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comment by coffeesp00ns
coffeesp00ns  ·  3222 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Sepp Blatter Resigns

I guess now we'll see if Blatter is responsible for the current culture, or just the scapegoat.





tacocat  ·  3222 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The E60 report on FIFA pretty directly implicated him in corrupt culture but also portrayed him as an extension of the previous President. He was the General Secretary since 1981 and was groomed to succeed João Havelange. Blatter and Havelange oversaw the rise of the World Cup to its current popularity, largely through bribing smaller member states.

The reform candidate in the 1998 election was narrowly defeated. His election was influenced by bribery, I believe from the same Qatari man who brought the World Cup there for 2022. So Blatter probably made things a lot worse.

The whole special is on ESPN.com if you aren't one of those people who bitches about ads and in general about video not downloaded off of BitTorrent. It's worth watching but I was expecting it to be more about the Nepalese slaves building up Qatar which I'm more interested in as a news story and I'd like to see covered more.

user-inactivated  ·  3222 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Blatter won the election Friday something like 130 to 70, right? You gotta figure none of those 70 will vote for Platini, and some percentage of the Blatter fans will balk at his presumptive successor. So if someone can put together a dark horse campaign for the emergency election...

coffeesp00ns  ·  3222 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm sort of expecting some push for Prince Ali, who I expect to be no better than anyone else.