Last week Lord Triesman, the (former)Chairman of the British Bid to host the 2018 World Cup and (former) President of the English Football Association (FA) took an unexpected walk on the wild side.
Lord Triesman, the married, 66 year old former Labour Minister, met in a London cafe with a 37 year woman with whom he allegedly had an affair in 2008 who taped their meeting. On the tape he suggested that Spain may withdraw its bid to host the 2018 World Cup if Russia, which is not in this year's World Cup but is competing to host the 2018 Cup would help Spain to bribe referees during this summer's tournament.
The English FA faxed "grovelling" letters of apology to the Spanish and Russians as part of a "damage limitation" exercise. The English Press, (except The Mail on Sunday which printed the story) and the English public has seen this as a major PR fiasco and have pilloried both Lord Triesman and the woman, a 37 year old civil servant.
The point is that in England Lord Triesman resigned from both posts immediately and the nation has labeled him Villain #1 for torpedoing the English bid and questioned the patriotism of the Mail on Sunday for printing the story. The English press, which happily does stings like the News of the World's expose of Duchess "Fergie" because of the "social importance" of the story have suddenly found that the Lord Triesman story was beyond the Pale and could not possibly be in the public interest!
In Germany on the other hand, the focus is on what they see is another example of corruption in the world football association FIFA. The German state-owned TV stations ARD/ZDF openly discuss the Russian bid as being characterised by a combination of Oligarchs and Politicians supported by criminal kingpins such as Alimsan Tochtachunow who is accused of manipulating the results for Ice Skating in the 2002 Winter Olympics. Mr Tochtachunow has met with FIFA President Sepp Blatter and is currently in hiding seeking to avoid an international arrest warrant.
Their report goes on to mention that although the English have apologised profusely for even suggesting that such "deals" are possible, that everyone in the FIFA "scene" knows that it is precisely such "deals" that determine things.
Spain's Football Chief, Angel Maria Villar LLona is also Chief of FIFA's Referee Association "in which several very corrupt functionaries sit" such as Vice-Commission Chief Ricardo Teixeira who is also Brasil's Football Chief and continually under investigation for corruption as well as Poland's Michal Listkiewicz who is strongly supported by Mr Blatter and is currently under suspicion for major corruption affairs including bribing of Referees and other scandals back in Poland.
Lord Triesman, the married, 66 year old former Labour Minister, met in a London cafe with a 37 year woman with whom he allegedly had an affair in 2008 who taped their meeting. On the tape he suggested that Spain may withdraw its bid to host the 2018 World Cup if Russia, which is not in this year's World Cup but is competing to host the 2018 Cup would help Spain to bribe referees during this summer's tournament.
The English FA faxed "grovelling" letters of apology to the Spanish and Russians as part of a "damage limitation" exercise. The English Press, (except The Mail on Sunday which printed the story) and the English public has seen this as a major PR fiasco and have pilloried both Lord Triesman and the woman, a 37 year old civil servant.
The point is that in England Lord Triesman resigned from both posts immediately and the nation has labeled him Villain #1 for torpedoing the English bid and questioned the patriotism of the Mail on Sunday for printing the story. The English press, which happily does stings like the News of the World's expose of Duchess "Fergie" because of the "social importance" of the story have suddenly found that the Lord Triesman story was beyond the Pale and could not possibly be in the public interest!
In Germany on the other hand, the focus is on what they see is another example of corruption in the world football association FIFA. The German state-owned TV stations ARD/ZDF openly discuss the Russian bid as being characterised by a combination of Oligarchs and Politicians supported by criminal kingpins such as Alimsan Tochtachunow who is accused of manipulating the results for Ice Skating in the 2002 Winter Olympics. Mr Tochtachunow has met with FIFA President Sepp Blatter and is currently in hiding seeking to avoid an international arrest warrant.
Their report goes on to mention that although the English have apologised profusely for even suggesting that such "deals" are possible, that everyone in the FIFA "scene" knows that it is precisely such "deals" that determine things.
Spain's Football Chief, Angel Maria Villar LLona is also Chief of FIFA's Referee Association "in which several very corrupt functionaries sit" such as Vice-Commission Chief Ricardo Teixeira who is also Brasil's Football Chief and continually under investigation for corruption as well as Poland's Michal Listkiewicz who is strongly supported by Mr Blatter and is currently under suspicion for major corruption affairs including bribing of Referees and other scandals back in Poland.
Now however it gets even more complicated. Lord Coe, who was the Chairman of the FIFA Ethics Commission but left that post last year to assume the role as Head of the 2012 London Olympics. He has recently fired off a bevy of articles in the UK press saying everything with the UK bid is fine and that the whole affair should be put to bed. FIFA for its part has announced that its Ethics Commission will look into it.
Funny that. The former Chairman of the Ethics Commission Lord Coe has announced that Lord Treisman was talking nonsense-there is no corruption in football. No corruption?
More likely "don't mention corruption". The current FIFA Vice President for England, Geoff Thompson, was actually given the job as a quick-fix after John McBeth was thrown out of the FIFA Executive.
The cause for his dismissal:an in-depth interview in which he spoke frankly about the backroom deals and corruption in FIFA, specifically naming the President Mr Blatter and the Vice-President Jack Warner. He went on to discuss how Mr Warner became a multi-millionaire through his corrupt dealings under the FIFA umbrella, and that he wouldn't shake hands with him "for fear of him stealing one of his fingers!"
I doubt whether the Ethics Commission will find any corruption.
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