Biscuit baron is bait for more Blatter ballacks
One vital piece of football news got lost amongst last week’s copious build-up and subsequent fallout from England’s abysmal start to the Ashes.
Eggert Magnusson’s £85 million takeover of one of this country’s most venerable footballing institutions - West Ham- did not go uncovered but definitely should have been examined more by the broadsheet press.
The Icelandic biscuit baron’s takeover of the East End side means that six Premiership clubs are now in foreign ownership.
With many football clubs being publically listed companies, there is nothing wrong with international investors coming into the English game and West Ham fans are predominantly delighted that Terrence Brown has finally exited the chairman’s seat at the Boleyn Ground.
But change is not necessarily a good thing and motives of investors must be closely scrutinised.
One comment last week from an influential figure in the world game summed up my sentiments entirely.
On the face of it the plea that “we need to be careful football doesn’t end up in the hands of the people who want football to serve them instead of them serving football” oozes rationale.
At least it does before you realise it was uttered by one Joseph S. Blatter.
Now most football fans know that the FIFA president is a slippery individual and Blatter openly acknowledged his image of chief pariah by avoiding the presentation of the World Cup in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium on July 9th for fear of being roundly booed once more.
We have all heard rumours of corruption at football’s top table but it was not until I had read Andrew Jennings’ exhaustive account of FIFA’s skulduggery in his book, FOUL!, that the hearsay was finally confirmed.
Jennings has spent years investigating FIFA to the extent that he is now officially persona non grata at the game’s governing body.
Through his bulging contact book he managed to get his hands on FIFA accounts, which made illuminating if not sickening reading.
Corruption has been at the heart of FIFA ever since the Englishman Sir Stanley Rous ceded governance to the more media and business-savvy Brazilian Joao Havelange in 1974.
This succession ushered in a more ruthless, commercial ethos into the corridors of FIFA’s Zurich HQ.
Sepp Blatter has reveled in this environment, worming his way to the top and once there, lavishly rewarding himself.
And this is why I seriously challenge the veracity of Blatter’s reservations about football serving its administrators.
In fact this remark reeks of hypocrisy.
Blatter has amply taken advantage of FIFA funds, meant “for the good of the game”, by treating himself to numerous luxurious trips abroad with all the deluxe trimmings.
In fact he is on another one of these jolly-ups right now, headlining the football business convention, Soccerex, in Dubai.
He continues to sanction a daily spending allowance of $500 despite reportedly earning an annual salary in the region of £1.7 million.
Jennings also reveals how Blatter plundered FIFA funds to bankroll his presidential re-election campaign in 2002.
This clearly put him at an advantage over his independently-financed rival Lennart Johansson and also severely contravened FIFA rules.
So far Blatter has yet to pay for his flagrant corruption but gradually, with the help of imperious investigative reporting by journalists like Jennings, football fans are wising up to Sepp’s sleaze.
The brazen criticism of the Premiership’s foreign owners on the day that Magnusson put pen to paper reaffirmed Blatter’s boundless arrogance.
The first signs look promising but it is far too early to say whether Magnusson and his dollar billionaire backer, Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, keep their promises and enrich the English game.
They may be foreign, inevitably there will be doubts, but they will have to do a hell of a lot wrong before they even near the league of sleaze in which Blatter is the sole competitor.
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