It’s no surprise to find that Blatter has no footballing background whatsoever, upon graduating with his degree in the early Seventies, he joined FIFA in 1975 at the bottom of the ladder, before climbing his way up and being completely unopposed since he managed to gain his Presidency. What Blatter doesn’t seem to realise is that much like his workplace or Regular Joe’s workplace, the football pitch is a place of work for the players themselves, and it should be treated just like any other working environment; if someone was sexist, homophobic, or racist then they would be immediately dismissed.
It’s incredible that Blatter, a man guilty of all three of these things, has remained in his position for such a long time; the mad, mad world of football clearly has its own rules that make it exempt from everybody else, a handshake fixes everything. Would Samuel Eto’o be satisfied with a handshake from those Zaragoza fans? Hell, I don’t think he would have been satisfied with the paltry six hundred Euro fine that was handed to the club.
Would Viv Anderson accept a handshake from the fans who threw bananas at him? I certainly don’t think Marcel Desailly and Ron Atkinson will be shaking hands any time soon. Blatter might defend himself with a statement that vehemently informs everybody that he has backed anti-racism movements throughout his tenure as FIFA President, but that’s beside the point; it’s clear that his feelings about racism in the game are a world apart from what he’s told to follow along with.
The rest of Europe has stayed suspiciously quiet on the whole situation and they will; it’s no secret that FIFA and UEFA favour other European nations over the English, despite the fact that these nations fluidly swap with one another as to which one is involved in a scandal. The French national team have recently been involved in their own race scandal, yet the French media have remained quiet on the Blatter situation, preferring not to strike up a storm like the English are doing.
It seems that because we’re English, and doing something we’re inherently good at – complaining – we’re setting ourselves up to be ignored again. The conclusion of this argument is that Sepp Blatter has once again done something he is incredibly adept at doing; shooting himself in the foot. In the midst of corruption claims this is one thing he really didn’t need, and he should take the advice given to him to run his tongue around his mouth a couple of times before he speaks. His comments have undermined everything that FIFA as an organization has done in the past couple of years to eradicate the problem of racism and sent them straight back to square one.
He won’t step down purely because the English have kicked up a fuss, but surely this is one mess up too many; it’s high time for Michel Platini to step up to the plate and take his place as FIFA’s new President. Sure, the English will still be profoundly unfavoured when it comes to the crunch, but at least we won’t have an out of touch, corrupt, sexist, homophobe and racist at the helm of our “Beautiful Game”, who knows, FIFA might actually one day be a respectable organization again.
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