The Blatter splatter

Deaf he was not, nor blind to the fact that trumpeters of FBI were warming up in the wings, and so he finally walked

My dislike of football is akin to my dislike of passing red-hot needles through my eyelids. And it runs in the family. From the earliest of ages the sight of 22 men chasing a ball around a perfectly decent lawn has always struck me as the proletarian iteration of fox-hunting — the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable. The sum total of my attendance at football matches is a little over 90 minutes, going to a match with my son-in-law and in the post-match knees-up in a nearby pub observing that football was in some ways not unlike ballet. A hush descended. Looks were exchanged. Grown men coughed politely and spluttered into their pint glasses. We left soon after and there was no repeat invitation to spend an afternoon wondering at The Beautiful Game ( … henceforward TBG).

Thus it has remained for over 60 years. Footie tournaments pass me by. On-pitch dramas induce a coma. The transfer season leaves me cold. The World Cup never sullies my TV screen… and then there was Fifa and the curious phenomenon of Sepp Blatter, a man who started his working life with a Swiss watch company and who will end it at the forefront of the biggest scandal ever to hit the biggest and most profitable game in the world — football.

My own antipathy to TBG aside I am happy to acknowledge that it is enjoyed and played by many many millions and that the unlamented Mr Blatter has presided over what in many ways was a golden era. It has seen massive investment in football particularly in the poor and developing world, jobs, infrastructure and the raising of professional standards, yes all of that — and much of that, wonderful as it is, under the aegis of an organisation that for decades has been mired in controversy and allegations of corruption far removed from fair play.

As Mr Blatter walks towards the twilight, the sponsors of Fifa, the money-people who front the operation to better market their brands, are expressing their satisfaction at his departure, and soccer pundits worldwide are dominating news channels (… few in Pakistan, admittedly) blathering on in an endless loop — the Big Why and the Big How hang in the air.

Those two questions will not be answered here, instead a reflection on the ability of power to corrupt and the willing complicity in that corruption by otherwise blameless individuals and international corporations.

As an organisation Fifa operates very much like an independent sovereign state. A sacerdotal caste rules behind a veil of layered mysteries. The masses are regularly entertained and see no reason to have their enjoyment curtailed, the proverbial turkeys voting for Christmas year after year. A lot of people get very rich. A few people over the years object. They find themselves in the corporate equivalent of a gunny-sack on a rural roadside.

Eventually there is just not enough carpet left to sweep the muck under, the Emperor stood naked believing himself robed and crowned and seemingly deaf to the chorus that sang outside the walls of his fiefdom. But deaf he was not, nor blind to the fact that the trumpeters of the FBI were warming up in the wings, and so he finally walked. It was foreign trumpets that brought down the walls of this particular Jericho, trumpets from afar and beyond the control or influence of the Emperor. The turkeys that voted for Christmas suddenly found themselves stuffed and awaiting the oven.

Those of you with a nose for allegory may see where this is going, particularly as we have had our own mini-version of the Blatter Splatter played out right here. An Emperor, albeit of little more than a network of call centres and a very busy printing press, has been brought down by another foreign trumpeter. The walls were breached by nothing more substantial than words on the page of an actual newspaper, words that then hung like a mighty blast in cyberspace and were impossible to silence.

Whilst I have not the slightest interest in or intention of ever attending another football match, I wish the sport well. And watch from the cheap seats the consequences of the mightiest of own-goals.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 4^th,  2015.

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