FIFA Bureaucrats Arrested, to be extradited to US

I am an odious, senile old windbag too and intend to stand against Blatter in 2019 unless he's already on Alcatraz.

 

Looks like Michel's located all the McDonald's drive-thrus in Zurich then.

 

it's almost impossible to believe he used to be one of the best players in the world. fat ex-pros (with the exception of fat ronaldo) lose so much of their sheen

 

Seemed reasonable to me at the time. Still does really. The last sentence may have been a bit harsh. Sod it.

 

Can we have a list why Blatter (and Platini) hates us so much? ... I'll start with;

• The formation of the Premier League

• Oh er! and this

 

Whisky's for p00fs .... oops

Real men drink beer

 

Blatter has a strangely shaped head. A high forehead and an even higher peak at the back. This suggests either that:

a. He is actually rather intelligent or,

b. That's where he keeps his 'bung box'.

 

It was indeed the Sunday Times, supported by Panorama, that produced the evidence which started off an investigation into the corruption that we all already knew existed. If you could bring yourself to read the evil Murdoch press, you'd see how Blatter is involved. And do you really think we would have been given the World Cup had the Sunday Times Beeb not exposed the crookedness? After all, we hadn't handed out all those bribes.

No doubt you also think that Robert Mugabe and Young Kim don't deserve their bad press.

 

I think today might be the day to start, Kelso.

 

What would the FA's reaction have been had we won the right to hold the 2018 WC?

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/fifa-odious-corrupt-fiefdom-fa-5787882

 

If I remember rightly, France's support for Blatter was linked to aircraft sales to the Gulf. Anybody involved in skulduggery in the past (and that includes Spain, who did a voting trade with Russia) will support Blatter to buy time until it all comes out. That's why Blatter stood for election again. The sooner the powers-that-be are off the scene, the sooner lots of other people will be exposed.

 

I've no objection to the ST. I never buy a Sunday paper at all. I do the Guardian Mon-Fri and that's quite enough without further, over-priced, weekend offerings that I'd need a wheelbarrow to get home with.

Edit: Or are you saying there's another big spread in the ST today that's worth taking a look at?

 

We were strong favourites so yes I think we had a chance.

So far the only bribes I've seen regarding that bid are the ones the ST offered although Qatar's bid is seemingly infected since. Without evidence you certainly can't say we wouldn't have got it without the Fifa backlash.

 

Favourites with who? The same crowd that seem to know all about WFC's contract negotiations and change their figures with the weather? Why would you expect to see the bribes? Were you expecting an e-mail detailing them for you? We got ONE vote GF! If the ST article and the Panorama programme made a difference, do you really think it made that much?

As for the ST's and Panorama's content and timing. They were both conducting some investigative journalism. I'm all for that if it's conducted properly and into an area of genuine public interest and am not too bothered whether it's the Guardian, the ST or Panorama that are doing it. The results of those investigations are likely to be delivered at a time of maximum impact, in this case at the climax of the World Cup bidding process. Why should the ST or Panorama have, as a more important consideration, the potential affect that might have on our own bid? They are simply exposing wrongdoing to maximum affect. There's no smoke without fire. Sometimes that's not true. But when the smoke is so thick and cloying it's difficult to breath you can be pretty sure there's a big fire somewhere.

In fairness, I've been critical of the press, and yes the Murdoch press, of hampering our World Cup prospects in the past. Pretending to get behind our boys one minute and then exposing some puerile 'scandal' that undermines them the next. The best example was the Sun delivering on John Terry's affair a few weeks before SA 2010. An affair with the ex-girlfriend of an ex-teammate. Banal stuff, of interest to only the most pathetic voyeur, yet it meant Terry didn't go to SA as our skipper. And whatever you might think of John Terry, he was an excellent servant for England both as player and captain. So the distinction between that and the ST article is that one's puerile tosh that undermines our chances whereas the other is a serious piece of investigative journalism genuinely in the public interest. Both published by the 'Murdoch press'.

I contend that your issue with the ST here is really nothing much to do at all with timing or content but everything to do with your issues with the Murdoch press per se, something you've freely admitted to in the past. Imho, sometimes they're wrong, but sometimes they're right too.

 

Do you ever sleep kelso, I thought I was a bit of an insomniac, but you always seem to be around :yawn1:

 

TBH I didn't even associate the ST with Murdoch at the time but as soon as the story broke I was certain our bid was scuppered ... one vote is one vote more than I expected from that point on. That's because they mostly vote the way Blatter wants them to and Blatter was non too shy with his displeasure with the 'Engleesh', you've also seen this week the volume of his support. The world's press outside the UK were also full of the same opinion, we actually handed the WC to Russia on a big golden plate, the consensus being previously that Blatter was looking favourably to our bid. However the British media just focussed on the fact that some Fifa members were corruptible (as if we didn't know) and their rights to publish (when did you ever see Sky criticise their owner?) and anyway the press all stick together for fear of reprisals. Foreign media mostly took the line that we English were trying to influence the vote's outcome (and maybe we were but if we did then someone got their sums very badly wrong).

The only smoke that was thick and cloying was from the fires the ST started themselves and without the scandal I'm pretty certain we'd have managed the magic seven votes we needed, more even because to that point IMO Blatter was actually with us, I know the Germans were.

 

Yep. Get seven hours or so most days but often at weird times. If I can't sleep in the middle of the night, I don't lie there contemplating the ceiling but come on here and mess about when no-one's looking!

 

I hadn't actually read it at the time I posted. It's an excellent paper, but I agree you have to decide between reading it or having a life. This week's contained plenty of detail about the FIFA Congress and a recap of their earlier exposes which started the whole thing off, but the main thing I learned was that Sepp is going around with his attractive 49-year-old girlfriend who happens to be married to somebody else. Apparently he's got through three wives already. I wonder what could attract them to the 79-year-old multi-millionaire, whose FIFA salary is apparently a state secret?

 

The Times/Sunday Times and Sun are both owned by Murdoch, but are aimed at different markets.

My reading of Murdoch is that he genuinely loves quality journalism and is willing to pump money into the Times/ST and The Australian for news-gathering and investigations that their circulations could never support. He also genuinely loves money. He funds these two passions with downmarket journalism and the appalling Fox News in the US.

It was the Sunday Times (admittedly pre-Murdoch) that exposed the thalidamide scandal, and I've seen no loss of quality since Rupe took it over. He also saved The Times from going bust.

Whether or not Rupe is a nice man - I've no idea - don't write off his quality papers because you don't like his populist rubbish. Though even that is better than the Daily Mail.

 

Unfortunately I can't do that the Mrs won't let me. But I still often get up in the middle of the night like you, but I end up dosing on and off most of the day, instead of having a proper straight 6 or 7 hours like you, as and when you want it :yawn1:

 

I know it is unlikely but I so much hope that the US FBI asks Canada to arrest Blatter when he arrives here for Womens' World Cup.

 

You will have seen that his sidekick Jerome Valcke, who is being accused of slipping $10 million to a no doubt deserving party, says he is "too busy" to go to Canada.

 

The FBI have clearly uncovered actionable evidence of wrongdoing by various FIFA officials, hence the extradition requests being made.

Concurrently, the Swiss authorities have opened up investigations into corruption in the bidding process for Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022. Why have they suddenly done that?

It's not rocket science: the FBI have uncovered evidence to that effect which has been passed on to the Swiss authorities. This evidence triggered the current domestic investigations going on against FIFA.

I don't think the ST story had any bearing on the Russia win because at this point, I'm pretty much convinced that Russia and Qatar bought their "wins". We could have tendered the best bid in history and been completely sidelined.

 

Blatter resigned today

:mengoal:

 

Not enough likes for this.

 

Link http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/32982449

 

Wahaay, thank fook!..never thought he'd go...

 

Yesss

 

Fu*king happy day!

 

You can run but you can't hide Sepp....

 

They must be closing in on him. Something has to have prompted this turnaround.

 

Heppy days everybody. Heppy days.

 

Platini to run for the next fifa president?

 

Agreed or it could be sponsor pressure. Lets hope we don't get a clone of him.