Is FIFA’s Sepp Blatter good for football?
There has been a torrent of negative campaigns against Mr. Sepp Blatter and FIFA by England and the West following the decision to award both Russia and Qatar the hosting of the World Cup tournaments in 2018 & 2022 simultaneously.
Journalists and editors of major media organisations including the BBC have been waging a campaign to discredit the award and imply its been awarded following fraud and kickbacks changing hands and most recently the treatment of the workers.
The Europeans seem to want to control FIFA and revert back to their old tradition of making the World Cup an exclusive European/Latin American affair at the expense of the rest of the world. Till recently the World Cup was always been held in the Europe or Latin America with one team for every 4 countries in these continents qualifying to the finals in contrast to Asia where 16 teams play for 1 place. The complete disregard to the reputation of football was exemplified in the World Cup in 1982 that saw two European teams Germany & Austria fix their match to end with 1-0 win for Germany in a match that was described by some of the media as the most blatant match fixing game of the century, during that match players of both teams kept passing the ball to one other the whole match to ensure they both qualify at the expense of Algeria which got knocked off.
On the other hand FIFA under Sepp Blatter is a more professional organisation backed by major global brands and has made some positive changes namely moving the World Cup to different continents, increasing the number of Asian teams qualifying to the finals and investing more money in third world countries and encouraging youth football which is a great CSR initiative.
Mr Blatter is considered to be an angel by football heads of the developing world has been elected with overwhelming majority once more because he has made real change from the old FIFA that did little for developing world football.
