Sepp Blatter quit as President of FIFA Tuesday, ending a 17 year reign.
Neil W. Blackmon
“One makes a lot of mistakes in life.” – Sepp Blatter, on Qatar 2022
This had to happen, sooner rather than later. People are dying in Qatar.
Sepp Blatter quit his post as FIFA President Tuesday, ending- or marking the beginning of the end- of a seventeen year Machiavellian reign over FIFA, the governing body of international soccer.
Blatter’s decision to step down from his role as the 8th President of FIFA comes less than a week after federal prosecutors in Brooklyn brought charges against 14 soccer officials and marketing executives accused of corrupting FIFA, arresting multiple individuals in Zurich, where FIFA was convening for presidential elections and meetings and raiding offices in Zurich and Miami. United States authorities have said more charges are expected and have promised to rid the organization of corruption.
Blatter has not resigned effective immediately.Instead, according to Domenico Scala, the independent chairman of FIFA’s audit and compliance committee, a special meeting of FIFA’s member nations will be called to elect a new president. According to FIFA’s rules, members must be given at least four months’ notice for such a meeting, so Mr. Scala indicated that the probable window for an election is between December 2015 and March 2016. Blatter will remain in power until that time.
The prospect of “Stoppage Time Sepp” will, according to Blatter, see a new Sepp, one uninhibited from the weight of seeking reelection, who can begin the project of overhauling FIFA without fear of bribe or reprisal. If your answer for the Daily Double was “Sepp Blatter” on the clue “Who does Sepp Blatter think can fix the mess Sepp Blatter made while running FIFA”, you win.
This sort of egomanical ploy would largely be a harmless last hurrah of a deposed despot except people are dying in Qatar, and every day Blatter remains in charge, even as a figurehead, is a day the Qatari government and World Cup organizers can continue to profit and prepare on the backs of human misery and slave labor.
Blatter’s resignation, even if it only comes to fruition by next March, raises a series of questions, both for Blatter and more critically, for the broken and fractured organization he’ll leave behind.
The Sepp-prize questions first.
Why now?
Speculating can and undoubtedly will generate many theories into why Blatter resigned now, five days from telling Swiss media that a resignation would be an acknowledgment he did wrong and four days after securing election a fifth time, again by a comfortable margin. But two things are clear about the timing.
First, as is often the case with police work, following the money trail was working.
Federal authorities believe that Sepp Blatter’s top lieutenant at FIFA made $10 million in bank transactions that are central elements of the bribery scandal engulfing international soccer, United States officials and others briefed on the case said Monday. The revelation puts the money trail closer to Mr. Blatter, FIFA’s president, than had been previously known.
Jerome Valcke’s closeness to the FBI investigation may have accelerated Blatter’s demise.
Jérôme Valcke, the soccer organization’s secretary general, is the unidentified “high-ranking FIFA official” who prosecutors say transferred $10 million in 2008 from FIFA to accounts controlled by another soccer official, Jack Warner, the officials said. The payment is a key piece of last week’s indictment accusing Jack Warner, the former CONCACAF chief who dominated news this week by taking an article from The Onion seriously, of taking a bribe in exchange for helping South Africa secure the right to host the 2010 World Cup.
And the nature of that relationship, as well as a report that US authorities were closing in on Blatter- while regrettably devoid of specifics- may have tipped the scales.
Furthermore, there is speculation, particularly among the press in Warner’s native Trinidad and Tobago, that Warner himself may be able to implicate Blatter, a move he believes could save his sons from indictment amid news this week that they jetset across the United States to hide over $600,000 of tainted FIFA money in American banks. Speculation and fear is law enforcement’s close ally, a criminal courthouse adage that applies twofold in RICO investigations, and certainly one Blatter had to be aware of as the situation developed over the weekend.
Second, as I noted Wednesday, and as was alluded to at the DOJ press conference in Brooklyn on the same date, the Swiss probe is far more focused on the 2018 and in particular, 2022 bid process than the FBI/DOJ probe, although as reported last Wednesday, a DOJ source has confirmed to us that the US probe also involves interrogatories into those bid processes. The Swiss have a vested interest in FIFA given the organization’s headquarters sits within their borders. The Swiss also have extradition laws far less convoluted than the United States, making Blatter a sitting duck if the investigation ultimately fixes its gaze on him.
Loretta Lynch’s investigation turned up the heat on Blatter.
This theory has been corroborated by the New York Times, who reported yesterday that a high-ranking soccer official said Blatter had been advised by his legal counsel that continuing in his current position could make defending him against possible future prosecution more difficult.
The Swiss probe, from a timing standpoint, is only beginning, meaning Blatter would, at 79, and with little allies left on his own continent, have to run FIFA while potentially being a subject in two continuing investigations, one in his own country and one in the United States. The Swiss attorney general, for his part, has said that Blatter is not, at present, the direct subject of their investigation. But as President of FIFA, if and when corruption is found, he’ll be at risk.
Ego can sustain a man for a long while, especially a man with an intellect as reaching as Sepp Blatter. But reality intercedes as well, and even canaries in the coal mine eventually sing. The chance a contemporary of Blatter flips- if one hasn’t already- and implicates Blatter, truthfully or not, to save their own skin- almost certainly helped shape the decision to abdicate.
Workers in Qatar toil under excruciating and inhumane conditions.
Yes, the story of FIFA’s systemic corruption and the gusto with which the resignation of its leader was received suggests a tale straight out of the movies, as Spencer Hall wrote at SB Nation.
Of course this is real life with slavery and people dying and journalists getting arrested and stuff.
And so Tuesday and Blatter’s resignation had to happen. And it is right, I think, to feel a deep sense of satisfaction and correct to claim this satisfaction stems from hope. Hope, be it known, is a good thing, and one that coupled with sunshine as disinfectant, properly channeled into hard work and intelligent dialogue and problem solving could serve as a foundation for a sleeker, more honest, transparent, fair FIFA. And the point of hope, and the victory of today and of the arrests and indictments of last week and the ongoing Swiss investigation is that there is a sense of optimism and a belief that FIFA’s prior ways will no longer stand. And there should be optimism.
There should also be urgency. Because people are dying in Qatar.
The Qatari government, of course, denies the deaths, suggesting that worker reforms are working and arresting journalists for reporting otherwise. And if soccer fans have learned anything over the past four years, it is that the Qatari government and its World Cup organizing committee can be charming. Remember Phil Ball, the ESPN FC journalist who was given an all-expense paid trip to travel to Qatar and report on the conditions he saw there and came back singing and of course writing, Qatar’s praises. One section in particular bears recollection:
“The feeling now in Doha, that you’re at the center of things, is quite extraordinary… The Metro, for which the ground has been dug, is scheduled to open around 2019 and will change the traffic snare overnight. The cooled shopping malls still smell of soap and fresh coriander, if you can get that. They’re the life of Doha, an urban concept, built on a tiny desert peninsula that only a few fishermen and pearl divers could previously be bothered to inhabit.”
Ahh yes, I love the smell of stoning homosexuals and slavery in the morning. Smells of…coriander.
But labor conditions aren’t improving and the death rate is accelerating. Among Nepalese workers, the deaths are occuring at a rate of one every two days.
Nepalese workers make up the brunt of the workforce in Qatar, but including the workers from other countries- most frequently India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh- The Guardian reported that the death toll is above one worker a day. And that’s after Qatar appeased FIFA by announcing worker reforms, those reforms being precisely what led Blatter to write off Qatar’s worker death camps as one of the many “mistakes of life”, like leaving a novel on a plane or only putting the toilet paper roll above the toilet and not on the dispenser.
As I wrote in 2010, awarding the World Cup to Qatar is and was more than a mistake, it was a human rights and sporting fiasco and an object lesson about the price of unbridled ambition, a tragedy born of hubris and ego and tunnel vision. When your stated goal is to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and your ambition overcomes reason and accountability, but you only run a sporting organization, you might hope the worst of the errors would be in Brazil, with its 2013 “FIFA Spring” protests, its prioritization of World Cup spending over infrastructure and poverty spending, its forced favela relocations and its white elephant stadiums. But Blatter ran FIFA, and the price of his ambition comes in unmarked Qatari grave sites and mourners in the abject and voiceless poverty of Nepal. For this sin alone, he had to be deposed.
But now what to do with our hope? And what if all we get is a transformed FIFA? And what if we don’t get that? And what if the World Cup remains in Qatar?
The answer to the final question is people will continue to die and we can hope never again. I won’t engage in a discussion about Russia 2018, not when the central complaint to register about that tournament’s buildup thus far has to do with the use of prison labor and the United States prison labor industry rivals Russia’s. You can engage if you’d like. To change Qatar, sponsors will have to pull out. Coca Cola and VISA have bristled at conditions and deaths in statements over the past month. But there is a moral and financial difference between rhetoric and eliminating ties. We aren’t there yet. Maybe we’ll never be.
The first three questions raise other dilemmas.
We should use our hope to demand that FIFA is rebuilt in a way that is inclusive, transparent, and fair. Sounds obvious, but isn’t particularly easy.
Greg Dyke, Chairman of England’s Football Association, stated this weekend “Blatter won’t make it through his four year term” and the statement proved oddly prophetic. Indeed, it took less than five days for Dyke to be correct. But his justification- that Blatter had lost support of “the big continents”, as Miriti Murungi wrote this weekend at Soccer Gods, portend the peril of the road ahead for FIFA.
Dyke claimed Blatter would lose power because he’d lost the affections and loyalties of the big footballing nations of Europe and South America, as if those were the nations FIFA should privilege.
There’s a tone deafness and a privilege involved in that kind of statement, even as it is buried in an accurate Blatter prophesy, and it applies in spades to FIFA criticism.
FIFA development fields in Rwanda, where children also want to be Neymar and Messi.
Whatever sort of FIFA is built, it must remain attentive to the soccer played at all ends of the earth. When I visited Rwanda, for example, it was easy to see how the Rwandan FA, fledgling as it was at the time in the aftermath of genocide, embraced the reign of Sepp Blatter. The FIFA soccer fields had children playing on them, fresh grass and turf and adequate training facilities. You couldn’t have been farther from Berlin, where this weekend’s Champions League Final will be contested. But the kids still want to be Neymar and Paul Pogba.
There must be a way to navigate the channel between the patronage paternalism of the status quo and a politics of inclusion in the future. And that road must be done by listening, not just implementing blanket development policy.
If you ask an African football journalist why the CAF federations stuck with Blatter for so long, they’ll offer a host of reasons (and have when I’ve asked) but they also nearly to a man or woman say it wasn’t about money. It was about listening and paying attention.
Blatter’s listening ultimately helped him consolidate power as long as he did. The FIFA Congress votes on a “one federation, one vote” basis. Is that ideal? Maybe not. But there needs to be middle ground in enacting change to the voting structure, if that is to occur. Ironically, it is FIFA’s richest countries, hailing from some of the more democratic governments in the world, that oppose “one nation, one vote.” If these nations replace Blatter with a yes-man who only serves the soccer elite, then the change will be no change. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
Only five days ago, Blatter received 133 out of a possible 209 votes. The majority of Blatter’s victory came from Asia and Africa. A new presidential election won’t bypass this math. Much of the developing world will still have to be wooed, wined and dined. Real change will only occur if those doing the wooing offer the more voiceless nations a seat at the table.
Alternatively, a new FIFA could abandon “one country, one vote”, but if they did, would the juice worth the squeeze? Is it worth it to privilege what are largely developed, often rich footballing nations? Is African exclusion inevitable? When a new FIFA politics emerges, will it involve a politics of inclusion or will the goal be akin to US civil rights laws—generating or delivering piecemeal change that while enough to quell the tide of restlessness, protest or rebellion isn’t ever enough to facilitate institutional change.
These questions must be answered.
Any FIFA reform that doesn’t amount to institutional change will quickly dissolve the new hope.
Institutional paralysis will prevent paradigm shift. A politics fashioned from the old methods, dressed up better, sanitizes but still destroys. It just does so more efficiently. Segregation ended in New Orleans by law but residential segregation filled the vacuum and lives were lost when the levees broke.
American racial politics are hardly the same as the global politics of FIFA, even acknowledging the countless intersections of FIFA and race, however, so perhaps a turn towards the NBA would work.
When Bomani Jones railed last summer on the Donald Sterling situation because the NBA spent 20-plus years “accommodating” Donald Sterling’s racism by talking about how the tragedy within the situation isn’t that Sterling finally fell off the ledge and offended the star power in the NBA, and the tragedy isn’t about the fundamental conflict between the NBA as a “progressive avant garde sports league” and its consistent whitewashing of Sterling previously- but rather, the problem is that it’s easy to stand against racism when it comes in the form of Sterling’s racism but it’s much more difficult to stand against the systemic racism that also implicates class and gender and economic inequality, he could have easily been talking about FIFA.
One wonders and hopes that our focus wasn’t so heavily on Blatter as the figurehead of FIFA corruption that no one thought to think of what happens now.
Who kickstarts that debate?
The reason our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were so intractable was two-fold: 1) anonymous, structural forces and dynamics drove our country towards conflict and 2) the professional knowledge producers and action planners who should have framed a healthy debate about the decision to go to war failed us b/c they didn’t really know how to debate beyond their traditional arguments.
Can the media as knowledge producers and the federations as action planners in the FIFA context produce a dialogue that develops institutional change and avoids edifice-crumbling conflict in the future? For the good of the game?
It is, after all, still a hell of a game, as Leo Messi reminded us this weekend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erECsDM-CTA
Let’s hope so.
After all, people are dying in Qatar.
Neil W. Blackmon is Co-Founder and Editor of The Yanks Are Coming. He is a civil rights attorney in daytime. He can be reached at nwblackmon@gmail.com and you can follow him on Twitter @nwblackmon.