Blatter: Four years late and murky

As Joseph Blatter declared stepping down as president of the Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA) on Tuesday amid the brouhaha of US-led corruption investigation, the first thing that strikes the mind is that people should know when to leave. When Blatter got embroiled with Qatar's Mohammad Bin Hammam in the build-up to the same FIFA presidential elections in 2011 and duly got elected unopposed after the Qatari's cloudy exit, and eventual life ban from 'all football-related activities', that was the time for announcing his departure. He did not and dangled on to the post for four more years to fight the next election and now got embroiled in things the whole world has come to detest. He has not been charged with any wrong-doing as yet, but after the US investigators said Blatter was also in being investigated, there was hardly any earth beneath his feet. People at top positions should leave at the pinnacle of their achievement, not when mired in controversy. Blatter's announcement has been four years too late.

At 79, and physically perfect and strong as most Europeans would be, Swiss-born Blatter was definitely the best possible option for FIFA over the years. Asian and African countries came to like him. There is a part in the Bangladesh Football Federation headquarters named `Blatter Corner'. Blatter, along with Joao Havelange before him, brought the World Cup to Asia and Africa. However, apart from the question of timing of one's exit, one fundamental question that few people are discussing is the moral ground of electing a paid employee of a voluntary organisation as its president. This turns the definition of voluntarism on its head.

Blatter started serving FIFA in the mid-seventies and then became its paid General Secretary in 1981 under the affectionate tutelage of president Joao Havelange, the Brazilian. During Havelange's 24 years of FIFA presidency, Blatter got all the focus into the so-called third world and was part of the Brazilian's inner-team that made FIFA the big money organisation and omnipresent body that it is today. Blatter carried on Havelange's work over the last seventeen years with aplomb and dexterity, but that does not take away the basic question of his election in 1998 when he succeeded Havelange: should world football heads have elected a paid employee as its president. It is rumoured, Havelange was out teach a lesson to Lennart Johansson of Sweden, the then UEFA president, who was out to displace him by putting in his own protégée in the FIFA post.

Allegations of corruption in FIFA elections are not new. When Havelange became FIFA president in 1974 as the first non-European displacing the English Sir Stanley Rous, there were gossips that 'brown envelops were passing on to black hands'. The obvious reference was to African and some Asian votes. However Havelange made FIFA the organisation that it is today and the work was carried on by his successor Blatter. The World Cup, the competition that is at the centre of FIFA, expanded from 16 teams to the current 32; and suggestions have been afloat that it should be stretched to 36 or even 40. Africa and Asia got more places and they repaid it through successive election victories for Havelange and Blatter.

Europe will have an axe to grind in the coming months till the FIFA election next December or January. Like the England-Australia-India axis in cricket, Europe has been the powerhouse of world football, being the cradle of most money and top leagues. First through Johansson and now through Platini, it will definitely try to stage a comeback, but managing a 209-member electorate spread in six continents only through European eyes and vision will be demanding. Besides, the culture that Europeans and Americans are talking about for axing will be difficult to eradicate, because in voluntarism one needs a degree of lubrication that is hard to pinpoint and impossible to banish. As Blatter has said, it is not possible for the FIFA president to monitor all the over- two hundred members.

FIFA's current situation can be likened to at where Juan Antonio Samaranch had left the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in the year 2000, at the epitome of its monetary might and world-wide expansion; but sadly there were many allegations of corruption by IOC members. When Samaranch left, IOC decided to fix terms and age-limit for IOC president and members.  

Now that both Blatter and last-week's beaten candidate Prince Ali of Jordan have spoken of fixing terms for FIFA president and executive committee members, this is definitely a good sign. Another reform that should be brought in is that no paid employee be allowed to contest a FIFA election. Prince Ali will definitely be a likely candidate to follow Blatter, or it may be Michel Platini, but one should not write off Sheikh Ahmed Sabah of Kuwait, currently the president of the Olympic Council of Asia, and a member of the FIFA executive committee. 

The US, which lost out to Qatar for 2022 World Cup, has a responsibility to the rest of the world to carry on the current investigation in the most transparent and acceptable manner so that nobody thinks that it is on a vendetta-mission. The new president must be alert that no reform takes away the World Cup from Qatar, not to speak of Russia. If the latest US actions can rid the organisation of the `beautiful game' of its ills, it will have done a marvelous job for hundreds of millions fans the world over for whom football is not just a sport, but remarkably a `religion'.

The writer is a former member of the executive committee of Bangladesh Football Federation