JOAO AND SEPP SHOW THE WAY
By
Mickey Blue Eyes.

Review of
“Badfellas”
By John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson
(Mainstream Publishing: 2003.)
[First published as “Great Balls of Fire” in 1999]

“At one time the race to host the World Cup was settled by voting in the FIFA Congress, but in the Havelange era the decision came to rest with the executive committee. Nobble them and you got the big prize.”
AUTHORS – Chapter 13, page 206.

“Everybody knew the game was lost. ‘You’ve got the FIFA you want, you want this FIFA of corruption, that’s what you’ve got. Get on with it,’ said one executive committee member to another.”
AUTHORS – Chapter 9, page 153.

The Beautiful Game isn’t as corrupt as you think it is.

It is worse.

Rotten to the core in fact.

Sugden and Tomlinson show you all that is necessary for the spivs, liars and cheats to get their way is for a few good men to turn their backs. Their self-administered brief is to outline the history of FIFA and how it was compromised almost from the beginning and then used by a variety of demagogues to make money or further the cause of their own power. In short, at FIFA level there never was a “Corinthian Age.” The idealistic aims of a few good men got lost in the swamp of chancers, suited-up barrow boys and totalitarian dictators like Hitler and Mussolini. The worst elements of human nature never change.

But football has, and off the field it is shot through with enough burgeoning Byzantine greed and plotting to write a movie script. Ownership and administration has never been as compromised. The authors do their job so well you are left in no doubt whatever that wilful ignorance is not bliss, that there’s nowhere for you to hide anymore. Institutionalised corruption and its slimy tentacles cling to every aspect of the game from buying tickets to buying clubs to buying the World Cup, even some match results. With that as background we are bound to ask just how false is the spectacle we watch? What is it worth if some of the matches themselves possibly are nothing but a neurotic delusion hyped up by a compliant media? Why has the simple healthy escapism of football competitiveness been transformed into the sports equivalent of Enron, BCCI and the P2 Masons?

This book provides some but not all of the answers. Nevertheless, every time it turns over a stone it finds a variety of primitive life clinging to the underside. Example, right-wing admiral Lacoste (FIFA vice-president) of the murdering Argentine junta which controlled World Cup 78 actually threatened the life of journalist Carlos Ares who questioned him over a blatantly fixed match between Argentina and Peru. Another example, the buying of votes of African delegates during the FIFA presidential election of 1998 which Sepp Blatter. It goes on and on until you feel the only way to get yourself clean is to go have a hot shower and scrub the memory off your skin.

Nobody comes out of it with an intact reputation, not even dear old Stanley Rous, let alone the disgusting hypocrites who run the FA or the present British government. Even Lennart Johansson ends up with racist yolk all over his face despite a worthy attempt to dislodge the Havelange-Blatter axis. FIFA, it transpires, is a direct reflection of the so-called “global economy.” That is, a fixed network of the same economic thugs peddling the same lies while stealing unimaginable amounts of money that could be put to better communal use.

In the end, yes, it does affect you. It affects you because these are the people who control and “own” the game right down to the park level. They make the rules, take the money and leave you next to no choice. If you let them.

Of course it is no consolation at all to know this kind of thing riddles the Olympic movement and most other professional sports. Only the scale of popularity of the sport defines the limits of its corruption. Arguably, professional codified sports have become the modern equivalent of ancient Roman Games designed to distract and gratify the population through contrived spectacle. After more than a hundred years maybe they have outlived their true usefulness and spontaneity. Maybe.

Havelange and Blatter are natural bedfellows. The former taught the latter. Havelange has even tried to stop publication of books critical of his behaviour while Blatter continues to claim he is an honest man with all evidence pointing precisely in the opposite direction. Together they reduced FIFA to the level of a second rate souk, a sort of Scotty Road Paddy’s Market populated by Armani suits and crocodile shoes. Along the way honest men got duped, weak men got corrupted and self-proclaimed “leaders” preened themselves in the game’s popularity. Meanwhile, The Beautiful Game has never been more compromised or near to implosion.

According to the authors Havelange succeeded Stanley Rous as president of FIFA and then set about corrupting virtually everything he touched while in office. They show this was a direct result of Rous’s Eurocentred, lazily racist, colonial mindset – a true product of his times. The rest of the FIFA world duly rebelled and put Havelange in his place. Diary-writing Uncle Stan and his blazer were replaced by entourage-accompanied führer Jo?o and his shiny suits, also a true product of his times. It reminds me of an old saying from Eastern Europe, “What is capitalism? Answer, the exploitation of man by man. What is communism? Answer, the opposite.” It is a sickening tale alleviated only by the weight of well-researched facts, most of it from primary sources and interviews.

I have only a couple of minor carping criticisms of the book. One is that it has no index – a lazy omission – and the other is the poor level of descriptive prose used to describe atmosphere and surroundings. Sometimes it reads like a tyro novel. But the journalism is first rate and can only add to your knowledge of what is done in your name.

Now that Euro 04 is here it would be as well to read it. You might then wonder not only what is REALLY going on on the pitch but what is being done in your name off it.

The whole house of cards couldn’t be more fragile. Maybe it is time to blow it down. (13/06/04)

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