The FIFA wesite page showing president Sepp Blatter's commitment to fighting racism. Photo / Supplied
"Resign!" howled the Sepp Blatter critics in England after the Fifa boss spouted forth with ill-timed and offensive views on racism in soccer.
Easy. Too easy.
Saying Blatter should go is as facile as pointing out that it isn't nice to pick one's nose in public. It's the sort of thing many or most people would agree with. But simply saying something is unpleasant doesn't make it go away.
That takes action. And, in that regard, soccer has failed. Miserably.
It is soccer's own fault Blatter is still able to dismay and infuriate from Fifa's glass fortress in Switzerland.
Those who run the global game, the soccer federation officials around the world who, ultimately, are Blatter's electorate, have had umpteen reasons to ditch him or call for his head before this latest episode. They've had opportunities. But they've stuck by him.
So they shoulder responsibility for giving a platform to his views, too.
Remember: Fifa member countries awarded Blatter a fourth four-year term just five months ago, despite bribery allegations, ugly internal politicking and match-fixing and corruption cases in the sport that have shredded the credibility of soccer's governing body.
Not only did the fawning Fifa congress allow Blatter to stand unopposed, it gave him 91 per cent of the vote. The regime in North Korea couldn't have done much better. Soccer has no courageous rebels leading an Arab Spring-type uprising and none on the horizon, either.
Why? One reason is money.
Under Blatter, Fifa has has built financial reserves of more than $1 billion. It has the cash-cow World Cup. It sits atop a giant of a sport that is still growing in popularity, especially in promising markets in Asia and the Middle East.
One of Blatter's tricks during his nearly 14 years as Fifa president has been to ensure that the gravy is spread around. Tens of millions of dollars in soccer development money doled out, special US$550,000 ($721,700) bonuses for all Fifa member associations last year. Seats on Fifa bodies for the favoured.
The former amateur player is also a proven master of keeping friends and enemies close. It is a testimony to Blatter's power, to his people and management skills, and to inertia and acceptance within soccer that even at the end of this year of atrocious headlines for Fifa, there seems so little appetite at the top of the sport to question his leadership or methods.
Clearly, judging from his subsequent efforts to extract both feet from his mouth, Blatter realised he wasn't clever to say this week in television interviews that racism isn't an issue on soccer pitches and, even worse, to suggest that players who are victims of racist slurs should simply shake hands with and forgive their abusers at the end of a match.
That Blatter could blithely voice such absurdities when police and soccer officials in England are investigating two cases of on-field alleged racist abuse between players in the Premier League made the Fifa president look wilfully insensitive and out of touch.
When Blatter later backtracked, saying "racism unfortunately continues to exist in football", Fifa's website published it with a 2009 photo of him embracing Tokyo Sexwale, a South African Government minister and former Robben Island prisoner. All that was missing was a caption: "Look, Blatter likes black people and they like him!"
But where was the subsequent outpouring of shock and anger from the global game? Didn't happen. Blatter's comments didn't seem to cause much of a ripple from soccer authorities. Many said nothing.
Blatter hasn't seen a need to step aside over any of the numerous corruption allegations made, or for calling on women footballers to wear "tighter shorts" in 2004 or for glossing over anti-homosexuality laws in 2022 World Cup host Qatar.
He's not going to resign now.
Soccer should have a forward-looking, scrupulously honest, modern, transparent, humble, open and intelligent leader. It has Blatter. Who's fault is that? The easy route is to say he should go. The more constructive one would be if those with power in soccer actually did something about it.
- AP
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