Written by After some speculation recently about what form the supposed FIFA reforms would take and, indeed, whether there would be any at all, Sepp Blatter has announced what seems to be at first glance a sensible way to proceed with dragging the organisation into the 21st century and providing some sort of procedural transparency.
A few days ago we wrote about what the likely reforms would be, the major changed being improvements in financial transparency, a beefed-up ethics committee including some independent, external oversight and a much improved procedure for choosing who hosts World Cups.
Blatter’s Roadmap
What Blatter has provided us with now is a ‘roadmap’ of the steps FIFA will be taking over the next two years or so which will lead to reforms being completed by the end of 2013. He also said FIFA are now prepared to disclose documents regarding the collapse of marketing firm ISL which will apparently name those who received payments from the firm in relation to securing World Cup television rights.
Blatter’s roadmap is as follows:
- Friday October 21st – Establishment of the various task forces
- December 2011 – Committee (of) Good Governance forms; approval of first round of task force reforms
- March 2012 – Feedback on governance committee; further task force reforms defined
- June 2012 – Ethics Committee forms two-tiered structure; FIFA approves and implements changes in statutes
- June 2013 – Elections for new Ethics Committee members and completion of the road map.
Blatter brandishes the 'roadmap'
The court proceedings relating to ISL are interesting; one might conclude that Blatter is doing this as some sort of attempt to shift the blame for FIFA’s past dark deeds onto other parties. A Swiss court convicted several ISL executives of fraud in 2008 and cleared some others but it is the ‘secret’ documents relating to the court proceedings which are interesting – as we wrote previously, some of the people named are current and former very senior figures in FIFA and the run up to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil could be ‘controversial’, to say the least.
So what’s behind the proposed release of the documents? ChangeFIFA, a group calling for transparency in international football, called it a ‘ruse’ and they may have a point – it does smack of an attempt to deflect any attention from him.
Reaction
Other organsiations have been lukewarm about the roadmap proposals; Transparency International (who advised FIFA) was the most appreciative, commenting that FIFA:
“have addressed several key issues but there is still a lot of work to do and we will have to wait until December to see how far and how quickly they act.”
Play The Game, a promoter of ethics in sport, was less flattering suggesting that the proposals:
“seem better suited for reforming [Blatter's] image than for revamping FIFA. [We] think it was obvious that Blatter, on several occasions during the press meeting, drew a line between his own integrity and that of the Executive Committee, Blatter is obviously trying to distance himself from a group of people who will get into trouble or have been in trouble because of the ISL affair.”
Sepp Blatter is still the sore point of course, and football fans and the ‘cleaner’ nations of FIFA will clearly be suspicious of the organisation while he is in charge and remains uninvestigated.
