The FIFA debacle
 

This is a question for the Europeans especially.

What are your thoughts with the FIFA corruption scandal? Now, I don't think there was a single soccer fan who actually thought that FIFA was free of corruption (or even that it wasn't knee deep in scandal), but I think the American attitude is that FIFA is a complete farce and embarassment. I can only imagine the attitude is similar in Europe.

I know that an American soccer journalist, Grant Wahl (Great US Soccer writer for CNNSI) wanted to run for president for FIFA as a joke/vote for a different guy candidate. Is there any similar rumblings overseas?

The Qatar vote was one of the biggest jokes in global sports, and the general consensus is Bin-Hammam dropped out to keep any re-vote chance from happening.

Thoughts?

Hopefully, it means soccer is over and the rest of the world can finally accept that baseball, basketball and American football are the only sports worth playing -- or more correctly worth watching.

i have been getting into soccer lately but fifa are the biggest bunch of d-bags in all of sports. they make the NFL owners look like boy scouts.

the refs are terrible. beyond terrible (remember the disallowed goal in the usa Algeria game?)

the shunning of technology is laughable (no goal-line sensor in the WC? no replay on goals or red cards?) ... and yes they are corrupt as the day is long.

the fact that this dude's punishment is to step down in 2013 pretty much says it all.

you came into the soccer forum to post this?

I hate to break it to you but soccer is trending upwards and it's not slowing down anytime soon.

FIFA and UEFA are and have been for as long as I can remember corrupt and conservative to a fault.

But I personally don't care about it that much because at the end of the day we love the game. So they sold the WC to Qatar, meh why would that sour me from the game.

Just last year we were bidding to stage the Euros. Us and the French were the last 2 standing and we were furious when Platini seemed to have favoured the French (they won) but it passed. It was news for about 3 days.


I have a question: I imagine more people know Blatter's name in the US then even in a soccer mad country like ours. Its a little hard to understand why you care for the administrative side of the game so much? It's not like they're fixing the matches.

And don't get me wrong there is the obligatory outrage in the media but thats about it...

I just read his piece. It's worth the read.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/201...acy/index.html