FIFA: Fair play or fair to pay? (News Feature)

By Peter Jordan Oct 18, 2010, 16:05 GMT

Berlin - Joseph Blatter has often gone on record calling on fans, players and officials to play fair.

It has become something of a catchphrase for the FIFA president.

But revelations in the past weekend's Sunday Times that two members of the FIFA executive had appeared willing to sell their votes for the 2022 World Cup host country would - if proven true - be yet another example of how not all in the FIFA family live up to the president's high moral expectations.

The revelations surrounding Amos Adamu from Nigeria and Reynald Temarii from Tahiti, which FIFA has said will be fully investigated, is just the latest in a number of scandals involving football's controlling body.

Blatter himself has previously been named in a number of these affairs, and in 2002 two football officials claimed that people close to Blatter had offered money to vote for the Swiss national during the 1998 presidential elections when he took over from Joao Havelange.

One of them, the former vice president of the Somali football federation, Mohiadin Hassan Ali, admitted that he had taken money.

'We accepted money to vote on behalf of Somalia FA for JS Blatter in the FIFA presidential elections in Paris,' he said at the time.

Similar allegations surfaced about the 2002 presidential election when Blatter faced African challenger Issa Hayatou in a bid to be re- elected for a second time. His main accuser at the time, then- secretary general Michel Zen-Ruffinen, left FIFA shortly afterwards.

Another FIFA official whose name has been linked with numerous scandals is Vice President Jack Warner, who was accused of personally enriching himself when his native Trinidad & Tobago hosted the 2001 Under-17 world championships.

A few years later, a report by the auditing firm Ernest & Young said that Warner had personally benefited from the sale of World Cup tickets.

Earlier this year, the prosecutor's office in the Swiss town of Zug said that several FIFA members received provisions from marketing group ISL/ISMM that they did not hand over to the football body.

Also involved in a scandal, though not accused of enriching himself, was the present FIFA secretary general, Jerome Valcke.

As marketing director, he was responsible for a FIFA sponsorship fiasco involving MasterCard and Visa.

After the issue was taken to court, a United States judge said that Valcke had lied to the financial institutions. He was subsequently moved out of FIFA, which said: 'FIFA's negotiations breached its business principles. FIFA cannot possibly accept such conduct among its own employees.'

An appeal court later vacated the judgement and even though FIFA paid MasterCard 90 million dollars to drop legal action, Valcke came back to FIFA in an even stronger position.

South Africa, who earlier this year hosted a very successful World Cup, also had reason to cry foul when they lost the right to host the 2006 World Cup to Germany by a single vote.

The decisive element in the elections had been the decision by Oceania delegate Charles Dempsey to abstain. The New Zealander had been instructed by the confederation to vote for South Africa once England had been eliminated.

He did not and Germany received the go-ahead. Had he voted for South Africa, Blatter would have been in the difficult situation of having to cast a deciding vote.

Dempsey said afterwards that 'unbearable pressure' had been brought on him to vote by European groups, but he also believed that his FIFA colleagues thought he was accepting money from South Africa.

Surprisingly, not many officials have left FIFA under clouds of controversy.

Botswana's Ismail Bhamjee, who was a FIFA executive committee member, resigned in 2006 after being caught selling World Cup tickets in a newspaper sting similar to the one that fingered Adamu and Temarii.

Bhamjee admitted selling 12 tickets at three times their face value for a game between England and Trinidad and Tobago, and was sent home from the World Cup in disgrace.

For some, Bhamjee had simply been made a scapegoat to show the organization's commitment to fight corruption and had been made to fall because he was an easy target.

It could well be, if the allegations surrounding Adamu and Temarii are shown to be true, that they will also be forced into the football wilderness.

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