Remove this Banner Ad

Round ball code talk

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

man, I'm gonna be pressing ctrl+R on this page all day, eagerly awaiting REH's insight

what are the chances of Luis Figo re-running as president?

or will Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein just take over?

what happens now to the 2022 World Cup, and to an extent, the 2018 World Cup?
 
Well Blatter hasn't exactly walked away- he's going to be running the show for the rest of the year and you can be sure he will try to ensure a protégé is elected to succeed him. The 133 nations that voted for him last week will vote for who he asks them to in December so I would say the chances of Figo or Prince Ali are only slightly greater then zero.

You gotta hand it to Blatter, he's a great survivor. The Yanks can investigate him all they want, but nailing him will be one tough job.
 
I'll share this article, written by my mate Paul Marcuccitti for InDaily



The next FIFA president could be even worse

Paul Marcuccitti, 3 June 2015

The timing should be perfect.

For had Sepp Blatter resigned just before the ballot that re-elected him last Friday, we would have ended up with a FIFA president who was elected by default.

That’s not a criticism of Prince Ali bin Hussein, the only other person that remained in the ballot. It’s merely recognition that others didn’t enter the race (or dropped out of it) because they felt Blatter couldn’t be defeated.

The Jordanian prince will carry greater authority if he wins the top job now.

Whoever does get the job faces an almighty task. Several months ago I wrote that some members of FIFA’s executive committee make Blatter look like a choirboy. If that claim needed validation seven days ago, it certainly doesn’t now.

The next president will have to deal with more allegations, investigations and revelations. He or she might be a cleanskin with no history in any murky FIFA dealings, but the challenge will be finding satisfactory solutions.

What you’ll see now is a lot of disagreement on what change should look like. And that’s partly because you can throw people who have been clamouring for change in FIFA into two broad categories.

There are those who genuinely care about the welfare of the game and want proper governance and transparency to ensure that, as far as possible, decision makers act in the best interests of everyone that loves the sport.

But there are also plenty of hypocrites who only called for change after they played the FIFA game and lost.

(Indeed, there might be some embarrassment in England – where opposition to Blatter has been fiercest – if allegations that England colluded with South Korea in their respective bids to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups are proven.)

If it’s the sham change agents who become beneficiaries of Blatter’s demise, there may not be genuine reform; you’ll simply have different people enjoying the spoils of being at the top of the world’s most popular game.

We can only hope that a fresh election will flush out less worthy aspirants.

In the recent campaign for the FIFA presidency, anti-Blatter hysteria was so great that there wasn’t enough focus on other candidates.

Everyone who challenged Sepp Blatter (including Luís Figo and Michael van Praag, who both eventually withdrew) promised World Cup expansion and sending more of FIFA’s cash reserves to its member associations.

I’ve said it before: that’s straight out of Blatter’s playbook. It was ensuring more World Cup places for Africa, Asia and the Americas, and sending funds to developing nations, which helped him build and maintain power.

Of course, Figo, van Praag and Prince Ali could all be highly principled guys who just made those promises because they felt there was no other way to win. There should be no excuses now.

Nevertheless, anyone would be better than Blatter, right?

No. If you think that, it’s because you don’t know much about Michel Platini, president of UEFA (Europe’s regional confederation).

Platini voted for Qatar’s bid to host the 2022 World Cup and supported moving the tournament from June/July (when it’s traditionally held) to November/December (which disrupts the big European leagues) well before that decision was made.

Not long after Qatar won the hosting rights for 2022, Platini’s son landed a job with Qatar Sports Investments.

And British newspaper The Sunday Times claimed Platini was given a Picasso painting in return for voting for Russia to host the 2018 World Cup.

Perhaps he never accepted a Picasso. And perhaps his son’s job had nothing to do with supporting Qatar’s bid.

But Platini has definitely expanded the European Championship from 16 teams to an unwieldy 24 – a Blatter-esque way of winning support among smaller countries.

(For a much deeper look into Platini, see this article written by a compatriot of his.)

Yet betting markets for the next FIFA president have already made the Frenchman the short-priced favourite. Because despite everything, when he was recently up for re-election as president of UEFA, those Europeans (who have been so aggressive in their campaign against Blatter and so outraged about Qatar) couldn’t find a single candidate to challenge Platini.

Good luck everyone.​
 
SczMC8L.jpg
 

Log in to remove this Banner Ad

SemperFudge said:
man, I'm gonna be pressing ctrl+R on this page all day, eagerly awaiting REH's insight

what are the chances of Luis Figo re-running as president?

or will Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein just take over?

what happens now to the 2022 World Cup, and to an extent, the 2018 World Cup?
Click to expand...
Sepp could be around another 6 months. He said he is stepping down once an extraordinary meeting is called not he is resigning and leaving on Friday.
 
Looks like FIFA's extraordinary meeting is at least 4 months away and maybe as late as March next year. Gives times for potential candidates to lobby, Sepp to bury some bodies and maybe make a few payments before he departs.

The Champions League final is on in Berlin on Saturday and the UEFA boys and others will be meeting there and having lots of discussions about the future. Zico said today he is interested the job. And he is in Berlin for the Champions League final. diegodcg could the Flamengo old boy do the job? He might need a right hand man assisting him. ;)

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/zico-considering-fifa-presidency-bid-011048632--sow.html
(Reuters) - Former Brazil international Zico has expressed a desire to run for president of FIFA following Sepp Blatter's shock resignation on Tuesday. Blatter rocked the world of soccer by unexpectedly saying he would step down as FIFA president in the wake of a corruption investigation that reportedly may include the embattled chief himself.

The 62-year-old Zico, who played in three World Cups, served as Brazil's sports minister in the 1990s and has decades of experience at all levels of the game including management stints in Japan, Turkey, Russia, Greece and the Middle East. "Why not?" he asked in a Facebook post from Berlin where he attend Saturday's Champions League Final.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/zico-considering-fifa-presidency-bid-011048632--sow.html

Zico v Platini?? Just like the battles in the late 1970's and 1980's.

upload_2015-6-3_18-26-27.png
 
Qatar - population 300,000 Qataris + 2,000,000 foreign nationals.

This Foreign Correspondent episode that was shown last night shows exactly why people went into overdrive to find out if there was corruption related to how the bloody hell Qatar got the World Cup after the technical committee didnt rate its bid. Its why FIFA insiders leaked to the The Sunday Times and Andrew Jennings. At a Qatar v Yemen game 50 Qataris turned up to watch plus a few hundred guest workers and a hundred or so Yemen fans.m

Watch either at the embedded video on this link or the iview one below.
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2015/s4247392.htm
Reporter Eric Campbell has been in Qatar to witness how this Middle East emirate - the world's richest country per capita - is spending some of the $260 billion it's showering on new stadiums, hotels and infrastructure.He discovered that the people doing the hard work - migrant labourers mostly from South Asia - endure wretched living and working conditions.

(They) live in squalor... They're owned by another individual, lock, stock and barrel - that's slavery. SHARAN BURROW, head of the International Trade Union Confederation. Australian Sharan Burrow, former ACTU chief, takes Campbell on a tour of a hostel of Nepalese workers, living 12 to a room, who endure filthy kitchens, washing and toilet facilities and work six days a week for up to 12 hours a day with no paid overtime.

They just bring you back when they decide you've finished. NEPALESE WORKER

Qatar has a system called Kafala which means foreign workers surrender their passports to the employer who decides where they work and even whether they can even leave Qatar. In response to international pressure, including from FIFA, Qatar is promising to reform the Kafala system.
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2015/s4247392.htm
or

http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/foreign-correspondent/NC1502H007S00#playing
 
The story behinds the story: the Unquiet Film Series chronicles the investigation of the FIFA files with The Sunday Times Insight team Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake in the video below.

And a different video from June 2014 explaining how Calvert and Blake got the info from a senior FIFA insider and the 2022 Qatar bid and how they went about processing the hundreds of millions of pages of documents, is embedded in this story of the Sunday Times with the 2 journo's. The Feds and DOJ would have access to all this info by now and would form a fair part of investigation to come, as so far they have only revealed stuff about 2010 WC and stuff involving CONCACAF and CONMEBOL activities. We will have to see how the Swiss DOJ handles the cache of info the Sunday Times journos got from the senior FIFA insider.

Plot to buy the World Cup: reaction from around the world to the Fifa files








This is the link to all the Sunday Times stories that make up their FIFA Files series and come from this huge cache of documents leaked to them.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/fifa/article1417206.ece
 
SemperFudge said:
Socceroos vs Kyrgyzstan tonight, who's watching?
Click to expand...
11.30pm is a decent time so I will be watching. Thought is was going to be a 2.30 or 3.30am start and would have given that a miss.
 

Remove this Banner Ad

Magnificent pitch they have. Maybe FIFA could pay for a decent new pitch out of there $1.5bil reserves they have - which is net of bribes paid by bidding committees.
 
17 more games to go for automatic qualifying or miss out on 2018. and 4 more if we make it to the final stage but finish 3rd in our group of 6 and make it to 2018.
 
Relieved that we got a win, after all we didn't draw with Singapore at home like the Blue Samurai
 
8 minutes into their World Cup Group Stage match with Sweden, the Aussie women are 1-0 up with Lisa DeVanna scoring in the 5th minute
 

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

1-1 at half time, with the Swedes scoring after 15 minutes. A draw should be good enough for the Aussies to progress.
 
DeVanna is a star striker and has a deadly left boot. Pity we have never had the equivalent striker for the Socceroos who regularly puts the ball in the net. Timmy Cahill is great for the Socceroos but he's a mid fielder who can use his head more than his foot to score.
 
The Matildas are through to the quarter finals of the Women's World Cup by beating Brazil 1-0 overnight. Kyah Simon scored the winner in the 80th minute.
 
I watched the first half of Canada vs Switzerland at Vancouver on the television. I learned that I know nothing about soccer- I don't understand the tactics at all. I wouldn't know a 4-4-2 from a pie in the face.

The Russian energy giant Gazprom is sponsoring this tournament. Not a great look.

50,000 people in the stadium for a women's sport event is some sort of progress.

Canada won this 1-0. Yay Canada.

But what I really want to know is who is going to present the trophy in the Final? Carn Sepp show your ugly head in the final you yellow-bellied f***.
 

Remove this Banner Ad

Round ball code talk

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

Back
Top