I suppose those were the good ol’ days.

As Tim Vickery puts it in an important historical reminder of all that today, there is a reason much of the rest of the world is less up in arms about the Blatter era than the English press.

There was no pre-Havelange and Blatter garden of Eden — just a different FIFA with different defects. With its lack of historical context it is unclear whether the current hysteria in the English press is motivated by a genuine desire to carry the game forward on a global basis — or by nostalgia for when English rule was unchallenged.

The lack of accountability of the current FIFA is surely unsustainable, the quasi-feudal personal fiefdoms that develop inside the organization are disturbing and the fat-cat lifestyle of some of those at the top makes the stomach turn. But for all its flaws and problems, it is not hard to understand why much of the developing world prefers the post-Havelange FIFA to what came before.

Of course, from any objective standpoint of the good of world soccer, the fact that FIFA was f*cked up in the pre-Havelange era doesn’t make it any more right for it to be f*cked up in the post-Havelange era. Havelange and Blatter have made corruption and commercial exploitation a way of life in the sport’s global governing bodies. That may beat colonialist arrogance as a defining ruling trait, but not by a lot.

The cesspool of corruption that has followed the game’s drastic commercialisation under Havelange/Blatter is a great betrayal of the movement that overthrew Rous’ arrogant rule. The overthrow of Eurocentric rule in the 1970s was born of a genuine desire to spread the game around the world and allow more nations into the World Cup, a development that has allowed it to become a kaleidoscope of global talent on display.

Back then, there were administrators from the developing world who wanted to use their growing voice within the game to end discrimination and racism in sport, and to protect world soccer from the deleterious effects of rampant commercialism.

What would Ydnekatchew Tessema, the head of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) in the 1970s and a true visionary of the game from Ethiopia, make of today’s farcial FIFA election? Or that each FIFA confederation (perhaps excluding UEFA) is run by a tainted leader?

It was Tessema who helped forge the coalition that ousted Rous in 1974 with the election of Havelange, but it was not with CAF being used as a tool of Havelange – rather, it was a necessary move by CAF to end the roadblock to African development Rous seemed insistent upon. As Paul Darby wrote in his excellent book Africa, Football and FIFA:

The fact that Tessema was in a position to threaten the withdrawal of African support for Havelange’s presidential challenge illustrates that CAF was not only gaining confidence to assert itself within world football politics but was also beginning to recognise the potential that its voting powers offered the African continent. Indeed, it is clear from African accounts of the 1974 FIFA Congress . . . that the African nations did not see themselves merely as pawns in a power struggle for the control of FIFA. Instead, they saw Havelange as the means through which to achieve a realignment of the distribution of power and privilege within world football which would more adequately reflect their growing stature.

Tessema led the push for Africa to receive more places at the World Cup by fighting for the principle that each nation should have one vote within the governing body, one that Rous had tried to circumvent. Rous was blunt about his belief developing nations did not deserve the same rights within the global game:

Many people are convinced that it is unrealistic, for example, that a country like England, where the game started and was first organised, or that experienced countries like Italy and France, who have been pillars of FIFA and influential in its problems and in world football affairs for so many years, should have no more than equal voting rights with any of the newly created countries of Africa and Asia.

Tessema was curt in his response to this patronising attitude.

Although we acknowledge the role played by certain continents in the creation of FIFA, its development and their moral, material and financial contributions, we estimate that democratic rule dictates that all rights and duties that form an international organisation should be the same for all. This is why in the framework of legitimacy, and by following a process consistent with the interests of world football and its unity, a progressive equilibrium of the representation in the heart of FIFA and its competition is required.

At the same time, Tessema was cautious about submitting to the tide of dollars flooding into the sport: Tessema fought against alcohol and tobacco sponsorship in African football, and warned against the consequences of young talent leaving African shores. In the mid-1980s, not long before his premature death from cancer, Tessema stated:

African football must make a choice! Either we keep our players in Africa with the will power of reaching one day the top of the international competitions and restore African people a dignity that they long for; or we let our best elements leave their countries, thus remaining the eternal suppliers of raw material to the premium countries, and renounce, in this way, to any ambition. When the rich countries take away from us, also by naturalisation, our best elements, we should not expect any chivalrous behaviour on their part to help African football.

It is sadly now the case that FIFA under the Havelange-Blatter regime has largely made African football a pawn for its own needs by submitting world football to the power of money for its own rapacious greed, with the corruption that has wrought around the world. That money is now the tool by which Blatter maintains his fiefdom, and that corrupt the successors of Tessema. There are no Tessemas today.

Nor is there any chivalry in the way FIFA operates. One example can be seen in the distribution of money from the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa – most of the money, of course, kept by FIFA itself.

Sepp Blatter explained that the money actually paid out was to be given to those who had developed young talent. “We are pleased that we can share the success of the 2010 FIFA World Cup with the clubs by providing them a share of the benefits of our flagship event, in particular to recognise their efforts in the development of young players.”

Those payments did not go to the countries from which these players developed and that desperately need it, but to the rich European clubs who poached them at young ages. The largest payments from FIFA after the 2010 World Cup went to clubs from England ($5,952,133.30), Germany ($4,740,666.70), Italy ($3,880,666.70), Spain ($3,699,066.70), France ($2,202,666.70) and the Netherlands ($1,858,266.70). The first African nation in the list is South Africa, with its clubs receiving $662,666.70.

FIFA uses its largesse to cement the support that earns Blatter 186 votes even after all the revelations of the past year, and indeed, past decade – the rest of the world is also bought off by dubious development programmes whose monies often end up in brown envelopes, as we wonder where the development actually is.

FIFA has certainly overseen a massive expansion of the game’s popularity worldwide since the Rous era, and part of that does explain the continued support for the Blatter regime as Vickery says. The English FA’s hypocrisy is hard to stomach, given their willingness to play FIFA’s game until their failed 2018 World Cup bid and the lonely fight against FIFA’s obvious corruption that Andrew Jennings was left to.

Still, that is no reason for the rest of the world to say that makes turning a blind eye to Blatter OK. FIFA has co-opted and corrupted the growth of world soccer for its own benefit rather than fostered it in a truly beneficial way for the grassroots of the sport – at least in the postwar era. The history of the treatment of women’s football (short shorts?!) or the struggle it took for African football to gain recognition in the halls of FIFA is evidence of that, nevermind the blatant bribery present and submission to the power of the dollar above all. The support for Blatter in the FIFA Congress is not high-minded, it is deeply self-interested.

And when we are left hoping for sponsors to save the world’s game from FIFA, remember this. The last few weeks have certainly dented FIFA and Blatter, but it’s hard to see where the movement to truly reform it for the good of the goddamn game will come from in this day and age.

It’s been admitted by Fifa that hundreds of games have been fixed in the past few years. In response, it’s investing a few million bucks a year out of its billion dollar-plus cash reserves into education of players and coaches about match-fixing. Note: that’s education, not investigation.

We commented that given the key problem in world soccer with regard to match-fixing is the lack of investigation, this seemed like a half-hearted effort by Fifa. The world’s leading authority on match fixing, Declan Hill, agrees, explaining he told the very same thing personally to Sepp Blatter back in 2008 with apparently no impact:

In FIFA’s announcement about their new anti-corruption centre, there is no actual money being put aside for investigations or enforcement. Nor is there a mandate to investigate corruption inside FIFA. Without these things the centre will largely be a sham. To be clear, FIFA does not investigate match-fixing or corruption. Nor does Interpol investigate crimes. All of the money that FIFA has given to the centre is for education.

Ask yourself – what do players need education for? Do you really need to explain to them which goal they are supposed to score in? What does a referee need education for? Is it really that difficult to figure out they are supposed to do their job without taking bribes?

I am not being facetious. If there are no investigation or enforcement arms at this anti-corruption centre, then to teach athletes and referees about the dangers of match-fixing is simply providing a bunch of ‘how-to-be-corrupt’ courses. No one will be afraid to take the money. Why should they be? There are no resources devoted to catching people who are fixing games. So the anti-corruption centre promises to be one of those well-constructed snooze-fest places where people go to hear their bosses give seminars full of corporate nonsense and then leave to get on with the lives.

As it happens, there is a concrete example in the news in Asia right now illustrating this very problem, with several reports of match fixing in Malaysia coming out this week. Police in Malaysia have asked for help from Fifa in investigating suspicious activity:

The police need intelligence from world football governing body Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA) to kick-off investigations into a global match-fixing network allegedly involving Malaysians.

Federal Criminal Investigation Department chief Datuk Seri Mohd Bakri Mohd Zinin said this was necessary for the police to analyse and launch certain operations in connection with the case.

“We want the investigating team from FIFA to provide us intelligence on the alleged match-fixing network operating from Malaysia,” he told reporters at the Selangor police headquarters here today.

It was reported that in the near future, FIFA head of security Chris Eaton would lead a team of investigators to Malaysia, as part of the probe into claims that more than 300 matches in three continents were influenced by match-fixers.

The only problem? As Hill notes, Fifa doesn’t really have a match fixing investigative team. Eaton himself commented this week to the Malay Mail: “We are not an investigation agency. We are a football organisation and our duty is to protect, prevent and eliminate such illegal activities.”

Eaton, head of global security for Fifa and a former Interpol official, does have a long track record in investigating organised crime (check out his linkedin profile).

But Fifa still has not provided much muscle for him to work with. In January, Fifa surprisingly backtracked on an agreement to hire Interpol’s senior anti-corruption detective Frederick Lord, raising eyebrows regarding the organisation’s commitment to fighting corruption right when allegations of wrongdoing within its own halls were circling following the controversial World Cup bidding vote. The Telegraph of London reported:

Lord is a former colleague of Fifa’s security adviser, Chris Eaton, an Australian detective who stepped down as Interpol’s director of operations last March to advise Fifa on security issues.

Lord, who has spoken extensively on anti-corruption issues at conferences around the world, previously worked in the Australian police’s Internal Affairs Covert Services Unit, which focused on police corruption.

Fifa’s withdrawal of the offer to Lord prompted security sources to suggest that the organisation lacks the stomach to tackle the reputational issues it faces.

One source suggested that Fifa executive committee members had objected to the appointment because they feared Lord would conduct internal investigations, but a Fifa spokesman denied this.

The recent bid process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups was mired in controversy following allegations of corruption against Fifa officials. Fifa executive committee members Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii were banned for one and three years respectively by Fifa’s ethics committee, and four other officials were also banned.

The effectiveness of Fifa’s investigation into allegations of collusion between the Spain-Portugal and Qatar bids has also been questioned after the ethics commission was unable to establish a case against them.

If Fifa cannot get its own house in order, it’s of course little wonder its efforts around the world to tackle match-fixing seem so tepid.

“It is crucial for us to go together with political authorities, with police authorities to fight those who want to destroy our game,” Blatter said.

“I’m a sad president because, after 36 years in FIFA, I thought we would be at the end of a wonderful development of the game.”

The investment is not quite as dramatic as all the column inches devoted to it seem to be presuming. This money will be provided by Fifa over ten years, and breaks down to $5.73m in the first year, and $2.1m in the remaining nine years. According to the Telegraph, the money given to Interpol won’t actually go to investigations, but to developing preventative programmes – educating players, coaches and officials on match-fixing.

Though there’s nothing wrong with that approach, this is barely a pittance from Fifa’s coffers to tackle something Blatter described today in apocalyptic terms: “Match fixing shakes the very foundations of sport. We are committed to doing everything in our power to tackle this threat. We have to try to put an end to these activities.”

A police commissioner in Bochum, Germany, where a major match-fixing ring was smashed in 2009, offered this “chilling warning” to Fifa:

Fifa generated a surplus of $631m between 2007 and 2010. Fifa has over $1.2bn in financial reserves tucked away. So this supposedly major investment to tackle a worldwide threat that Blatter says “shakes the very foundations of sport” doesn’t seem to be drawing a huge amount of that surplus to invest in its eradication.

Of course, Fifa does have other anti-match fixing investments. It has an ‘early warning system’ (EWS) that examines betting patterns to try and figure out where something fishy might be. The problem, though, is the lack of an investigative unit to get to the roots of this, something this latest investment does not (cough) fix. Months ago, the always on-the-ball Declan Hill pointed out this was the sport’s biggest need in a careful critique of a Fifa seminar on match-fixing:

So who has the money to help create such an Agency? Who has the clout? Who, according to its own president, sees a clear and present danger from match-fixing to sport demanding the creation of such an Agency?

The Age newspaper reported on how lavishly these services are being rewarded by the FFA:

Mr Hargitay is being paid $1.35 million by the FFA and has a success fee of $2.54 million. Mr Radmann’s work for the Australian bid, which the FFA has attempted to keep confidential, will earn him up to $3.49 million via a German consulting firm. He is also entitled to a $3.99 million success fee. As part of a separate contract, the FFA is paying Mr Radmann’s business partner, Andreas Abold, an additional $3 million for World Cup “bid book production and bid advice”. It is unclear if Mr Abold will also receive some of Mr Radmann’s fees.

As the Observer put it today:

Radmann’s career highlights: long-time Sepp associate, former managing director of ISL – Fifa’s marketing agency which collapsed in 2001 after paying £60m in bribes (Radmann was not implicated), plus allegations in 2000, all denied, about a scheme to incentivise key Fifa officials to back Germany’s 2006 bid. Radmann later stepped down from the Germany 2006 organising committee after awarding a lucrative contract to his business partner.

The Age explained further Radmann’s past:

Hargitay is not the only international soccer lobbyist on the FFA payroll. He is joined by Fedor Radmann, a German businessman who can speak four languages, loves opera and mountaineering, and between 1979 and 1989 was the managing director of sports marketing company ISL.

He is also a man rich in apparent conflicts of interest between his business interests and the sporting associations he represents.

The European company has been embroiled in a long-running Swiss court case over alleged bribes to FIFA and other sporting officials. The case was settled earlier this month after key participants agreed to make big payments, with a Swiss prosecutor affirming earlier comments from a judge that ISL had made improper inducements.

Once again, we turn to investigative Andrew Jennings to fill in the blanks on Radmann: who is, as Jennings puts it, “the self-styled Mr Fixit of the world game”.

The question is, what exactly is it that Radmann does that’s so valuable?

Nobody’s quite sure what Fedor does so well – it’s nobody’s business – but whatever it is, he learned everything from the Master. Thirty years ago Horst Dassler made him head of the Adidas International Relations Team – aka the Department of Dirty Tricks & Votes Fixing – and Fedor’s career has gone downhill, subterranean, into places you wouldn’t want your children marooned in. He must have developed night vision eyeballs because whatever Fedor does, he does it in the dark.

Radmann’s links to the global game and the World Cup go back decades, and reach to the highest levels of the sport.

In 2000, Radmann was selected by Franz Beckenbauer to play a key role on the Organising Committee for the 2006 World Cup to be held in Germany, touted as a “marketing and PR expert”. He had previously been the co-ordinator of Germany’s successful World Cup bid, one tainted by allegations of bribes paid to FIFA officials to secure the vote, as the Age recently recapped:

In 2000, shortly before the FIFA officials voted, Radmann was tied to a scheme to channel large payments to “trust accounts” associated with at least three FIFA officials. These payments were ostensibly for the broadcast rights to football matches that on the open market would have struggled to find a buyer due to their limited audience appeal.

In an associated deal, $1 million in consulting fees were sent to a Lebanese racehorse owner called Elias Zaccour, who was very close to leading FIFA officials.

The German media suggested these payments were sweeteners to impress key FIFA officials. Radmann and the FIFA executives allegedly involved in this foul play dismissed the claims, despite the documentary evidence aired by the German press. Radmann has not responded to questions from The Age.

Radmann’s role on Germany’s 2006 World Cup organising committee soon landed him in further public disrepute. The book German Football: History, Culture, Society detailed Radmann’s controversial tenure heading its marketing efforts, particularly with regard to the unveiling of the 2006 World Cup logo in 2002:

When the Organising Committee (OC) started its work on 1 January 2001, Fedor H. Radmann, the OC Vice-President at the time, was responsible for the section ‘Art and Culture’. Radmann, a close confidant of Franz Beckenbauer, however, came under immense negative pressure when the official logo was presented. The ‘creative disaster’ (as the renowned design magazine Die Form put it) was mocked by German designers and the national and international press poked fun at it. . . Those responsible, namely Fedor Radmann and the OC, were promptly taken to task by politicians, as they had neglected to carry out a formal competition for the logo.

The controversial 2006 World Cup logo

It was revealed that Radmann and the OC had selected a Munich-based design company, abold, owned by Andreas Abold, to work with London-based Whitestone International on the logo design. Abold just happened to be closely connected to Radmann, with business connections going back thirteen years. The German press increasingly poked into Radmann’s connections with many of the companies central to the World Cup in Germany: his previous work with adidas and to Leo Kirch’s failed company ISL in particular.

By mid-2003, the controversial wheeler-dealer Radmann had to resign from the OC, acting from that point on as an ‘OC special advisor’ only.

The FFA has since called on both Radmann and Abold to work on their bid, to return to The Age report again:

Australian press reports that mentioned the recruitment of Abold failed to mention Radmann.

As secret FFA documents from 2009 reveal, Abold was awarded two Australian government-funded contracts after being appointed sometime around early 2009. These contracts were handed out in confidential deals, done without any, or minimal, competitive tendering.

The first contract is worth $3.2 million and is labelled “Abold 1: Bid Book Production and Advice”. It requires Abold to help design and produce Australia’s Bid Book, a crucial marketing document that promotes the nation’s case to host the cup.

The second contract is more mysterious. It is worth $3.7 million and is labelled “Abold 2: International Relations/ Advocacy.” It may be more accurate, however, to label it as the Abold and Radmann contract. For, as other FFA documents make clear, the Abold 2 contract actually goes, at least partly, towards financing Radmann’s duties.

It also includes a very hefty bonus to “FDR” (Radmann), should Australia win hosting rights to the World Cup. So what exactly is Radmann doing for Australia?

The answer to that question is that despite his disastrous tenure with Germany’s World Cup organisation, Radmann’s perceived value lies in the connections he built there and earlier in his career, particularly to FIFA Executive Committee member Franz Beckenbauer.  Could this have influenced Beckenbauer’s December 2009 statement that Australia’s World Cup bid was “perfect” and notably had “the support of some very, very experienced people who know exactly how it works and what it takes to be successful”? Australia’s 2022 World Cup bid page boasted:

Franz Beckenbauer has hailed Australia’s 2018-2022 FIFA World Cup bid as ‘perfect’, adding that the country can’t ask for better promotion than hosting the world’s biggest tournament.

Beckenbauer is a member of the FIFA Executive Committee, the 24-man panel who’ll decide the hosts for those respective tournaments in a year’s time and was heavily influential in the lead up to and during the 2006 World Cup in his home country.

He said Germany is still basking in the afterglow of 2006, which helped change the world’s perception of Germany, and said Australia would reap similarly massive benefits.

“The FIFA World Cup is the most seen sporting event in the world,’’ Beckenbauer said.

“Billions and billions of people are watching all the games and it’s the best promotion that your country could have.

“In terms of the bid itself, I think it’s a great bid, it’s perfect and also you have the support of some very, very experienced people who know exactly how it works and what it takes to be successful.’’

Those people are the likes of Hargitay, Radmann and Abold’s expensively recruited company, abold, who played a key role in South Africa’s 2010 World Cup bid as well as in Germany 2006. The employment of these figures becomes a virtuous or vicious circle depending on your perspective: with each bid’s success, and the role played by the same small group of elite marketing consultants in them, those marketing consultants’ connections grow and their employment becomes ever more desirable, as Abold himself explained in an interview with the Host City website:

Our clients award us contracts mainly based on the strong bidding experience we have gained over a period of almost 20 years. Besides FIFA bids, we have also prepared bids for the Olympic Games, European Athletics Championships, 59th UITP World Congress, ICCA Congress and others. In every business it is important to know your target group well. We are proud to have established long-standing relationships with our clients, not only during the bidding phase for an event but also in the implementation phases. This, by nature, results in close ties.

These crucial “close ties” bring us back to the same issue we began this series with when we looked at Australia’s suspect gift-giving practices to FIFA’s Executive Committee members and FIFA’s absurd and inadequate Code of Ethics. The rotten core of this subterranean process for selecting World Cup hosts lies in Zürich, Switzerland, at FIFA’s headquarters. It lies in the set-up of FIFA’s all-powerful Executive Committee, 24 men (and they are all men) so long and so deeply embedded in the political subterfuge and grubby finances of the organisation of the world’s game that it’s doubtful they even realise how corrupt they are perceived to be by so many. Secretive decision-making practices, a lack of public transparency and tenure on the Committee that can stretch to decades (with unlimited reelection of four-year terms) makes a mockey of FIFA’s claim to be democratic.

Here is how long each Ex-Com member has been on that body (with most having earlier relationships to FIFA stretching back years as well):

President
Sepp Blatter: 12 years

Senior Vice-President
Julio Grondono: 22 years

Vice-Presidents
Jack Warner: 27 years
Issa Hayatou: 20 years
Mong-Joon Chung: 16 years
Ángel María Villar Llona: 12 years
Michel Platini: 8 years
Reyanld Tamarii: 6 years
Geoff Thompson: 3 years

Members
Michel D’Hooge: 22 years
Ricardo Teixeira: 16 years
Mohamed Bin Hammam: 14 years
Senes Erzik: 14 years
Chuck Blazer: 14 years
Worawi Makudi: 13 years
Nicolas Leoz: 12 years
Junji Ogora: 8 years
Amos Adamu: 4 years
Marios Lefkaritis: 3 years
Jaxques Anouma: 3 years
Franz Beckenbauer: 3 years
Rafael Salguero: 3 years
Jerome Valcke: 3 years
Hano Aby Rida: 1 year
Vitaly Mutko: 1 year

As we can see, the tenure of some of the senior executive committee members, the most influential men in world soccer, is extremely long, with Jack Warner spending 27 years there cultivating and being cultivated surrounding decisions that impact how billions of dollars are spent year in, year out. And hence, the likes of Radmann and Hargitay, with their connections to senior members stretching back years, are recruited at high cost for Australia’s World Cup bid team. The Sidney Morning Herald explained how Jack Warner had been wooed:

As one of 24 on FIFA’s executive committee (Exco), Warner in December will help decide which nations will host the 2018 and 2022 Cups. As a contender for 2022, Australia is counting on Warner’s support in the later rounds of the FIFA ballot.

Assisting Australia to court Warner is Football Federation Australia’s highly paid lobbyist, Peter Hargitay, who helped arrange the Warner-Rudd meeting.

It is understood that Hargitay was also involved in arranging, at Warner’s request, the sponsorship by the FFA of a trip for the Trinidad and Tobago under-20 men’s football team to a training camp in Cyprus last year.

FIFA revealed it is investigating the trip.

A statement said: “FIFA can confirm that it is looking into this matter. For the time being, FIFA cannot disclose any other details or make any further comment.”

The trip would have cost the FFA – presumably using Australian taxpayer money – tens of thousands of dollars. The Warner family’s travel company, Simpaul, was involved in arranging part of that trip, however, the FFA said yesterday all its dealings with the Trinidad and Tobago soccer team were through a separate and unrelated travel company.

It is also believed Hargitay was involved in, or at least knew of, a trip to Australia offered by the FFA to Warner supporter and a South American FIFA Exco member, Rafael Salguero, and his wife in December, as well as other gifts given to Exco members by Australia.

The lid lifted on Australia’s World Cup bid has demonstrated to the world once again how shady this process is, and just how badly we need reform at the highest levels of FIFA to stop the game falling even more deeply into the pockets of the likes of Hargitay, Radmann and Warner.

At halftime of the Spain v Switzerland game I found myself watching just such a dance from a picnic table in the large courtyard of an ‘entertainment lounge’ across the street from Loftus Versfeld stadium (where South Africa was to play Uruguay later in the evening).  I had made my way to the stadium neighborhood to check out the scene and see if there was any chance the touts had tickets for the South Africa game.  They did—but the price was exorbitant, and it just made more sense to find a pub and settle in.

The place I found would not have been out of place in an up-scale suburban American mall on Super Bowl Sunday.  There was an affluent crowd in uniforms and face paint, happy to pay a relatively high cover charge and drink prices to be amongst others who felt the same.  Local college students, almost all attractive white females, had been trucked in to sell drinks from specific sponsors.  I’ve never been asked so many times ‘would you like a Jaeger bomb?”  The number of servers was only matched by the number of foreign media conspicuous with their credentials and their determination to find ‘true’ images and sounds of South Africa.

Enter the dancers.  It was a cold night, most of us were bundled in ski parkas and woolen caps huddling around barrel fires in the courtyard, but three men dressed only in skirt-style loincloths and feathers appeared suddenly amidst the crowd.  As the halftime entertainment, they jumped on the stage with only their drums and staffs by way of introduction.  To the crowd’s great pleasure, indicated by flag waving and vuvuzela blowing, they danced and gyrated for several minutes before being ferreted away by one of the eager foreign camera crews for an interview.

In their stead several white South Africans from the crowd, bundled in green and yellow Adidas parkas,  jumped onto the stage and improvised their own version of a war dance—pretending the microphone stand was a spear, and the beer company poster a shield.  They too received an enthusiastic response, though I couldn’t be sure if it was for their enthusiasm or their satire.  The South African couple next to me at the table smiled: “White South Africans just love these dances.”

Why?  The dances do, of course, have some distant origins in the ‘traditions’ of South Africa—but they are hardly a part of contemporary daily life.  Amongst the masses of people I’ve seen here no one other than those halftime dancers has worn just a loincloth.  The popularity of these dances, and perhaps also the vuvuzelas, instead seems to me more reflective of the complicated process anthropologists call the ‘invention of tradition:’

“In a famous essay on the invention of tradition in colonial Africa, Terence Ranger insisted that social and cultural traditions were invented and manipulated by both Europeans and Africans to serve their own interests. Specifically, elders, men, ruling aristocracies, and indigenous people appealed to “tradition.” The elders did so in order to defend their dominance over the rural means of production against challenges from the youth; men wanted to retain control against women, who were playing an increasingly important role in the rural areas, especially in regions dominated by male migrant labor; ruling aristocracies sought to maintain or extend their control over their subjects; and indigenous people were anxious to ensure that migrants who settled among them did not achieve political or economic rights. This model became popular for analyzing the contexts in which various cultural and social practices in colonial Africa developed—from music and dance to law and marriage.”

In the context of this World Cup, the notion of traditions being employed by ruling aristocrats brings to mind Sepp Blatter and his perspective on the vuvuzela (as was quoted in the June 15^th Johannesburg Star): “I have always said that Africa has a different rhythm, a different sound… I don’t see banning the music traditions of fans in their own country.  Would you want to see a ban on the fan traditions in your country?”  As many have pointed out, however, just how ‘traditional’ are one-note plastic trumpets manufactured in China?

As with the dances, the vuvuzelas do have some basis in the history of the region; it is true that some tribal groups used kudu horns as part of ceremony and ritual.  But as the ‘invention of tradition’ concept suggests, ‘culture’ is always dynamic and often used as a chit in broader power relationships.  In that vein, part of what is interesting about seeing the vuvuzelas in South Africa is how many of the people blowing it are tourists and white South Africans jumping on the soccer bandwagon.

They are, I believe, genuinely enthusiastic and well-meaning.  But as we all now know, that enthusiasm has side-effects: the vuvuzelas drown out any possibility of other types of fan culture, while the dancers at halftime of Spain v Switzerland invent an illusion of what it means to be African.  These patterns are not, of course, specific to Africa.  At the last World Cup I’m sure there were many German half-time shows involving lederhosen, while sports ‘traditions’ such as New Zealand’s Haka dance could qualify as a meaningful ‘invention.’  But in South Africa the inventions seem more loaded: if nothing else, it is just too cold here to be out and about in just a skirt-style loincloth.

All must be in its place for the set-piece, decorating his life’s narrative. Behind his head, a replica golden World Cup Trophy. On the coffee table is a branded banner, maybe 18 inches high, with his final attempt to be taken more seriously than he knows he deserves, the contrived slogan ‘For the Game, For the World.’

He is dressed as the mortician would like to receive him, pale blue shirt, slightly darker tie, dark suit, skull polished, remaining hairs smoothed back to his neck. Outside the polished aluminium window frame it is still late winter on the bleak hill above Zurich.

The way the reporter writes her story, she’s from Al-Ahram in Cairo, he leaves his farewell to the end. Hell! Skip the endless column inches – we’ll be back later – he’s announcing his likely decline and death and that’s the news we’ve waited too long for! Here we go, down the page.

The Curved Executioner’s Sword

Over-shadowing the endgame of Patriarch is the flapping jalabiyya of the man who once bankrolled him but now, between mouthfuls of honey, dates and coffee, practices swinging the curved executioner’s sword.

‘With Mohamed, we had a wonderful time together as friends up to the last congress in May,’ says Patriarch. ‘All of a sudden our friendship was broken. Ask him, why? I don’t know.’

Oh yes he does. Patriarch went behind the back of the man from the Gulf, and 14 months from now there must be retribution in football’s Chop Square. Such an inept manoeuvre shows the Big P is losing his touch. To mock a man backed by an Emir’s billions is unwise.

The alliances that will form the death squad are still being negotiated. There’s a second shadow, a kimchi billionaire of heavy industry and politics from the Far East and nearer home, dangerously near, across a few Alpine ranges to the south and closeted with his advisors in his modern palace overlooking Lac Geneva, the third shadow of a charismatic, curly-haired, beautiful former athlete.

Unlike Patriarch, this man’s tie, shirt collar and jacket always look dishevelled, as if he’s come straight from a kickabout in the car park. In his homeland, France, he cannot walk the streets without being mobbed. Patriarch never knew such popularity, such love.

In his prime Patriarch was blessed with a superficially warm smile for the public but it masked the mean-spirited, spiteful backstabber at his private desk with subordinates to carry out the sackings and the deferential secretaries.

He shagged a few of them over the years but was too old for the come-later lissom blonde who has gone off with an architect. Some female employees felt his small hands in the elevator, others discovered his flamboyant late night welcome to the presidential suite with the silk dressing gown flung open in slow motion.

When his long-time Polish girlfriend Ilona walked out in late 2008 he knew his game would henceforth be going down, not up. Increasingly disorientated, he has fumbled his way through recent public appearances.

He giggled away concerns of John Terry’s philandering as ‘Anglo Saxon’ exceptionalism. ‘If this had happened in, let’s say, Latin countries, then I think he would have been applauded.’ There was a kind of group holding of breath. Then embarrassment rippled across the world.

A man who has worked with him for much of two decades and watched him when he didn’t, says Patriarch is now a confused specimen. ‘In his own mind he casts himself as a victim, now doubting he can anymore walk on water.’

When Patriarchs summon God to support their cause, you can hear the mortician cough and reach for his measuring stick. ‘If I’m still wanted by the congress and God will give me health I will go, but if the congress says no, then I will say ‘thank you,’ meaning he’s undecided when exactly to reach for his coat and turn in the car keys.

Uh huh. Why did she wait so long to give us this second, fin de siècle announcement. It is because she defers to the Great Dictator but we are the lucky ones because she lets him dictate his obituary as he would wish it were constructed for his favourite newspaper, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

Back to Patriarch’s custom-built mirror. He dazzles himself with talk of his 35 year ‘mission’ to make the world a better place but still his meanness writhes in a dark corner as he tells her that ‘unlike former presidents’ (that’s one in the shrivelled nuts for the previous Patriarch, now aged 93 and, in Rio, beyond the reach of the Swiss cops) he has been ‘committed to a wide range of humanitarian projects.’

Fighting child labour: Tick that box. UNICEF, tick again. Fair Play, Respect, Discipline, Social Advancement, Mutual Understanding, Eradicate Polio, Improve Public Health.

Switch Ticking machine to rapid fire, fax results to NZZ Obituaries Department.

Keep reading, here’s Patriarch’s ‘Love Affair With Africa.’ Indeed he so much loveth Africa that, lacking a son, he hath bequeathed it to Nephew. Patriarch talks frequently of the Family of Football – but when there’s money to be extracted, it’s a very small family. Nephew has been given an enormous chunk of the television rights to the Big Games in South Africa this year and if that isn’t enough, he’s been gifted a large bite size of the ticketing for the corporations.

Management Mumbo-Jumboists

But Nephew – a graduate of management mumbo-jumboists McKinseys – has majored in Greed and Failed in business acumen. (There’s a story within a story here. Back in the late 1990s Patriarch hired a mob of McKinsey Greenhorns, led by Nephew, to evaluate his business model. They gibbered managementspeak for a couple of years, pocketed millions of whatever currency you prefer and then split forces. Nephew went off to become CEO of the company that has since got the football business. He took another Greenhorn with him and the third stayed behind to become Patriarch’s financial controller. Its called keeping it in the families – McKinsey and Patriarch).

Patriarch and Nephew and their capos, cocooned in their duvets of wealth and self-confidence, didn’t notice taxpayers bailing out banks, dole queues growing and corporate budgets shrinking and even disappearing. They jacked up their prices. The capos jacked up the ticket prices for ordinary fans. Crazed South African hoteliers, airlines and profit-takers were encouraged to jack up their fantasy prices, swelling the percentage commissions.

And they waited for the money to roll in, as it always did. And they waited. And waited. And now they are panicking, stuck with inventory and abused by fans.

Falling back on the scoundrel’s defence Patriarch deplores the ‘envy and jealousy that the World Cup has gone to South Africa’ – whatever that means. And his capos blame the media. We’re used to it. But there’s a real victim. Retired to his ancestral home in the Eastern Cape and his own and most honourable Autumn is the Man from Robben Island. He has been disrespected by the European gougers busy looting his country and that may never be forgiven.

Patriarch, having had his photo-ops with the World’s Most Loved – who now looks too frail to protest at the deception – wasn’t fretting.

Then the NZZ spoke. Their editorialists know of Patriarch’s tax fiddles, the grotesque 8 million francs hush money to the last general secretary, the P’s disloyalty to his former boss and just about everybody who ever worked for him. They weren’t happy about the $90 million it cost to extract the family from the massive marketing mess the Grand Vizier got them into – and they know about the blackmailing letters between him and Patriarch, and everybody knows what the uppity woman judge in Manhattan had to say. But it was the fining and suspension of the shot-up Togo team that pushed them to reset their keyboards to ‘roast.’

Right Between the Sticks

On February 3 they gave it him between the sticks. It wasn’t just Patriarch’s refusal to condemn his ally in Africa who had shafted Togo. They fingered Nephew as well and ‘the stagnant sales of World Cup tickets’ and fumed that Patriarch refuses to discuss anything that matters in the real world beyond his barbed wire and uniformed guards.

The NZZ is very serious. Giacobbo and Müller are not. Most Sunday nights on Switzerland’s most popular television channel they lampoon Patriarch. So too does satirical site klatschheftli.ch that noticed the famous Swiss is actually a rather small person who needs to be on tippy-toes for photo-ops with normal humans.

The Swiss were less amused 15 months ago when Patriarch roared out of an Alpine tunnel in his 6.2 litre Mercedes sports car, smashed into a slower-moving car he was trying to overtake, lost control and cannoned into an oncoming VW Golf.

The Golf rolled three times. Fortunately, the driver suffered only minor injuries. The police hurriedly removed Patriarch’s number plates to ‘protect his privacy.’ Then this multi-millionaire got off with a paltry 600 francs fine.

Discontent rumbles at all levels of Patriarch’s diminishing empire. Irascible and erratic in these, his last days, he fired his press mouthpiece and then his most loyal consigliore. Spotting the open door his ‘Head of Security” a Christian Democrat MP and former member of the Papal Swiss guard has marched away.

It’s been a dozen years of scandal since Patriarch was ennobled on the eve of the French World Cup. He was helped to power promising every national franchise big bundles of dollars every year. He knew the money wasn’t in the bank and future earnings were hurriedly pawned at a knockdown price. Swiss KPMG wrote him the audit report he wanted. Simultaneously, Enron, advised by McKinsey, were going bust. Dots screamed to be joined up – but weren’t. He survived.

Patriarchs don’t get to be Patriarchs without immense reserves of inner strength, wiliness – and luck. From late 2000 he knew, privately, that the marketing company that bribed a generation of sports officials was heading for that high brick wall, the optional blindfold and the last cigarette. Inevitably, the cops would be in. He might be the shortest-lived Patriarch in history.

He lied, he diverted, he fantasised and the smartly dressed Notebooks wrote down his ramblings unquestioningly and the world was reassured. The executives who created the offshore accounts to warehouse the bribes were summoned to court in the canton of Zug and we discovered Patriarch had secretly lobbied the cops to halt investigations. He failed but with the exception of one courageous German-language Swiss TV channel, the Notebooks obliged and didn’t print.

Lying To The Cops

Three Swiss judges fined Patriarch for lying to the cops but the Notebooks found it incomprehensible and strangled the story at birth. The judges named an old rogue who runs the Paraguay franchise for trousering bribes, even produced the documentary evidence, it was posted on the web but Patriarch told the Notebooks he didn’t want to talk about it and they broke into applause.

Patriarch’s Nephew watched from his high office window 100 yards from the courthouse. His sports business had made its home in the same offices as the outfit that had paid the bribes and soon documents were liberated showing its game is change the name and do the same. The art of laundering kickbacks thrives.

Patriarch’s heart fluttered when they arrived just after 10 on the morning of November 3, 2005. He’d heard on the grapevine that pushy investigating magistrate Thomas Hildbrand in Zug had opened a new investigation . . . into him! Patriarch! Patriarchs think themselves untouchable, especially by coppers from faraway cantons. And the Zurich politicians would surely never dare consent to a cross-border raid.

It took two weeks before an astute reporter at Zurich’s Sonntags Zeitung got the tip-off. When he called the Palace, a guard portrayed it as a happy meeting of minds, a leisurely kaffee und kuchen, and that some of the documents, only borrowed, might have been returned. But the guard let slip enough for the reporter to figure out that under the Swiss penal code, the cops believed Patriarch had been dipping into the treasury. Some of the kickbacks to Patriarch’s closest lieutenants had been repaid, surreptitiously, and the coppers had got documents showing Patriarch had signed off on it.

Heavy Legal Bills

Patriarchs get a better press than presidents and prime ministers. A fraud squad raid on Downing Street, Elysée or White House would clog media arteries for months. The Notebooks, alternatively cowed or unable to comprehend what had happened, preferred to look away.

The ignominy of the raid and the continuing attentions of the coppers is airbrushed out of today’s carefully constructed obituary. Our Egyptian reporter in Zurich isn’t pressing the point that Patriarch hangs on to his position because the sport pays the heavy legal bills for protecting his reputation. She may not know but that’s good because today we only want to hear his obituary, in his own words. Then we can know it’s nearly time to make the plates for the big printing presses.

Is the blade really being sharpened? Is there soon to be a vacancy at the People’s Palace? Patriarch fears so. His 35 years ducking and lots of diving include setting up his own global intelligence networks. He knows who is restless, who is whispering rebellion.

He also knows that nobody loves Patriarch. Not the fans, that’s for sure. They boo him at big games, forcing him to hide under the bleachers rather than hand over his trophy after the Final of the Germany tournament in 2006. The sponsors weren’t happy about that blemish on their spectacle. The fans buy their products and he was docked 10 points for the booing.

The Brands averted their eyes from the blatant corruption as long as the Notebooks did. But they became restless during the Manhattan process when they heard the evidence. Patriarch and his Grand Vizier brazenly lie to the Brand managers who pay for the fucking show. You can walk on water but not on Coca-Cola. The coming South African debacle – with the likelihood of empty seats for God’s sake! – will ease relegation to bootboy in the Visp Pensioners League.

Back in the mid-1990s when today’s Patriarch was yesterday’s Grand Vizier a sports marketing company with clients among the biggest brands met secretly in the Frankfurt airport Sheraton with the Industry Billionaire from the Far East. They were concerned about the millions in kickbacks that were about to flow from a deal they were excluded from. They were clean and offered more. They lost. Brand managers have long memories. You only get to screw them once. The Billionaire was out-manipulated that time. Not again.

Dirty Tricks ‘Consultant’ Fired

The Man from the Gulf has told his dirty tricks ‘consultant’ Peter Hargitay, previously fired by Blatter and the England FA, that he’s persona non grata in Qatar or Kuala Lumpa. Asia, with the whole-hearted involvement of the Eastern Billionaire, comes to the hustings with 46 votes.

They know it’s not yet Asia’s time and the only certain candidate to glue the game together is Europe’s charismatic leader – and he’s got another 53 votes. Only six short of the tipping point of 105.

The Man from the Gulf is long famous in Africa for his generosity and most if not all of their 54 votes will make it a landslide. How big the ticketing mess created by Patriarch’s friends and family turns out to be could have African delegates turning their backs on him at Oliver Tambo when his Gulfstream lands. Before the Opening Ceremony.

After that, it doesn’t really matter what anybody else thinks. Dig out the obit. Sound the klaxon on the presses. Who is backing a loser?

Flashpoint could be the Congress on the eve of the July 11 kickoff. Will the Europeans allow Patriarch to continue influencing the contest to host the Big Event in 2012 and 2018. He’s so tricky it might be best to tell him to take his money and manufacture his medical exit. And they might scrap the ludicrous plan to chose the 2022 host nation a dozen years ahead of time. The dazzle of doubling the bribes before the Mortician called them in was too much for some of the very old consiglieres.

Let the Clean-up Begin

The North American and Caribbean franchise, tightly controlled by the bubble-bearded Fatman, with his homes in Trump Tower, Paradise Beach in Nassau and the farm in Lenior, North Carolina, and his gold-encrusted partner in crime from Trinidad have been given freedom by Patriarch to misbehave as they wished. With Europe, Asia and Africa united, life bans on them and suspension of 35 subservient nations pending forensic audits could only be for the good of the game – there and everywhere.

Likewise, the Latin Americans can be warned that they’d better rid themselves of the Bribe taker listed in the Zug court, the Anti-Semite from the land of Maradona and the Dodgy Brazilian who makes the enter-at-your-peril favelas look safe yet has been given his own World Cup to plunder in 2014. A swift blood-letting, soon forgotten as the game begins to get respect again.

Editor’s note: Many thanks to Andrew Jennings for giving us permission to post this piece on Pitch Invasion. For more of Andrew’s investigative work in world sport, visit Transparency in Sport.

The General Secretary of FIFA, Jerome Valcke, has admitted ticket sales for the 2010 World Cup have been a shambles, and changes will be made for the 2014 event.

And ticket prices will be cut in an effort to fill stadiums in South Africa this summer. According to the Telegraph, Valcke also admitted that running ticket sales through agency Match had not been successful:

He also acknowledged that Fifa may have made mistakes in the way it had run ticketing and travel arrangements. Fifa granted agency Match exclusive rights to sell travel and ticket packages for the 2010 and 2014 tournaments, but its near-monopoly on hotel rooms has seen supporters asked to pay high prices. Valcke predicted that Match was unlikely to make a profit from South Africa.

“We have good lessons to learn from 2010 and they will help us in 2014. For the World Cup 2010 we will have to sell the tickets to fans direct, we will think about setting up Fifa ticketing centres around the world.”

The Telegraph doesn’t mention that the original decision to award Match the exclusive rights generated considerable controversy. It just so happens that Match is part-owned by Swiss company Infront Sports & Media, whose president and CEO is Philippe Blatter — yep, nephew of one Sepp Blatter.

Last month, Andrew Jennings reported on Match — who stood to earn as much as $342m from the contract — and their expensive surcharges that have raised prices for everyone.

Travel agents have to pay MATCH $30,000 just to be allowed to buy tickets to package with rooms and sometimes flights. Then they have to pay up to 35% surcharge on every ticket MATCH sells them, boosting a ticket with a face value of $160 to as much $244. So MATCH can take up to $84 from each fan.

The company has also established an iron grip on rooms. Hotel chains and Bed & Breakfast want business from fans and have signed up with MATCH – and must pay them 30% of their gross charges – so driving up prices again.

Any thoughts on this, Sepp or Philippe?

Why did one of Sepp Blatter’s key aides suddenly leave a top post at FIFA this week? Speculation from journalists is rife. The true story, sadly, is hard to find.

FIFA’s International Relations Director Jerome Champagne surprisingly departed from the world’s governing body this week, despite the fact that World Football Insider says Champagne had been “believed to be positioning himself for a run for Blatter’s job” next year. ESPN Soccernet similarly reported that “Champagne may have been positioning himself to run for president in next year’s election.”

Matt Scott at the Guardian concurs, seeing Blatter’s move as a sign of weakness:

Sepp Blatter is under increasing pressure as the president of Fifa, with his closest adviser having been dismissed last Friday following a coup. The departure of Fifa’s director of international relations, Jérôme Champagne, came as a result of the same stormy, seditious executive committee meeting last month at which Blatter was challenged over Fifa finances.

The move on Robben Island reflected a growing boldness among the heads of continental confederations, who have been growing their own powerbases and influence at the expense of Fifa’s once-omnipotent president.

Champagne’s direct courting of national associations – some say in an effort to promote his own ambitions towards the Fifa presidency, others say because he was under orders to cut out the confederations – left him vulnerable. And Blatter was told by the principal figures in the executive committee from the Asian, African and European blocs that unless Champagne was fired, the president himself would face a serious problem in future.

The background of unrest comes at a defining time for Blatter’s 12-year-old presidency and less than 18 months before he seeks re-election for another four-year term. His delivery of the first World Cup on African soil comes to the crunch this year and risks being a logistical disaster, with sponsors and fans declining to travel to a nation of questionable security at a time of economic difficulty.

If Blatter has been relieved by the reaction to Champagne’s departure, he is not out of the woods yet. With several senior pretenders to his throne ready to mount their challenge from within Fifa’s ex-co, his reputation will stand or fall with events in South Africa this summer.

Andrew Jennings, our favourite thorn in FIFA’s side, reports a slightly different background story, noting that FIFA’s briefings to journalists only hint at what the acclaimed investigative journalist believes are the real reasons behind Champagne’s departure at the behest of a confederation boss we can guess resides somewhere in the Americas:

Sepp Blatter’s FIFA is in chaos following the frenzied sacking of Jerome Champagne, one of the few clean senior executives remaining at the highest level of world football.

Blatter capitulated to furious demands from one of the most corrupt members of FIFA’s 23-man executive committee – from outside Europe – that Champagne had to be fired.

He had become increasingly incensed at Champagne’s attempts to block his rampant thieving from football.

Blatter and his general secretary Jérôme Valcke spent Friday hurriedly persuading reporters that Champagne had to go because he was planning to run against Blatter in the presidential elections.

This is nonsense; Champagne never tried to build his own power base – and probably couldn’t have persuaded a single national association to risk Blatter’s anger and nominate him. It is virtually impossible to unseat Blatter who ‘looks after’ his voters in the national associations so generously with millions of dollars for unaudited ‘development.’

But Jennings does say that “An increasing threat to Blatter’s survival comes from FIFA’s World Cup sponsors who are letting it be known they are disturbed by the endless corruption allegations clouding his administration and dirtying their brands.”

So, might this be an opportunity for Michel Platini to ride in as a white knight? The AP reports that Platini will decide his future before the 2010 World Cup, saying “I’m very happy (as UEFA president), but, still, I can also be very happy elsewhere.” The Guardian speculates that Platini may challenge Sepp Blatter instead. Platini, though, would have a lot of work to do to win the necessary votes from outside UEFA to beat Blatter, or another confederation chief.

And yeah, I’m as confused as you are as to what’s really going on here, and I shan’t pretend to know otherwise. And sadly, that’s just how Sepp Blatter, Jack Warner and the many cronies getting rich out of our love for the game want it to be.

And the parlour games go on.

His blog, Travels with Chuck Blazer, is just chock-full of pics of Chuck and company at work. Here he is just this week at the FIFA Club World Cup in Abu Dhabi, second from the left, next to a clearly overwhelmed Sepp Blatter Julio Grondona of CONMEBOL.

I won’t steal any more photos, so just go and visit Chuck’s blog for more.

David Beckham, Ambassador to the World

Big Story
Winning the right to host the World Cup finals is about much more than the actual content of the bid, as we commented yesterday when examining the United States’ solid package.

For England, it’s been a torrid time of interminable controversy inside the bid administration, with the unseemly bickering between the Football Association, the Premier League and all the egos of England’s bloated football administration. The U.S., without the intense press coverage of the sport and with a much more streamlined (perhaps too much so!) national administration, is able to avoid most of this.

And so the Daily Mail plunges another knife into England’s faltering World Cup bid, though there’s something a little unsettling about the major complaint being that “Yet another sign of a wasted opportunity came in the bear hug with which FIFA president Sepp Blatter greeted former FA chief executive Brian Barwick at the Soccerex conference in  Johannesburg. Barwick, one of English football’s best networkers, was not even deemed worth a place among the bid’s 70-odd ambassadors.”

Yet England does have one endless route to good publicity: David Beckham. The Times falls for Beckham’s ambassadorial role for the bid hook, line and sinker, commenting that “The England midfielder has emerged as the figurehead of the 2018 campaign and he has already had made progress in his attempts to charm Fifa power brokers such as Sepp Blatter, the president, and vice-president Jack Warner.”

Suddenly, we are reminded that this whole World Cup bidding process — with the need to snuggle up to the likes of Warner and Blatter — isn’t such an edifying business after all. Can we ever imagine a future in which the world’s game (as FIFA likes to call it) isn’t directed by 24 old and corrupt cronies who need their egos petted at all times?

Worldwide News

• The Colorado Rapids’ traditionally dismal supporters’ section may get a boost, as the Colorado Rapids Supporters Association says that “After several years of deliberating and negotiations, I’m proud to say the supporters are finally where they want to be…behind a goal!” They also say that negotiations with the front office will be bringing further positive change. Another step in the right direction for MLS teams’ dealings with supporters. Let’s hope it’s not too little too late for Colorado.
• A curious defense of agents appears on the Guardian by Lawrence Donegan. There’s a good argument to be made that agents are necessary, but it needs to be put in the context that their consistently underhand and greedy practices have at times severely damaged the sport and thus they need to be kept under extremely tight leashes.  Surely they could do their job being paid a lot less than the £70.7m the Premier League spent in the past year. Yet Donegan’s defense is instead a blabbering and completely irrelevant rant about Simon Cowell’s role in the entertainment industry: “The X Factor producer and judge runs his own record company which, coincidentally, signs lots of acts that appear on the X Factor.” Who the hell cares? Football does not need to take its cues from the pop industry.
• Why did Manchester United pull out of their deal for Serbian youngster Adem Ljajic? The Guardian speculates on, but offers little evidence for, further fnancial problems stemming from the Glazers’ debt-laden takeover.
• There was a pretty extraordinary ending to the Copa Sudamericana final, as Ecuador’s Liga Deportiva Universitaria went down to nine men, lost 3-0 to Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro and still hung for the title thanks to their 5-1 lead from the first leg.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.