Another clean day at FIFA House

Banned Ex.Co. member Mohamed Bin Hammam has slammed Sepp Blatter and Chuck Blazer following his expulsion from football last week.

He compared Blatter to a tyrant wiping out his rivals and called for Blazer to go before the FIFA Ethics Committee for receiving suspicious payments.

Bemoaning his life ban from football, the former Asian Football Confederation chief told Sky News, "This is the act of the dictators and we have witnessed this through history...When they think that a person is prominent to replace him, the first thing they do is execute him."

With reference to his ban for handing out cash for votes, Bin Hammam denied he was guilty, but also admitted that clientelism was an everyday fact of FIFA life. "This is a normal, a normal, normal practice," he confirmed. "This watch is a gift."

The Qatari then went on to have a dig at Chuck Blazer, whose whistleblowing began his impeachment process. "We have, during the investigations, discovered that Chuck Blazer himself has received from the Caribbean (Football) Union $250,000. For what, God knows."

This news was broken by Andrew Jennings and Blazer's defence sounds, well a little odd. Claiming it was Jack Warner repaying him a loan, he added,

"As a precaution, I have set aside these funds and am prepared to return them should it turn out that the CFU was the source of the funds and not Jack Warner as was represented to me."

Jennings also revealed Blazer pocketed 10% of CONCACAF's marketing and TV rights money over the past five years, a total of $9.6m. The 66 year-old New Yorker defended his bonuses as "consistent with industry standards."

* * *

Ricardo Texeira, was it something we said?

The Brazilian soccer chief, FIFA Ex.Co. member and former son-in-law of that great dictator Joao Havelange, has something against the English all right. This is what he told Brazilian magazine Revista Paui at the weekend:

"The islanders (the English) are the pirates of the world, a bunch of pirates....The BBC is a state organisation...It’s all orchestrated...I will make their lives hell...In 2014, I'll be able to get away with anything. The most slippery, unthinkable, Machiavellian things. Denying press credentials, barring access, changing game schedules. While I'm at the CBF, at FIFA, they won't get past the door!
And you know what? Nothing will happen. You know why? Because in 2015 I'm out of here..."

Why do you hate us so much, Ricardo? Are you worried London's smoothly organised Olympics next year will show up your disorganised World Cup two years later or the Rio Olympics in 2018?

Oh I remember - you took at least $12m in bribes from FIFA's now defunct marketing company, ISL, your company laundered the money and our media (Andrew Jennings, the BBC et al.) pointed it out, that's right.

Oh and you have been awarding yourself contracts for 2014 and you were willing to sell your vote for 2018. The truth hurts, Ricardo. And when the Zug prosecutor's report is finally revealed, you'll be history like Jack Warner and the other crooks in Zurich.

Enjoy your time in football while it lasts.

-Sean O'Conor

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FIFA house is on fire

What a week it has been at FIFA H.Q. Could the den of thieves finally be about to be gutted and the old guard sent packing, bribes and all?

By Sunday afternoon, the final stretch of campaigning for the Presidency had become an ugly fire-fight between incumbent Sepp Blatter and the challenger Mohamed Bin-Hammam, with the Swiss apparently emerging from the conflagration the winner after his rival withdrew.

Blatter had led comfortably going into this week as news arrived that the African votes were headed his way.

Then out of the blue Chuck Blazer, the portly Executive Committee member from the USA, who has backed the uber-crook Jack Warner for two decades, suddenly announcing he had reported Bin-Hammam and his CONCACAF boss to the Ethics Committee for trying to buy votes from the Caribbean Football Union. On Sunday, Bin-Hammam, seeing his bid for glory going up in flames, retaliated by reporting Blatter to the same committee for not reporting breaches of its laws on his watch.

Warner and Bin Hammam were suspended from football activities, while Blatter was let off.

Now on Monday, Warner has got his revenge by reporting Blatter for sending unsolicited gifts of computers and cash to CONCACAF, plus revealing an email in which General Secretary Jerome Valcke expressed an opinion that Bin-Hammam was trying to buy FIFA Presidency in the same way Qatar "bought" the 2022 World Cup finals.

The ruling class of FIFA are at each other's throats in an almighty cat-fight. So much changes by the day it is hard to keep up with the latest shenanigans. The presidential election on Wednesday will be the most absurd embellishment to this farce, with only one, denigrated and discredited candidate left on the ballot paper.

If the FIFA nations have any shame they will follow the lead of the Football Association and allegedly some Asian members in boycotting the ridiculous 'vote' for Sepp Blatter.

Surely the 'Salt Lake City moment' we have dreamed about is imminent; if the FIFA house of shame does not fall now in the fallout from the disgraceful 2018/2022 World Cup votes, then when will it ever?

- Sean O'Conor

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Bin Hammam to challenge Blatter says ally

Chung Mong-Joon, the former FIFA Vice-President, today tweeted that his close friend and AFC President Mohamed Bin-Hammam is to challenge Sepp Blatter for the Presidency of FIFA in June.

“It seems he will challenge the FIFA presidential election in June," wrote the Korean who was unseated by a Blatter loyalist Prince Ali Bin Hussein of Jordan at the AFC Congress in Doha in January.

Bin-Hammam recently said Blatter, in charge since 1998, had spent too long at FIFA - 35 years in total, and pinned the global complaints about the organisation onto the President's back:

"Everybody is going to accuse us today as corrupted people, " he said, "because maybe people see Mr Blatter has stayed a long time in FIFA."

Blatter's to-ing and fro-ing over the date of the 2022 World Cup , toying with the possibility of other Gulf nations co-hosting and his vocal backing of India and Australia for future tournaments have been judged to be political moves designed to split the Asian vote.

Bin Hammam set himself on collision course with Blatter since the President backed Bahrain's Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa in his ultimately failed attempt at unseating him at the AFC Congress in 2009.

The Qatari has until the 1st of April to formally announce his bid, but recent statements from both he and Blatter appear to confirm the inevitable.

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile

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