last night about Blatter.

At the end it showed a chart containing the profiles of all the FIFA bigwigs - nearly all of them were either suspended/struck off or under investigation

Blatter himself is utterly deluded and it seems he might be about to create a special position especially for himself. 'FIFA honorary president'. So he would still be hanging around in the corridors of power, like a kind of Godfather type figure!

Meanwhile it seems that the mega mega big huge mistake (for Blatter and co) was the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar - when it had been "promised" to the U.S.A. According to the Channel 5 investigation, the then French president told Platini to vote for Qatar, this event then swung the deal away from the U.S.A. which obviously rattled the Americans so much they activated the F.B.I.

Result = FIFA in meltdown.

theoriginalfatcat wrote:There was a good programme on Channel 5 last night about Blatter.

At the end it showed a chart containing the profiles of all the FIFA bigwigs - nearly all of them were either suspended/struck off or under investigation

Blatter himself is utterly deluded and it seems he might be about to create a special position especially for himself. 'FIFA honorary president'. So he would still be hanging around in the corridors of power, like a kind of Godfather type figure!

Meanwhile it seems that the mega mega big huge mistake (for Blatter and co) was the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar - when it had been "promised" to the U.S.A. According to the Channel 5 investigation, the then French president told Platini to vote for Qatar, this event then swung the deal away from the U.S.A. which obviously rattled the Americans so much they activated the F.B.I.

Result = FIFA in meltdown.

Not really bothered what initiated the meltdown, just that it happened. Years overdue but better late than never.

Platini and Blatter banned for 8 years.

Merry Christmas everyone.

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Darlogramps wrote:Platini and Blatter banned for 8 years.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Sent from my SM-A300FU using Tapatalk

This is a victory for football

Furthermore, whoever replaces Blatter will know that they are now open to scrutiny.

Darlogramps wrote:Platini and Blatter banned for 8 years.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Sent from my SM-A300FU using Tapatalk

WHAAT?

Shakey's been banned for eight years?

Please Go, No!

(Sodding autocorrect)

It's not complete until he's charged and imprisoned for corruption