Originally posted by neoboy259
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no, read back a page or so. -
So the short answer is 'nothing'.Originally posted by abigsmurf View Post
You're in a foreign country, you know they have certain rules etc regarding certain things. You play ball, go to the football, enjoy the games, end of story.
Moving on.......Was listening to Talk Sport yesterday (They make me laugh on Drive Time, at them rather than with them but still) and Durham seems to think Arshavin shouldn't be welcomed back into English football for being patriotic and supporting his countries bid. Thoughts?Comment
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You're right, it has nothing to do with football.
Everyone knows that only straight people play or watch football. We shouldn't care about how they oppress homosexuals and how we're propping up a regime that does so.
Any fans who face a decade in a foreign prison just for having a trace amount of cannabis on their shoe? They should learn to watch where they step!
All those activities that add to the enjoyment for watching a game? What matters is the football on the pitch, not how much the people who've paid £2000 to follow their team have a good time! I'm sure the man of the match will enjoy their sparkling grape juice!Comment
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The only sour grapes in this thread are the ones clumped round your ring!Originally posted by paul View Post
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Edit: Dammit Van it took me ages to type that then you go in there and post before me........I don't want no sloppy seconds......
ABS: I'm sure someone else less drunk than I might be tempted to rip you apart for most, if not all, of what you've written but let me distill it for you........
LOL, you have yet to give a reason other than "I'm pissed that we didn't get the WC and to top it all some sand rats with backwards ideas are getting it before we do!! Wah Wah Wah"
I'm not saying it's right/wrong/sideways/green/purple (purple myself because it looks so much better....)
But I see no place for having a pop at middle eastern cultural/religious beliefs just because you didn't get the WC in 2018. Far as I'm concerned football needs to be above/below/sideways to that crap. Lets talk football, lets have a proper discussion!!! (Note, about to make a hypocrit of myself)
And yet I'll try again. So then. Arshavin?
(we all know the answer so I'm really just doing this to root out the tools that think Durham is right....)Comment
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I think that fact that no-one has repsonded to the Arshavin thing has kind've answered your question for you.Comment
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Erm, not just my opinion, but the opinion of world renowned and respected sports journalists, is that good enough for you?....Originally posted by paul View Post
"In the back seat was the man who has it all. Not FIFA president Sepp Blatter, but the man who created him and the soccer empire now crumbling under the weight of its own corruption.
Brazil's Joao Havelange, now aged 84, had FIFA in his iron grasp from 1974 until 1998, when he pulled all world soccer's levers to place his protege (Blatter) on his throne.
He had little choice. The front runner in early 1998 to replace Havelange was Europe's Lennart Johansson. The big, blond Swede was globally respected for his integrity. He had to be prevented from discovering FIFA's dark secrets and the sleazy truth about Havelange's 24-year dictatorial reign.
And Havelange, forced to quit the presidency after the debacle of awarding this year's World Cup Finals to both Korea and Japan, was unwilling to surrender the life of privilege and luxury provided by the world of football.
Blatter, now 65, won the presidency, and Havelange took the title of honorary president, continuing to enjoy his lavish FIFA perks. His chauffeur from the old days has been kept on and was even flown out to Mali.
He was reportedly seen piloting the honorary president around Salt Lake City earlier this month. In the clubby world of sports lead-ers, Havelange is also a senior member of the International Olympic Committee.
He would never have lasted as FIFA president without the German entrepreneur Horst Dassler.
The legendary boss of the adidas company, Dassler routinely arranged the election of the presidents of the IOC, world athletics and many other federations. In return, his Swiss-based marketing company, International Sport and Leisure, acquired exclusive marketing contracts.
Dassler died in 1987 and adidas has since changed hands. Jean Marie Weber became president of ISL and continued that company's close relations with sports leaders.
Havelange had taken power with a mixture of promises and manipulations. Even then, Africa was seen as the crucial voting bloc and one observer of the vote in Frankfurt in 1974 claimed it was won with 'small brown envelopes going into big black hands'.
It was alleged that diplomats based in Europe turned up to vote, instead of members of their national federations.
Havelange had toured the world with Brazil's sublime soccer team and visited countries almost unknown to the incumbent, Britain's Sir Stanley Rous.
Havelange promised an expansion in coaching and tournaments. It would all benefit football. The problem was that he did not have the money to keep his election pledges. Dassler solved his problem. He was given the marketing contract, sweet-talked the Coca-Cola company to back the alien sport of soccer - and everybody got rich.
As FIFA grew, Dassler hand-picked Blatter to run the new soccer programmes. Blatter was taken to Dassler's base in Landesheim, France, and trained in his ways of doing business.
At the end of 1997, Johansson, then 68, was the only candidate to replace Havelange. Blatter attended the Confederations Cup, held that year in Saudi Arabia, then flew off to Qatar in the Gulf to meet his backers. But he refused to declare that he was a candidate.
As UEFA fumed, he delayed announcing his candidature until late March 1998. Blatter's initial problem was in finding a major soccer nation to sponsor him. He recruited Michel Platini, the celebrated former France captain, to his election team and the French federation duly announced that it was switching its support away from Johansson.
Blatter was up and running. It was widely rumoured that French president Jacques Chirac, himself under investigation for sleaze, placed personal calls to the presidents of French-speaking countries in Africa, asking them to pressurise their football federations to back Blatter.
Behind the scenes Havelange waged a relentless campaign for Blatter. He should have been neutral, remained above the fray. Instead he secretly promised cash and favours to delegates to the Paris election in return for votes for Blatter. Soccernet has acquired some of the correspondence.
It seems that Havelange was working in concert with Mohamed Bin Hamman from Qatar, alleged to be the paymaster behind much of Blatter's vote-gathering in Africa.
In early April, Havelange wrote to the general secretary of Somali soccer 'confirming my promise to you concerning the presence of two delegates for the FIFA Congress in Paris. The cost of travelling for one delegate will be charged to FIFA, as decided, and the other, as I promised you, will be my responsibility, as well as the cost of accommodation.'
The FIFA president added the promise of two free trips to Brazil. Midway through April, Havelange was at it again. This time he was courting the president and general secretary of the East African soccer federation.
He promised: 'The FIFA finance department will soon pay you the amount of $50,000 for the functioning of your secretariat for the next two years. Please send FIFA your bank address and number of account.'
It is surprising that FIFA did not already have on file the bank details of one of its affiliated federations. Havelange went on to pledge a free fax machine and photocopier to each association in the region.
Even more surprising was that Antonio Matarrese of UEFA, the vice-president of FIFA's finance committee, was unaware of the payments. When he found out on the eve of the election, he wrote to the finance director demanding to know who had approved the payment, what bank account it had gone to and for a list of all similar transactions in the previous three months.
He was denied this information. Havelange was even more explicit in a letter to Hong Kong's Timothy Fok, whose tycoon father Henry had been a member of FIFA's executive committee.
Havelange asked Fok Jnr to 'use your influence on the federations of Hong Kong, Macau, China and North Korea' to vote for Blatter. Following Blatter's election, Henry Fok was given FIFA's Order of Merit and last year Timothy Fok was appointed to the IOC. Earlier this month the IOC appointed a Qatar prince, aged 21, and a Saudi prince, aged 23, to its ranks.
Blatter went into the Paris election on June 8 with the backing of Jack Warner, who has controlled the 35 votes in the Caribbean, Central America and North America for the last decade, and his American general secretary, Chuck Blazer.
Blatter could also count on the 10 votes from South America, heavily influenced by Havelange's son-in-law, Ricardo Teixeira, the corrupt boss of Brazilian football, and Paraguay's Nicolas Leoz, also a member of FIFA's executive committee.
Europe, which had initially been 100 per cent behind Johansson, was peeled like an onion, and the English FA was among the defectors. Africa was also divided, but until the result was declared, few outside Blatter's camp realised how devastating was the damage to African unity.
In a last-minute gesture to rally his troops, Havelange strode across the floor of the FIFA convention and publicly embraced Saudi Arabia's Prince Faisal Fahd Abdul Aziz.
It was rumoured that the Saudis, along with Qatar, had invested $5million to fund Blatter. The prince died a year later, a victim, said his critics, of debauchery and drug addiction.
The embrace was the cue for the voting. As Blatter's camp had predicted, he defeated Johansson by 111 votes to 80. The Swede was devastated. With tears in his eyes, he conceded victory.
At Blatter's Press conference, German reporter Jens Wienreich asked him about allegations that his campaign had been funded from the Gulf and he replied: 'The match is over. The players have already gone to the dressing-room, I will not respond.'
That evening Blatter went to Le Meridien Hotel where most rank-and-file delegates were staying, some at the expense of their national associations, others on the largesse of Havelange and his backers in the Gulf.
Blatter schmoozed through the lobby, shaking a hand here, clasping a shoulder there. Later that night, the mood changed when Issa Hayatou, president of African soccer, arrived, roused from his bed at the Hotel Bristol by a call telling him that bundles of cash were being handed out to delegates who had voted for Blatter.
'Unfortunately, by the time I arrived it had gone quiet,' he said later. The Empire was intact.
Havelange had seamlessly secured the succession. World football was now a trinket owned and shame-lessly displayed by oil billionaires from the Gulf whose national soccer teams have yet to make an impact on the game.
It was not to last. The wounds from the dirty campaign ran deep and the sores would not heal. Blatter lacked the indomitable arrogance of Havelange and was unable to dispel rumours that the election had been bought. Europe would never forgive him for the election.
Asian football, divided between the East which supported Johansson and the Gulf which had bankrolled Blatter, were united in revolt at the FIFA Congress in Los Angeles in 1999, when Blatter denied them an additional place in the World Cup Finals.
UEFA stepped in and offered help with the compromise of a play-off. Iran, however, were unable to capitalise on the opportunity, losing to the Republic of Ireland.
The debacle over the hosting of the 2006 World Cup Finals weakened Blatter further. Africa was outraged that he did not keep his campaign promise to send the championships to South Africa.
Remarkably, Blatter was trying to recycle the promises in Tokyo yesterday. Oceania, fierce Blatter supporters, were being seduced with the prospect of an automatic World Cup Finals place.
Africa, increasingly sceptical, was promised the possibility of a jointly hosted World Cup in 2010 and the fiercely anti-Blatter Asians were told they would have to earn an extra spot in the 2006 Finals.
There seems as much cynicism this week as there was in July last year when Blatter was approaching a potentially damaging defeat at the conference in Buenos Aires.
Criticism was growing about Warner's style of leading North and Central America (CONCACAF) and so the only solid core of support seemed to come from Latin America. So how did Blatter survive?"
Andrew Jennings is the award-winning author of three books tackling the subject of corruption inside the International Olympic Committee.Last edited by Spooky Mulder; 03-12-2010, 17:17.Comment
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I remember something about Johansson being screwed over during the voting round.
If you compare both UEFA European championships and FIFA World Championships, the UEFA tournaments give the impression that they aren't as controversial. The FIFA 2002 world cup was beyond ridiculous. If South Korea matches weren't fixed (or manipulated by the oldest trick in the book; put the tourneys worst refs on those games), I'll eat my damned shoe.Comment
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Mulder, I hope you copied and pasted rather than having to type that out!
An interesting read.
It would have been nice to have gotten the Finals. We've certainly got the infrastructure but if it came down to money we were always going to be beaten.Comment
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Kinda telling how interested people are in the friendly tomorrow.
I see Gerrard has had one of his unfortunate 3 day injuries that seem to occur only when there's an England friendly.Comment
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I actually live with a Danish girl, so if we lose tomorrow I'll never hear the end of it.Comment
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Always nice to see Frank Suck Your Cock Lampard has been made captain.Comment
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I'll probably watch it but I'm not that bothered about the result.Comment
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