Can anybody clean-up FIFA?

Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini have been suspended for 90 days from any activity in football by FIFA’s ethics committee

Yesterday the whole FIFA scandal took a new turn as the organisation’s ethics committee (really FIFA has an ethics committee) decided to suspend outgoing president Sepp Blatter, UEFA president Michel Platini and secretary general Jerome Valcke from football activity for 90 days

That suspension could be extended by a further 45 days and is in place while an investigation is conducted into the trio’s conduct takes place.

Valcke was already on leave from the organisation following an investigation into the Frenchman selling black market tickets for the 2014 World Cup.

It is just the latest development in an endless list of corruption in the cess pool that is FIFA.

Controversy

The man who has been placed in temporary charge of FIFA is Issa Hayatou, who is president of Africa’s football confederation (CAF). He is the most senior vice-president in the organisation, so gets the job on a temporary basis.

Unfortunately Hayatou was reprimanded by the international Olympic Committee in 2011 over a payment received from an organisation affiliated with FIFA in the 1990’s.

Even the man in line to take over UEFA on a temporary basis, Spaniard Angel Villar Llona is subject to an investigation by the ethics committee after refusing to co-operate with an inquiry into 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids.

Corrupt

What surprises me is that FIFA even have an ethics committee. I am just wondering what they have been doing for the last four decades, as corruption has been rife through the organisation. I am also wondering who is on this ethics committee exactly?

It seems with great power comes great off-the-record payments to the men at the top of the organisation. There I am me thinking about the old Spiderman line about great responsibility coming with great power. Silly me!

The FIFA big wigs have just used their great power in the beautiful game to line their pockets. It seems that anybody working for FIFA that claims they are an honest man is a liar at the moment.

Start Over

It also seems that football needs to start again and FIFA can no longer be trusted to run the game. FIFA as an organisation may never fully recover from this scandal. This sort of corruption is enough to bring down any organisation, let alone the organisation that runs the biggest sport in the world.

If FIFA is to ever recover then it needs a clean start, or it is in danger of losing its place at the top table of football. There has already been talk of a rival organisation being started-up and that could spell the end for Blatter and all his cronies.

You can line your pockets for so long, before an honest person calls you out for it. It seems the days of FIFA officials lining their pockets from back-handers and bungs may be over.

However, investigations into previous deals could well bring about more scandal for more officials of one of the biggest organisations in the world. FIFA as an organisation is lying in the gutter and it is definitely not looking up at the stars.

Who

Blatter is due to step-down from his role as president of FIFA in February, and the question is who will replace him at the top of the football tree?

Platini was one of the favourites for the job, but due to a payment he received from Blatter of £1.35million for work done between 1999 and 2002 he is now suspended and being investigation. However Platini did not receive that said payment until February 2011, which has raised a number of questions.

Another former candidate South Korea’s Chung Moon-Joon has been banned from participating in football for six years for his conduct related to the 2022 World Cup bidding process.

It seems trying to find an honest man to lead FIFA is like trying to find a fart in a Jacuzzi, simply impossible.

Money

A number of FIFA’s biggest backers have pulled their sponsorship deals with the organisation since the corruption scandal first broke earlier this year, and quite rightly so. That could be a good thing in the long run for football’s governing body.

Maybe the people who enter the race for the big job at FIFA will actually want the job for the right reasons, and not just want it to line their pockets. Quite simply the football community has had enough of corruption and it is now time for major change at FIFA.

Can anybody clean-up FIFA?