Bear Down Wildcats

I didn't really know what to name this thread, so I decided to go with the first thing that came to mind and, honestly, that was what came to mind.

I hope FIFA burns. Hopefully Dr. Rauball can light the match.

German Football League (DFL) president Dr. Reinhard Rauball has claimed UEFA could leave FIFA if the World Cup bidding report is not published in full.

A 42-page summary of the report into the 2018 and 2022 tournaments was released on Thursday, clearing Russia and Qatar as hosts and accusing several other bidding nations of impropriety.

http://www.espnfc.us/fifa-world-cup/sto ... leave-fifa

I would 110% support UEFA (Europe) and CONCACAF (North and Central America) breaking off from FIFA. They can try and run a 2018 WC in Russia (that should be interesting in itself) with just Brazil and Argentina showing up.

Wait so fifa issued a report saying them, Russia and Qatar are good and squeaky clean while everyone else is dirty?

ASUHATER! wrote:Wait so fifa issued a report saying them, Russia and Qatar are good and squeaky clean while everyone else is dirty?

Kinda, yeah. They're so corrupt and every so knows it that they can put off stuff like that. The accountability level is literally zero.

The first thing I thought today when Garcia appealed the finding was, "FIFA forgot to pay Garcia his bribe." No joke.

Would love this...

Katzenfreund wrote:a) As president of DFL (Deutsche Fussball Liga), Rauball is not in a position to make these kinds of decisions.

Platini is the head of UEFA if I'm remembering correctly. Platini would seem to be the heir apparently to Sepp's job; I seem to remember some discussions I've had with people who talked about Platini being fairly corrupt also, but I don't remember the details. Platini might be upset with Sepp staying on for another four year term at 78 years of age so who knows, perhaps his ear could be bent with offers of being the head of the new organization.

b) UEFA would need CONMEBOL's support in order to sustain the quality of an "alternative" World Cup.

This was the part I was thinking through in my mind. I don't have any sense that South America is particularly interested in leaving FIFA. That said, if Europe and North America walked out, South America might well look at what's left and ask themselves "What's the point of staying? Brazil v. Argentina final in Russia with no other teams there?"

c) A successor organization would most likely be as corrupt as FIFA due to the designated founding members and their agendas.

I'm not sure a new thing could be as corrupt as FIFA as I would probably rate FIFA a 10 on a one to ten scale so there's really nowhere to go but down, but obviously the individuals and the vested interests could create similar problems. But honestly it's probably worth trying in my opinion because the current governing body is just so bad.

d) The new federation would have to separate the big football nations from the minnows in order to avoid a recurrence of today's mess.

Why is that? You're saying the small teams will just get bought off by the big teams? I feel like, if the organizing structure gave a shit at all about transparency, honesty, etc, certain things could probably be put in place to help stamp out some of the most egregious stuff (like what the IOC has done over the last 10ish years). Of course the current structure gives no fucks about any of that and in fact encourages opaque structures, bribery, etc so it's no surprise that we get that in spades.

I well understand that the US is evolved in bribery efforts (of whatever level; my guess is our level is generally lower than others as others are more interested in paying for legitimacy than we are, which is how you end up with Qatar and Russia) and I support the US's bribery efforts; when the only thing on offer is bribe or sit out, then you grit your teeth and bribe.

The point is to try and change the structure from the straight bribery (ie literally, whoever brings the biggest bribe wins with zero regard to how appropriate it is to host the tournament there, see:Qatar) that we have devolved into. Some kind of "bribery" (also called negotiation) will always be present, but stuff like trading the Cup location from continent to continent for me is fine and possibly even good, even if I personally would be fine with Germany hosting the WC every year (2006 was an amazing experience). What we have now is untenable; one would have to consider some pretty ridiculous locals to find places clearly less appropriate to hold a WC than Qatar. Basically any decision making system is going to be better than the one that brought forward Qatar, so if it takes corrupt UEFA types to set it up then I say welcome to our new overlords.

We still talking about hating on FIFA, right?

Giving the World Cup to Qatar was a joke

Oh we are. I Agree.

but for sportive

Agree.

and not for moral reasons.

Well the sporting reasons are more than enough to have never awarded them the tournament; bribes seemed to be the only factor they considered which is why things need to change.

As to the moral, 5000 dead slave workers are going to disagree with you on that one. But to each his own.

When that estimate for the number of workers that were going to die building Qatar's stadiums came out I thought to myself, 'Oh that's it. No way FIFA can stand that kind of press.'

FIFA didn't even skip a beat. They basically shrugged and it became a one day story. So yeah, change is necessary.

We know that you love the Russians and anything non American, but c'mon man...

You've already admitted giving the Cup to Qatar was a joke. Good. Now what's with the rest of this stuff?

Katzenfreund wrote:

SCCat wrote:As to the moral, 5000 dead slave workers are going to disagree with you on that one. But to each his own.

Nice straw man but worthless.

Worthless...exactly what FIFA said about those lives. I wonder if those dead people would consider themselves straw men?

I'm sorry, but that's just more than naive.

I'm a little bit surprised you're getting on me about this, but let's make some points.

One, there's a little bit of difference between the tyrannical killing machine that is the US government and an organization such as FIFA and so casually equating the two and dismissing any responsibility from FIFA due to another group's hypocrisy is an interesting thing.

Second as far as my positions vis-a-vis the middle east, I personally wish we would leave the region entirely and let all of their shit governments fall. I can only imagine that will lead to an even more gruesome orgy of violence where figuratively everyone in the region is killed by each other. But if that's what they want to do...have at. Obviously I am just one person and I do not make policy for the US, but if I did none of those shit governments and terror states would be getting any support from me and all our troops would be headed out of the region ex post haste.

But seriously, useful chat. If only the US Diplomatic and Military policy were different we could properly criticize FIFA for holding their tournament in Qatar.

So FIFA being one of the more evil and corrupt organizations in the world is the fault of America. Got it. We'll just add it to the list.

US took the snub in favor of Qatar pretty hard...

7 officials arrested ahead of vote in Zurich due to alleged 25 years of corruption and kickbacks. Shocking, I know...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/sport ... -them.html
(Love the NTY headline, btw)

and from their homepage, FIFA plays the victim.

Statement: FIFA is fully cooperating as injured party in the actions by Swiss authorities

http://www.fifa.com
http://www.fifa.com/governance/news/y=2 ... e_news_top

Today, the Swiss Office of the Attorney General announced that it has opened criminal proceedings against persons unknown in relation to the 2018/2022 FIFA World Cup™ bidding process. FIFA is fully cooperating with the investigation and is supporting the collection of evidence in this regard. As noted by the Swiss authorities, this collection of evidence is being carried out on a cooperative basis.

I love the Swiss...

Blatter still wins re-election.......I hate FIFA.

Lets keep it in one thread guys.

I think we've now seen almost as many FIFA vice presidents indicted as ISIS "commanders" drone striked. Seriously, what the fuck do all of these veeps do?

Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini are facing likely bans of around seven years when FIFA's ethics judge delivers his verdict on Monday.

Barring a major surprise, both FIFA president Blatter and UEFA president Platini are expected to be found guilty of ethics code breaches surrounding a £1.3 million "disloyal payment" made to the Frenchman in 2011.

German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, the chairman of FIFA's adjudicatory chamber, held disciplinary hearings for the pair last week and is due to announce his findings and any sanctions on Monday morning.

http://www.espnfc.us/fifa-world-cup/sto ... even-years" target="_blank

Sepp's going to get rung up by Eckert of all people?

I did not have that on my betting slip.

FIFA is hilarious.

Where to begin. From it's own filing very recently in court...

GENEVA (AP) — While acknowledging for the first time that votes were bought in past World Cup hosting contests, FIFA is seeking to claim "tens of millions of dollars" in bribe money seized by U.S. federal prosecutors.

FIFA submitted a 22-page claim to the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York on Tuesday that seeks a big share in restitution from more than $190 million already forfeited by soccer and marketing officials who pleaded guilty in the sprawling corruption case.

OMGzzzers! Votes were bought in past World Cup hosting contests?

Notice they aren't willing to admit votes were bought in future World Cup hosting contests.

Here's a quote from the new FIFA President about some of the corruption that was going on...

"These dollars were meant to build football fields, not mansions and pools; to buy football kits, not jewelry and cars; and to fund youth player and coach development, not to underwrite lavish lifestyles for football and sports marketing executives," Infantino said.

One of the parts Infantino is talking about was some of the worst bribery, the bribery basically for votes to keep Sepp in power. We've discussed it a bit before, but FIFA would kick out development grants to each nation in FIFA, which is basically each of the 200 or so nations in existence. The grant would be the same regardless of the nations size, so the USA and China got the same grant that the Cayman Islands got. From my understanding this grant was usually about $3M dollars. So the head of the Cayman Islands football association is given this money to fun football infrastructure in his country, and here's how that went: two football fields were built (at a cost of about $50,000) and that was all that occurred. Invariably local journalists would raise the hue and cry about this and nothing would ever occur.

This basically repeated itself in all 200 nations every year when the grant went out. It was 100% well known what was happening with that money over years and decades; it was straight bribes. Put up some bullshit infrastructure and pocket the rest was the standard operating procedure. So it isn't hard to figure out why Sepp had so much staying power even as everyone was getting arrested around him over the last year. He had been kicking out $600M a year in bribes for years and years and that buys lots of support, even if you personally have to support him from your jail cell.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/so ... /81850202/" target="_blank