{"id":444281,"date":"2011-06-20T10:49:25","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T10:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/06\/20\/nigeria-from-rous-to-blatter-how-fifa-has-transformed\/"},"modified":"2011-06-20T10:49:25","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T10:49:25","slug":"nigeria-from-rous-to-blatter-how-fifa-has-transformed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/20\/nigeria-from-rous-to-blatter-how-fifa-has-transformed\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria: From Rous to Blatter – How Fifa Has Transformed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Daily<\/a><\/p>\n

Tony Okerafor<\/p>\n

19 June 2011<\/p>\n

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opinion<\/p>\n

It was Argentina’s former soccer coach and World Cup-winning captain, the legendary Diego Amando Maradona, who recently described the current FIFA President, Joseph Sepp Blatter, as well as the other members of the world soccer-governing body’s powerful Executive Committee, as “dinosaurs.” Incensed by the spate of corruption allegations and match-fixing scandals that have dragged the name of several FIFA executives, including the President, in the mud, the 1986 World Cup winner said of Blatter and other Exco members that they ‘will cling to power as long as they can. They are dinosaurs who don’t want to give up power… They are going to look after themselves, look after their backs. And football, unfortunately, will be the same.”<\/p>\n

Indeed, allegations of corruption inside FIFA are nothing new. Some of them go a number of decades back. However, the radar of both the sporting and non-sporting world has been focusing rather heavily on the organization, and how it conducts its affairs, in the run-up to December, last year, when 22 out of the 24 Exco members awarded the hosting rights of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, respectively. The scandal that plagued the bids led to the suspension from all football-related activities of five FIFA officials, including two members of the Exco, one from Nigeria and the other from Tahiti. Since then, the names of eight more Exco members have been linked to bribery allegations concerning the 2022 bid, whose latest casualties were recorded ahead of the vote on June 1 for FIFA President, which Blatter won for the fourth straight time.<\/p>\n

The Ethics Committee ultimately suspended the organization’s Vice-president and President of CONCACAF, Jack Warner from Trinidad and Tobago, as well as his close ally, Mohammed Bin Hammam from Qatar, who headed the Asian Football Confederation. Blatter himself escaped the axe of the Ethics Committee, despite the fact that, Warner named him in the same scandal that stemmed from Bin Hammam’s failed bid to stand against Blatter in the presidential contest, which the 75-old Swiss eventually stood, unopposed.<\/p>\n

The latest corruption scandals within FIFA, have only helped to underscore two key phenomena, in fact, two “blessings,” so to speak, that have now become a liability and a curse. One is the financial power, the commercial brand which started to take shape in the mid-1980s, specifically in the run-up to the Mexico ’86 World Cup. The other is also linked to the first: the enormous power and influence, near emperor status, that the FIFA President has come to acquire, and that, surely, began, following the 1974 FIFA Congress, which saw the memorable defeat of the longstanding President of the organization, a certain Stanley Rous, an Englishman, and the emergency of a totally different type of boss, a certain Joao Havelenge, a Brazilian, who held the mantle for another 24 years, before standing down in 1998 for his Secretary-general and “disciple,” one Blatter from Switzerland, to stand and win.<\/p>\n

There are of course, a number of angles to the story of FIFA’s extraordinary transformation. One angle, the most popular one, refers to how the organization has grown in size and weight, from just a small range of mainly European members, after it was born in France in 1908 to today’s association. Once upon a time, only half a score countries played at the World Cup, following the inception of the competition in 1930. But, since the World Cup in Germany in 1974, the number of qualifiers to the top world soccer tournament has never stopped rising, so much so that an unprecedented 32 countries can qualify to feature in the tournament. Critics of FIFA say it now lacks the capacity to fulfill its duties: namely, to hold football in trust as common property for the world and to solve the global public interest, rather than its own. It was born in an era, during those early years of the twentieth century, of uncommercialized, unpoliticized international sport. But, subsequently, the arrival of so much money and power in FIFA, totally unenvisaged by its founders, has broken it.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the idea that the President of the organization, under whose stewardship this tragedy has occurred, namely Blatter, happens to be the man to reform FIFA, looks increasingly empty. The arrival of Sir Rous as FIFA’s sixth President in 1961, is poignant because, the soft-spoken, quietly-driven Englishman had inherited, at the time, several new members, almost all of them coming from the newly independent nations of the global south, including many from Africa. The Europeans could no longer treat FIFA as a private club.<\/p>\n

The votes of this new non-European majority were instrumental to the defeat of a 79 year-old Rous by a charismatic, multilingual and well networked Havelange, who got African votes in 1974 by promising to work for the expulsion of apartheid South African from the FIFA community. For the first time in the history of FIFA, Havelange was the one President to introduce into the organization, a leadership that could weave together a tapestry of sporting, political and industrial contacts. He arrived on the scene at a time of simmering discontent in global football, with the dominance of Europe. A billionaire businessman, it was during his reign that money began flowing into FIFA’s coffers, big-time. Under his stewardship, sponsorship for World Cup tournaments began. FIFA’s funds started flowing into the coffers of member associations and more and more spaces at the World Cup began to be created. By the time he stepped down, FIFA had not only become a global brand, but, it was already super-rich. Blatter inherited an organization that had already ceased to be a club of amateurs, and had become a political machine. The global brand that brought it importance and immense wealth under Havelange, reached new heights under Blatter. Blatter had under-studied Havelenge in the mechanics of sports marketing. But, as the evolution under Blatter gathered pace, so also did FIFA’s problems escalate.<\/p>\n

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\nNigeria: From Rous to Blatter – How Fifa Has Transformed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tony Okerafor 19 June 2011 opinion It was Argentina’s former soccer coach and World Cup-winning captain, the legendary Diego Amando Maradona, who recently described the current FIFA President, Joseph Sepp Blatter, as well as the other members of the world soccer-governing body’s powerful Executive Committee, as “dinosaurs.” Incensed by the spate of corruption allegations and match-fixing scandals that have dragged the name of several FIFA executives, including the President, in the mud, the 1986 World Cup winner said of Blatter and other Exco members that they ‘will cling to power as long as they can. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":402048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-444281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-local-news"},"yoast_head":"\nNigeria: From Rous to Blatter - How Fifa Has Transformed - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/20\/nigeria-from-rous-to-blatter-how-fifa-has-transformed\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Nigeria: From Rous to Blatter - How Fifa Has Transformed - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Tony Okerafor 19 June 2011 opinion It was Argentina's former soccer coach and World Cup-winning captain, the legendary Diego Amando Maradona, who recently described the current FIFA President, Joseph Sepp Blatter, as well as the other members of the world soccer-governing body's powerful Executive Committee, as "dinosaurs." 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