It turns out that the only thing more ridiculous than Fifa’s sponsors not calling for Sepp Blatter’s immediate resignation was their finally getting around to calling for it. After months – or, rather, years – of studied inaction, the various purveyors of trans fats and piss-beer and sundry obesity-epidemic drivers who serve as Fifa’s self-parodic partners have suggested that the Fifa president may care to step down and spend more time helping police with their inquiries.
To paraphrase Coca-Cola, Blatter’s Fifa is as “tarnish[ed]” as a tooth that’s spent the night in a glass of their product. “An obstacle to the reform process,” intoned Budweiser’s maker, Anheuser Busch InBev. McDonald’s was as worried about “the best interests of the game” as it might be if it heard the players were living on its wares. This holy trinity were latterly joined by Visa, though Blatter still looks unlikely to pull off the clean sweep and get the remaining sponsors, Kia, Adidas and Gazprom, to suggest it might be time for him to go.
As for the sponsors who have called for his immediate departure, Blatter “respectfully disagrees” with them – with all the respect that can be mustered someone who probably has Après moi le déluge tattooed on his arse. For once, though, I find myself right with the old rogue on this. There is a certain perverse charm to what appears to be Sepp’s final mission: exposing the weaknesses and wickedness of everyone who has profited from his regime down the decades. The list is almost as endless as the trough was bottomless. The sponsors, who regarded a collective $1.6bn over the last World Cup cycle as a price worth paying, do not deserve anything other than contempt for their sudden pretence to principles. Blatter must resign? Or they’ll do what?
Not a lot, on the form book. Fifa’s sponsors have looked the other way as long as anyone can remember, and even now only care to issue threats which everyone can see are empty. Money has finally talked – but I think we all know that money is not about to walk.
Therefore, to adapt the late Denis Healey, being lectured to by the likes of McDonald’s is like being savaged by a dead cow. And not even the good cuts. A statement from McDonald’s calling for Blatter to resign serves the same purpose as the salad on the fast-food chain’s menu. It is there for appearances’ sake, a token flash of chlorophyll to permit business as usual. The firm’s 11th-hour statement on Fifa could only have been more laughable had it been delivered by Ronald McDonald himself, in a ransom video masterminded by Hamburglar.
And so too with Coca-Cola and Visa and Budweiser, whose non-ultimatum only leaves one with the conclusion that silence would have been more dignified. The only thing this episode does serve to highlight is a fact that few can bear to think about too much, which is that the new Fifa – when it comes – is going to look very much like the old Fifa.
Its sponsors, we can safely assume, will be unchanged. As for its leadership, the current choice of new brooms includes a prince from a non-democracy, a South Korean billionaire and Fifa insider who nodded Blatterism through for the best part of two decades before deciding opportunely to speak out (and is now whining about being taken out by the “hitman” that is Blatter’s ethics committee), and Michel Platini, whose reputation appears to have a half-life shorter than most highly radioactive isotopes.
Clearly, we may expect some of our new brooms to withdraw from the process in the coming weeks. But for all the sound and fury, the idea that any of the names that may spring up to replace them will be candidates offering a radical departure seems vanishingly small. The structures that support a Fifa which puts itself before its sport are far too deeply embedded for even the current reckoning to terminally disrupt them. Fifa will still override the constitutions of host nations, still operate without transparency and away from the reaches of the tax authorities, still draw its power from a vast, complex and shadowy web of local associations with no earthly interest in reform.
No, I have never seen the rumoured ancient Fifa scrolls – they are believed to be kept in a lead-lined vault somewhere deep beneath the organisation’s Zurich HQ. But if they do foretell of a golden child who will one day preside over a truly clean Fifa, then I can only think this saviour has yet to be even born.
Surprise backing
There is one bright spot for José Mourinho, as Alex Ferguson appears to debunk one of the more demeaning vignettes of recent years. Mourinho has always been at pains to stress that he ruled himself out of the Manchester United job (as well he might). But in a new documentary, Ferguson appears to confirm this.
Back in 2013, you may recall, it was claimed in a book that Mourinho had set his heart on the United job, only to spiral into despair when he realised it was going the way of David Moyes. The then Real Madrid manager was alleged to have checked into a hotel and spent a sleepless night literally sobbing down the phone to his agency. A sad loss to the canon, that one. Still, if things continue as they are, there’s every chance Mourinho could replace it by Christmas by doing a Partridge. Which is to say, gorging on Toblerone and driving to Dundee in his bare feet.
