I think this makes it all the easier for Blatter to get on with his votes-for-favours type of leadership. The picture I'm getting is that he is so single-minded about preserving his own status in this way that it gives carte-blanche to the other delegates to follow their own agenda without interference from anyone (up until now).
I wonder what happened to the money from countries like England who tried unsuccessfully to buy votes? I doubt whether any of the unsuccessful bribes were returned.
Why is a vote from Swaziland worth the same as a vote from England? Ali had no chance even with the recent goings on
Forest, I have a vague memory of the English contingent being furious with someone for having promised to vote for England, and not delivering. At the time, the big stick was that a friendly we had promised them would be withdrawn, but given the ambience around FIFA, would anyone belive that was the only thing on offer, and to just one delegate? The whole thing is a farce, but yesterday, we saw Blatter does sometimes come through. He said on thursday that there would probably be more bad news, and yesterday he was reelected by the likes of Laos, Haití and Fiji. Time to get serious with France, Spain, Germany etc and leave them to get on with it.
Hey! I resent that on behalf of my family and friends and all Haitians. Haiti is a genuine, middle-ranking soccer nation and ranks above Paraguay and China for example. Haiti won the Caribbean Cup in 2007. It is not widely known that the scorer of the only goal in England's notorious loss to the US in the 1950 World Cup was scored by a Haitian "guest star", Joe Gaetjens, who was not qualified to play for the US. And they have the nerve to accuse poor Mr Blatter of cheating!
Sorry mate but not according to FIFA... http://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-table/men/rank=243/index.html Paraguay are 76 PR China are 88 Haiti are 93 However, Australia are ranked at 94
A lot of talk of a break away world cup, and leaving Blatter with his worshippers, will founder on the news that the French voted for him. I can understand the smaller nations, as he runs FIFA as an organisation which exists simply to keep him as president, but why on earth would the French see him as the right way forward? Sadly, I can't imagine it would be anything noble, as it's FIFA, so ideas such as rank anglophobia, creeping around Putin's arse, or basically, some sort of free gift from the man himself. Honestly, I can't imagine any normal reson for a European country to see him as a logical choice.
I watched his press conference. An amazing exhibition of smugness, complacency, self-righteousness, pomposity and delusion. "Let's Go, FIFA" indeed. Another one "Now I'm president of everybody". Wow.
Unlike you, I do not obsequiously defer to every pronouncement from that corrupt and incompetent organization. I have my own rankings derived from methodical data collection and sensible interpretation thereof. A modest annual payment of nine pounds 90p into my PayPal account will ensure that I email you monthly updates of the "Bitter and Malicious World Soccer Rankings". They are scientifically produced and uninfluenced by personal bias, but just to spite you I have moved Haiti up to 75th, above Paraguay. The girlfriend has promised me something special by way of thanks.
According to the bible of truthfull news reporting, the Mail on Sunday, Spain Turkey and Finland also broke ranks with UEFA to vote for Mr Blatter. The rumour is that Spain and France both recieve a lot of development grants from Qatar (a name I see quite a lot of in Spanish football lately).It just goes on does'nt it! Maybe it's time to hand the world cup voting to Bitter and Malicious. It could'nt be any worse tan the current set up, and from what I've seen of the Dominican Republic, a few kick backs from a Charlton fan being spread about the place could'nt do any harm.
It just shows that bribery and corruption are not seen as being much of a problem, if a problem at all, by many. You have to ask, would their be all the outrage if the 2022 World Cup had gone to Australia? No, I think the Qatar decision was the tipping point, but there is still the feeling by many including Blatter that we shouldn't really be too bothered by widespread corruption, there are more important things to worry about than a few bribes. Even Blatter's daughter has waded in, and there are accusations that attempts to clean up FIFA are motivated by personal hatred of Blatter. I don't think this will cut any ice with the Attorney general.
I'm quite astounded by the amount of human rights abuses and deaths that they are in Quatar, when building for this world cup. That should be a more pertinent point to sort out first. I think countries should be boycotting it, because of that, not some corruption charges.
but Richard Keys Tweeted at the end of last week that there had been NO deaths on ANY of the WC sites.... so that's OK .... then again Mr Keys wors in Quatar and is paid quite a lot of money .... I am not sure if that has anything to do with his comments..... he did say that he had checked with his bosses.....
I saw that, they've actually got an interesting article on The Independent about the death toll in Qatar. It is quite an eye opener, the fact that FIFA are trying to pull these off as faceless individuals. It’s 1,200 migrant workers who have traveled far from their homes and their families, when they arrive in Qatar they are forced to surrender their passports (so if they decide to leave/quit or give up living in their squalid conditions), cannot return home to their families. It's inhumane, and then you read executives pocketing millions off the back of these people. I for one believe that all the bribes, money earned from corruption should be given to the workers families that have died.
Qatar have been given carte blanche to carry on their cruel treatment of workers by FIFA's continuous and unequivocal statements that under no circumstances will the venue be changed. The great and the good don't give a fig about these deaths. Greg Dyke likes to sound off about Blatter, but I haven't heard him mention these construction workers conditions once. They just don't have anyone of consequence prepared to speak up on their behalf, and that's appalling.
Speaking as a diehard football fan who absolutely loathes international football, and who has done since around 1993, I hope that little Dyke leads by example and pulls England out of the next two World Cups - regardless of what the quisling Platini suggests. I flatly refuse to support the current generation of non English internationals come what may Raheem Sterling ? Not in my name.
So I've worked it out: Est. 1,200 to date. That's with building work going on for about a year. So if it continues at this rate till the start of the world cup, you're looking at approximately 8,400 deaths! Lets put that into perspective; 2.8 times more deaths than the 11th September attacks 161.5 times more deaths than 7th July attacks 112 times more deaths than occur each year by shark attacks 2,800 times more deaths than deaths by bee stings each year 8,400 times more deaths than occur each year in the UK by Honey Badger attacks 21.9 times more deaths than both the Malaysian Airline and Lufthansa incidents 5.8 times more deaths than occur on UK roads (2012 stats) 23.9 times more deaths than people falling down stairs People get riled up about these things, but are seemingly don't mind about the atrocities in Qatar.
