oh dear...Blatter blasts big-money backers

T_G

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Blatter blasts big-money backers


Fifa president Sepp Blatter has vowed to stop "greed ruling the world of football" after launching a blistering attack on hugely-wealthy club owners he claims are threatening the future of football.

In an astonishing column in the Financial Times, Blatter says the "pornographic amounts of money" being thrown around by some club owners could suffocate the game.

Blatter said: "A fortunate few clubs are richer than ever before. What makes this a matter of concern is that, all too often, the source of this wealth is individuals with little or no history of interest in the game, who have happened upon football as a means of serving some hidden agenda.

"Having set foot in the sport seemingly out of nowhere, they proceed to throw pornographic amounts of money at it. What they do not understand is that football is more about grass-roots than idols; more about giving entertainment and hope to the many than bogus popularity to a predictable few; more about respecting others than sating individual greed, whether for adulation or money."

Blatter insists a new Fifa task force set up to deal with corruption and multiple ownership issues will deal with the excesses.

He adds: "This cannot be the future of our game. Fifa cannot sit by and see greed rule the football world. Nor shall we.

"The time has come to take action to curb the excesses and ensure that the sport protects its roots.

"If nothing is done, this new money could suffocate a sport that has no fewer than 1.3billion active followers around the world.

"The professional game is now shot through with practices that, at best, expose the ugly side of club football and, at worst, threaten its very existence."

Blatter says the practice, in Latin America especially, of speculators buying the commercial rights to promising child players is unacceptable and a "new form of slavery".

He also attacks players and agents for demanding "insane" wages, saying: "Equally unacceptable are the sort of wage negotiations that can produce the spectacle of semi-educated, sometimes foul-mouthed, players on £100,000 a week holding clubs to ransom until they get, say, £120,000.

"More often than not, these players are guided in these endeavours by unsavoury agents.

"It is simply insane for any player to 'earn' £6m-£8m a year when the annual budget of even a club competing in the Uefa Champions League may be less than half that. What logic, right or economic necessity would qualify a man in his mid-20s to demand to earn in a month a sum that his own father - and the majority of fans - could not hope to earn in a decade?"

Blatter also blames the influx of hugely-wealthy owners for causing football to become predictable.

"Unlimited cash has given a handful of club owners the wherewithal to control the global club game by splashing unimaginable sums on a tiny group of elite players. More than ever before, the majority are fighting with spears, while the greedy few have the financial equivalent of nuclear warheads.

"No wonder empty seats in stadiums and saturation live television coverage of matches have become issues. What is interesting about a league whose champions can be predicted with confidence after about five games?

"Why is it good for football to take the excitement away from fans by overcharging them for tickets to see 'their' team? And is it really still 'their' team when one club in England has a squad with 19 nationalities?

"What we are faced with today is a football society of haves and have nots."
 

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Brilliant !

He can start by working for free then :D


L.
 

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Yes, indeed Blatter is the very personification of ridiculous.
 

rolfw

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Sorry, but I tend to agree with him on pretty much all of it, it is indeed ridiculous that a foul mouthed, ill tempered and uneducated moron with a complete lack of self control can earn more in a week, than most of the people coming to watch the team can earn in two years.

He is also probably right about the hidden agendas of people like Abramovich.
 

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FIFA's new HQ .... ask him how much that's costing ;)
Out in leafy suburbia near Zurich zoo....right next to where I play on Saturdays.

Any chances of me being spotted and being paid all this money ol' Sepp hates so much? ;) :D
 

T_G

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rolfw said:
Sorry, but I tend to agree with him on pretty much all of it, it is indeed ridiculous that a foul mouthed, ill tempered and uneducated moron with a complete lack of self control can earn more in a week, than most of the people coming to watch the team can earn in two years.

He is also probably right about the hidden agendas of people like Abramovich.


He is not right, especially on the players and education issue.
The thing is that there is a massive amount of money in the game, and this is a fact. The debate about wether it is good that so much money is generated by football is another one. But it is popular, and loads of money about.
Basically what that stupid man is saying that all the money should go not to the players, but maybe to Fifa, where educated and civilised people who don't swear linger? Or maybe the money should go to the clubs? Or the agents? Or Agencies? In his point of view, the players who ARE the ones who make the game what it is should not earn as much as they are getting...This is wrong thinking. A footballer has a short career, he neds to do the best he can. I don't even think ANYONE who is employed by someone who does not try to get the best amount of cash, especially as the clubs who pay 100000 a week wages can afford it.

The man is corrupt and rotten, and anything he says has to be viewed very carefully. He talks about ignorant footballers, but his comments in the past have not exactly shown him to be very clever....
 

rolfw

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I'm sorry he is right, particularly on the education issue, not of all footballers, but certainly a percentage of them, have you listened to some of the after match interviews?

I'm not a fan of Blatter either, but think he makes a lot of sense in this.

As for the issue of the money in the game, yes there is a lot of money, but it is mostly pouring into the top 3 or 4 percent of clubs and players and certainly not filtering down to the grass roots of the game. They are bringing in these huge amounts of money from sponsorship and advertising and then still hammer the supporters with ever increasing ticket charges and constantly changing kit at higher and higher prices, so that they can pay some of these ridiculous salaries.

I agree that their playing life is short, but many of them could retire in luxury after only a year of playing at the top level.
 

rolfw

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Mind you, he's being silly now, you cannot put the genie back in the bottle and restricting the number of non-national players on the field to 6, would be to attempt exactly that.
 
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