Japan's Fifa executive committee member, Junji Ogura has claimed that England's World Cup bid humiliation was a result of a backlash against the British media. Fifa president Sepp Blatter spoke to members of the executive committee about the "evil of the media" just before the vote.
I dont blame BBC's panorama or the british press. FIFA were never going to give this bid to England. FIFA want to spread the word of football. It's precisely because England already have the infrastructure that we were never going to win this bid, no matter how technically good it is.
It's also right that someone exposes the corruption at the heart of FIFA. After all it is amazing that this organisation, gets exceptions from tax and is protected from corruption in Switzerland. Bribery would not break Swiss anti-corruption laws because non-profit sporting entities are exempt from such legislation.
So lets give up on this, we are never going to win. I doesn't matter who we send for the 2026 world cup bid. We can't win and we won't win so lets stop wasting our time and instead expose more corruption at the heart of FIFA. The press no longer have to be concerned about winning anymore bids.
I think that FIFA are immune from any damage done by media investigations and they know it. The product is so prized that corruption in the bidding process is expected. That's the way that the real world works.
ReplyDeleteWell done to the BBC for airing the Panorama program that exposed a bit of this corruption. I was surprised at how many people thought that this program should have been rescheduled for after the vote or even dropped altogether - an implicit acceptance of the corruption and bribery that seems rife in FIFA.
I think the BBC was wrong to schedule it when they did.
ReplyDeleteWith rights and freedoms come responsibilities.
If FIFA were determined to give the World Cup to another country, more people would have watched a Panorama exposing them this Monday than last Monday.
What is the BBC's responsibility in this case? The responsibility not to damage the England World Cup bid, and therefore the Panorama program must be rescheduled? It wouldn't have made any difference and the program after the event would just have been dismissed as sour grapes. FIFA is riddled with corruption so much, much better to produce this evidence in a credible way before the vote.
ReplyDeleteThe FIFA exc already knew the BBC had done this report as they were asking the questions of them directly. Wouldn't of mattered if the program was shown before hand or not.
ReplyDeleteAlso if we delay because of the vote them are we not some how endorsing the corruption? We agree to it until after the vote. Let's face it with two votes including ours how many more would Emgland of got. 2 more? It's not enough.