The biggest news in the world of sports this Wednesday noon is the suspension (provisional) of Sepp Blatter, the head of FIFA.
It's only supposed to be for 90 days, but that FIFA has even had to take this step indicates there's a real problem in the organization -- one that I still believe could end up with two soccer world sanctioning bodies, or none at all!!
It is clear to anyone paying attention that the match-fixers and FIFA corrupt officials are the only reason soccer has a world reach right now. I'd have to think those people an countries are going to shove back -- and probably quite hard -- in the near future.
(EDIT TO ADD 12:35 PM 10/7: And FIFA is trying to cover it up, according to Deadspin. A German with ties to covering up FIFA's misdeeds is one of the main people behind the nature of this suspension.)
Parenthetically, someone might want to investigate this "CONCACAF Cup" matchup. The United States and Mexico are going to contest an extra match, because each of the two countries won one of the previous two CONCACAF Gold Cups -- and the aggregate of the two is being used to determine CONCACAF's representative in the 2017 Confederations Cup in Russia.
Several Central American nations screamed FOUL at some of the officiating in the recently completed Gold Cup from this year. And CONCACAF admitted that "third party manipulation" probably occurred in the semifinal match with Panama (according to Yardbarker's article on the match on Saturday and the San Diego Union Tribune)!!
(So much so that the Panamanian team posed with a makeshift banner condemning CONCACAF's corruption. (For which Panama's soccer federation was fined $15,000.))
The United States had already won last year's Gold Cup. Had they won this year's, there would've been no extra match. Interestingly enough, the United States was eliminated in the first match of a doubleheader that night in Atlanta by Jamaica.
The controversies came in the second match, Mexico and Panama. This after Mexico had apparently been gifted a penalty in it's quarterfinal victory in the last minute of injury time. In the semifinal, a similar dodgy penalty (at the same point of the match!) by the top United States soccer referee, Mark Geiger, forced the match into extra time. Panama threatened to quit the match then and there, causing a 15-minute delay or so in the match. Two Panamanians were banned from the third-place match (a victory over the USA!) and their first CONCACAF World Cup Qualifier for insulting the referee.
It is now believed that the entire course of the tournament was plotted for extra money for CONCACAF by having this match -- and having this match be US vs. Mexico, the two (relative) powerhouses of CONCACAF.
Reasoning? Simple. Money. I was looking around and saw that there were theater simulcasts planned of the FOX Sports 1 broadcast of the match. The match will be played Saturday in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena -- which, as any soccer fan would know, actually IS a neutral venue (AT BEST!) for the United States.
No comments:
Post a Comment