Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does » 2010 » May » 17

The FA is fairly strong on the Tottenham supporting front.  Or at least it was until naughty Lord Triesman was taped by a bimbo spilling the beans about the way the pesky Russians and the Spanish are bribing world cup refs.

Tottenham-crazed Triesman is now yesterday’s news (a bit like the club he supports) – but fear not.  The FA’s position on Tottenham won’t be diminished.  They still have Tiny Tott Sir Keith Mills on board – he is a Tottenham Hotspur non-executive director.

But having only one Tottenham supporter in a senior position in a FA committee would never be enough, and so already Lord Sugar of Tottenham has nominated himself (on the basis that no one else will) so that two Tottenham Hotspur men are in charge of FA activities vis a vis the world cup.

Now I don’t think I am talking behind anyone’s back if I say that Fifa – the organisation that runs the Bent World Cup – is corrupt.  If you want to know more about that just go to google and type in Jack Warner corruption, or if you want a really detailed story, just click here for a transcript of a Panorama report into Fifa corruption.

Tottenham – FA – Fifa – corruption – it sort of hangs together somehow, although of course I make no allegations – just note the coincidences.

But Fifa has been found guilty in the American courts of lying and duplicity and no one can doubt what happened over the scandal outlined in the Panorama report.

So, as Untold publishes a story showing the useless refs are being given world cup roles (see Rewarding Loyal Refs for Dreadful Decisions)  it is not hard to see where international football is…  It is in the gutter, but unlike Oscar Wilde’s Lord Darlington, none of those involved are looking at the stars.  Indeed it is unlikely whether there is a person in the FA, or Fifa, who has a clue where the stars are.

I don’t think any of that is particularly interesting or new – and if you are a regular reader of Untold (and my deep thanks to you if you are) you will know that I’ve run just a few dozen of the vast number of Fifa corruption stories on this site.

But here’s something new – and I am not sure the papers are making too much of this…

When the story about Lord Triesman saying that Russian and Spain were busy bribing refs for the world up finals, what did the FA do?

(The FA, lest we forget, apart from being a branch of the Tottenham Hotspur supporters’ association) is the organisation responsible for the English world cup bid, and responsible for running the FA Cup, and responsible for running the amateur game in the UK.  It also runs Wembley – she of the famous pitch).

This is what the FA did….

The FA tried to get a court injunction on privacy grounds to prevent the story being published.

Shall I run that story again? Well, no, ok you got it first time – the FA’s response was not to

a) present evidence to show that the allegation was true

b) say the man who made the allegation was clearly a loony who should never have been there in the first place, and sack him

No, they tried to hush up the story.

This approach has been replicated to a lesser degree by the broadcasters in the UK who have invested money in broadcasting the world cup.  Anxious to protect their commercial properties BBC Radio 5 has been running stories about how people are not going to buy the Mail on Sunday (the extreme right wing  “paper” that broke the story in Britain) any more, because the Mail on Sunday was unpatriotic.    (Actually, you can call the Mail on Sunday a lot of things, but unpatriotic is something they are absolutely not).

No one, but no one, that I have heard so far in the media has said either

“Well, Fifa is corrupt as we know, so is this ref fixing actually going on?” or

“Here are the steps being taken by Fifa to ensure match fixing is not going on.”

No, what the media and the FA are saying is, “how can I get my snout in the trough?”

It is a sign of just how far down the FA has sunk into their gutter that its instant response to the activities of one of its members is to try and get an injunction. They should be used to old men in the FA having relationships with young women, having had Sven and others on board for some time, after all.

Triesman joins four chief execs who have left the FA in the past eight years – not a good record.   His record as chairman in the FA was awful – not least because he totally failed to implement the idea of having independent directors on the FA – the one last chance the FA had of regaining any credibility or respect.

He did, to be fair to his noble lordship, actually come down on the side of the argument against massive EPL debt, and actually used the £3bn figure for the debt (the EPL generally put it way under £2bn).  But then Tottenham declare no debt, since all their accounts are hidden in the Virgin Islands.  So he would, wouldn’t he.

So, what now?

The battle between the EPL and the FA is being fought out between the press and Sky (pro EPL) and the national broadcasters in Britain (ITV and BBC) who are pro FA (because they run FA Cup and bent world cup games).

Aleksey Sorokin, who runs Russia’s bent world cup bid has asked Fifa to investigate the FA, which could be fun.  Each side could send in their call girls to tape each other I suppose.

My prediction is that England’s FA will stumble on, looking after its own, making fools of themselves.  I tried to get odds on that prediction coming to pass, but the bookmaker just laughed at me.

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Untold Arsenal: the home of Arsenal stories

More corruption stories:

Fifa rewarding the loyal refs for their loyal decisions

The origins of corruption in the football league.

Arsenal play the champions and the rest of the league cry “foul”.

Tottenham Hotspur: the dark history.

Chelsea: fixing a way into the football league without ever playing a game.

Read the full story of how Tottenham tried to claim that Arsenal fixed their promotion in 1919