Blatter’s Fall: Was he caught up between America and Russia?

After dramatic events and revelations that are only seen in movies, Sepp Blatter has resigned as the head of football’s governing body, FIFA, after a 17 year old lengthy period. While Blatter spread the love of football around the world, helped developing countries to improve their facilities and brought the World Cup to Africa for the first time, his legacy will always be overshadowed by the various corruption scandals.

Yes, there is more than one scandal, it didn’t all just start last week with the arrest of several top ranking FIFA officials. Recent revelations show that the organization has been fraud for decades which only back up accusations of briberies for all the recent elections, and the right to organize most FIFA events, at least in the past 25 years.

Every time Blatter won, he stood up on the podium and said that change is coming. It never came, yet he was always trusted with the job on and on again. Blatter’s main support originates from Africa and Asia, who are hugely grateful for what he has done with developing the sport and the local economies. They seem to be less concerned with the fact that he and his colleagues became unlawful millionaires in the process.

But Blatter, refused to step down. He deflected all the pressure, and remained defiant. He pointed to his successful record as President, and accused his enemies for involving him in their political feuds. Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed with Blatter and accused America of being jealous of losing their World Cup bid to Russia. Qatar, the hosts of the 2022 World Cup, echoed Russia’s dismay, and accused Britain and America for trying to meddle in FIFA because they lost. Qatar and Russia are especially worried because separate corruption investigations have been launched regarding their bid, after former FIFA executive Chuck Blazer stated that he received bribes regarding the 1998 and 2010 events.

They could even lose the right to host the tournaments. Now that would be unprecedented, and make this the biggest scandal in history.

Most world leaders had something to say about the event, but once again the discussion focused on the reasons why the FBI chose to arrest all the executives just two days before the FIFA election. While football and politics should be kept apart, Putin’s point is that the Americans have clearly timed their arrest to oust Blatter and get revenge. While there are definitely questions about the timing of the event, the West perhaps just wants to get rid of a corrupt leader who has outgrown his mandate. Nothing new there.

Regardless of the reasons why, the scandal is now out there, and more people will fall. Most of Europe and the West rejoiced when Blatter left, and saw it as a good day for football. However, what troubles many people is that even though Blatter and several of his executives are gone, is that FIFA will still not change and that corruption is here to stay. At FIFA, corrupt leaders and handing over of money seems to be tradition, and we can all just hope that it won’t ruin the sport we all love. There needs to be a complete restart in the organization, and new people must be installed for FIFA to be credible again one day.

And as tensions continue to rise between the West and Russia, we can only hope that things will get better. Ukraine and the Middle East seemed to be generating enough tensions between the two sides, but now the war has arrived to the pitch as well. Russia and the US have the worst relationship now since the heights of the Cold War and heads continue to fall. Blatter was the latest, but not the last.

First Appeared 7th June 2015, The Moderate (www.themodcon.com)