Okay first let me get this out of my system…
USA! USA! USA! We, the United States of America, a 2nd tier soccer team have ousted Sepp Blatter as president of FIFA. If you have been paying attention to any American news network over the past week you might have noticed they’re talking about this thing called “soccer.” FIFA executive officials were caught laundering money, accepting bribes, and a lot of other shady business through a joint Switzerland- FBI investigation. FIFA has been accused of being corrupt for years and years and years and yeah you get the point but as of the past week nobody has done anything about it. Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, hadn’t been directly linked to these accusations and claims no responsibility but come on we all know thats bullshit. Swiss officials are now looking into whether the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the 2020 World Cup in Qatar were chosen through bribes (which they were).
This is fantastic for soccer, this isn’t just hype. The 17 year Blatter administration was the worst, they cheated the world out of billions of dollars in bribes. They found that the 2010 World Cup in South Africa was bought through bribes and honestly once they keep digging they’ll find the same with Russia and Qatar. Qatar has never qualified for the WC and honestly never will after 2020 (host country automatically gets a bid) so what do they add to the table for soccer? Nothing accept millions of dollars for high-level executives. Why would teams go play in the freakin’ desert where it gets to be like 150 F? Oh that’s right FIFA changed the timing of the WC so it’s less hot (thus interfering with every other soccer league on the planet). Oh, plus they blatantly go against nearly every human-rights policy that FIFA “opposes” such as human slaves/labor, women’s rights (or lack-there-of), and funding of terrorist groups. Not to mention the fact that thousands of migrant workers have died and thousands that will die due to constructing infrastructure for the 2020 WC in scorching Qatari heat. Sorry for the politics but that’s international soccer for ya. So yeah those WC’s should be vacated from those countries and another bidding cycle should follow.
Although Blatter and his cronies are out, FIFA is a while away from being “normal”. Blatter won the election due to his opponent withdrawing, but he still received a good majority of the votes. So really what this means is every official who Blatter had in his pocket will likely vote for the next guy who will give them what they want (money money money). So what it really is going to take to get things back on track is for a powerhouse soccer team (Spain, Germany, the Dutch, Argentina, ect.) to join the US effort to protest the WC and FIFA to start gaining more support. Next,sponsors need to start pulling sponsorships to hit them on the financial front.
But as for now, we celebrate the start of a new era in international soccer.
The Beantown Buzz 