Soccer: The shame behind the game

By DAVID CONN

Now it's all over. Four weeks of glorious telly, all finished in Yokohama with Cafu, Brazil's monumental captain, climbing on to the plinth and holding the World Cup in his hands, as if born to the role. For its governing body Fifa, the tournament has proved again the global pre-eminence of football.

No other game, no other entertainment, has the power to captivate so much of the world, to glue more than a billion people to their televisions, from Copacabana Beach to Invercargill.

Yet in all the hours and weeks of coverage by all the media, there was almost no mission to explain this phenomenon, only to report it breathlessly and let its scale and spectacle speak for it.

Nobody tried to answer quite how football has conquered the world so completely, why old ladies with a lifetime's disdain for the game found themselves discussing Nigeria's midfield in the hairdresser's.

As for other questions, especially those about corruption and bribery aimed at Fifa and its president Sepp Blatter, these were barely mentioned.

At the end, there was Blatter, his grin as bright as the floodlights, gladhanding the Brazilians alongside Pele and Lennart Johannsen, the head of European football who has failed to unseat Blatter after years of trying.

Two days before the World Cup began, Blatter was resoundingly re-elected. France and Senegal kicked off, the world painted its face and analysis was put on hold.

Blatter is still in charge and will almost certainly be there again in Germany in four years' time. One Fifa heavyweight who won't be is the former general secretary Michel Zen-Ruffinen. Blatter handpicked him for his right-hand man and once described him as "like a son to me".

But what Zen-Ruffinen found behind the scenes at Fifa led him to turn whistle-blower and to compile a dossier of alleged financial mismanagement of staggering proportions.

Not even Blatter, slick, gregarious and plausible in five languages, could hide the shambolic collapse of Fifa's marketing partner ISL with a loss that Blatter estimated at US$31million ($63 million) but which Zen-Ruffinen put at more than US$100 million ($214 million). Fifa is already reported as living off estimated profits from the 2006 World Cup.

Zen-Ruffinen provided some of the ammunition for Blatter's enemies - and his reign has produced many - as they sought to have him replaced. But Blatter is not easily defeated.

The five-hour Fifa meeting held to discuss finances ahead of the presidential election was extraordinary. Blatter's opponents were not heard. David Will from Scotland, who had led an internal audit committee critical of Blatter, was twice refused permission to speak.

Zen-Ruffinen was silenced as Blatter called delegates from soccer superpowers such as Libya, Papua New Guinea, the Cayman Islands and Seychelles.

"You see," said Blatter, "I choose in strict rotation. I have tried to go through the continents."

For if Blatter has enemies, particularly in Europe, he also knows how to make friends. He served for more than 20 years under Joao Havelange, the octogenarian who treated Fifa as a personal fiefdom during 27 years of his presidency.

He is also a consummate charmer, by profession. He began his career as head of public relations of the Valaisan Tourist Board in his native Switzerland before becoming public relations director of the watchmaker Longines, where he became involved in organising the 1972 Olympic Games.

A former amateur footballer, Blatter moved into Fifa as director of technical development programmes in 1975 and began his long and faithful association with Havelange. He became General Secretary in 1981 and Chief Executive Officer in 1990.

Eight years later he succeeded his mentor in the top job. Fifa has more than 200 members and every nation, from Brazil to Montserrat, has an equal vote. Like Havelange before him, Blatter has worked to win the allegiance of the minnows.

Sweet words - like his promise that Oceania, which includes New Zealand, would be considered, although not guaranteed, for a World Cup place of its own - go with more solid inducements.

He dismisses airily any suggestions of impropriety. Accused of bribing an African referee to smear his rivals, he explained he was just being too charitable. "He said to me with tears in his eyes that he was a poor devil and had nothing left. So I gave him US$25,000 ($51,200) of my own money."

No one knows how much Blatter is paid. During his first term he fought off every attempt, spearheaded by Lennart Johansson, the Swedish head of the European football grouping, to rein him in.

Despite mounting claims of corruption and the ISL debacle, he emerged from Fifa's annual meeting in Buenos Aires last year to a standing ovation, setting the scene for his re-election this year by a landslide over his African opponent Issa Hayatou.

Blatter's victory was total. The whistle-blower Zen-Ruffinen was axed and was left in his post only until July 4 and the end of the World Cup. A legal action in a Zurich court by 11 members of Fifa's executive committee who alleged misuse of funds was dropped.

Blatter's opponents on the executive are unlikely to stay. Chung Mong-joon, the influential head of the South Korean Football Association and the man who battled to bring the World Cup to Korea, is too proud and has too much integrity to be frustrated for years without power

Uefa president Lennart Johansson, 72, is reconsidering his position, too. He lost the election to Blatter in 1998 after Blatter scooped up the African votes, and he saw Hayatou, the man he was backing, routed four years later.

Hayatou has failed twice to unify Africa behind him in a campaign against Blatter and is unlikely ever to be elected president. He now faces a real threat to hold on to his position as president of CAF, the Confederation of African Football.

Scotland's David Will, the chairman of the internal audit committee set up by the former executive to examine the state of Fifa's finances, could be sidelined and the committee emasculated.

The days of the executive could be numbered, too. When he was first elected in 1998 Blatter wanted to introduce an "inner cabinet" of advisers to take decisions. The old executive didn't allow that, although, in effect, that is what happened behind the scenes. The new executive will probably openly endorse what is known as the "F-Group".

There is also no doubt that the man appointed as Zen-Ruffinen's replacement will be a loyal Blatter ally.

One name in the frame is Flavio Battaini, Fifa's former marketing director who was sacked by Zen-Ruffinen "with due cause" and left Fifa with a 1.3 million Swiss franc ($1.78 million) payoff authorised by Blatter. Blatter came out of the Seoul meeting saying, "Let us now forget what has happened and go forward. Fifa will be one family united."

Fifa preaches morality and world togetherness: "for the good of the game" and "the football family" are Blatterisms of choice. This self-righteousness is pushed into every corner of the world, along with McDonald's, Coca-Cola and Fifa's other multinational sponsor "partners". And behind the rhetoric lies Blatter's trump card - the majority of delegates profit from the status quo.

The prospects are that Blatter, the arch-manipulator, will maintain his hold on Fifa, while European football, which is anyway resented for its great wealth, huffs and puffs.

Expect more revelations, more rows, more front from Blatter. And then, in four years' time, expect the world to be reminded again that it doesn't really care enough about how the sport is run so long as the game goes on.

- INDEPENDENT, additional reporting by staff reporters

nzherald.co.nz/fifaworldcup

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