FA clearly guilty of bringing the game into disrepute. So what’s their punishment « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

By Tony Attwood

Before England put in their bid for the World Cup they knew that organisation they were dealing with, and the people within it, were corrupt.  They must have known because on this site, and of course on many others, there are loads of articles about corruption in Fifa.  We even have a section on this site called FICK FUFA just to record some of the findings.

And for most people knowingly dealing with a wholly corrupt body is itself corrupt.  But that’s what English football did – we put in a bid to run the World Cup, and we chatted up these most appalling people, even suggesting that we were just about there and had won the thing.

Now Lord Triesman, the ex-Football Association and England 2018 chairman, has simply followed the route most thinking people in football have gone down and pointed out that Fifa is corrupt.

But he does so, not only after we got out one little vote for the World Cup finals in England, but when we are still in Fifa and dealing with Fifa.  England has and has always had the opportunity to pull out of Fifa, and invite any other countries that think that the corruption has gone far enough to join in a new grouping.  One in which countries respect the clubs and players, respect the sort of business ethics that decent and honourable people adhere to, and one that will stop pumping billions of dollars into the hands of the disgustingly corrupt group that run Fifa.

Lord T (the man who got his title for being there and doing things for government) told the select committee of the British Parliament that is taking a peek under the carpet of football and pulling out all the mucky bits, that the Fifa vice-president Jack Warner asked for around £2.5m to build an education centre in Trinidad with the cash going via his handbag.  He also wanted £500,000 to buy Haiti’s World Cup TV rights.  Oh yes and just for simplicity he also wants that to go via himself. Just for safety’s sake.

Did we hear of this at the time?  No.  Were the fraud squad told?  Did it make world news?  No, because Lord T thought we might win the bid.  Corruption at the heart of British government as well as at the heart of football.

The man  from Paraguay, Nicolás Leoz, wanted a knighthood (saying that Lord T, as a man who had got the freebies out of the British government himself with his peerage, ought to know how these things work.

The man from Brazil, Ricardo Teixeira, asked Lord Turnip, sorry Triesman to “come and tell me what you have got for me”.

The man from Thailand’s, Woraw Makudi, wanted the TV rights to a friendly between England and the Thai national team.  Personally.

The Sunday Times has alleged that Fifa vice-president Issa Hayatou from Cameroon and Jacques Anouma (Ivory Coast) were paid $1.5m by Qatar to help their bid.

Lord Trumpington sorry Triesman said he didn’t own up earlier because “we would have burned off our chances.”  And that of course is how corruption flourishes – and how it reached the very top of the FA.

The prime minister didn’t really want to know.  He said, “Ultimately, Fifa are the world governing body of football and it is for them, if need be, to do the things that they need to do to put their house in order. Clearly they need to reassure the sporting public and fans that there is no suggestion of corruption or any problems with competition for these kinds of major sporting events.”

So how did our FA get so mired in the dirt.  Come to that, we had a Prince in there too.  And a new prime minister.  Mind you the PM was used to giving out knighthoods and peerages so maybe he thought the request was just the normal run of the mill.

As it is in sport.  Juan Antonio Samaranch, former president of the International Olympic Committee, was given Spain’s Collar of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, Ukraine’s Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, and the Order of the White Double Cross, First Class, from Slovakia – at least according to the Guardian, who know about this stuff.

But there’s another thing.  Do you remember that Panorama programme on the BBC just before the mucky process went on?  Or earlier articles in the Sunday Times?  They were all saying Fifa was bent.  And what happened?

We were told that we should not rock the boat, and that the national interest of getting the world cup should come before the BBC’s brief of exposing corruption.

Quite clearly the desire to cover up corruption goes to the very top of football in the country – just as it does in politics.

Oh and here’s one other snippet.   Lord T said Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the EPL offered support for the 2018 world cup bid if the FA would go for the “39th game” plan, for playing EPL games overseas.

Scudamore immediately issued a strong denial, just as all those people in Fifa have done.   English football corrupt and bent?  Surely not!  Why, next they’ll be saying that the old Italian system of buying refs is deeply entrenched in the Premier League!