It’s been a long, impossibly close race, but we think we’ve finally found the dumbest FIFA member, and he’s from our very own federation.
Yesterday, Sepp Blatter, Luís Figo, and other candidates competing in the upcoming FIFA presidential elections were in the Bahamas for a meeting of the CONCACAF Congress. The meeting, ostensibly planned so that the members could discuss among themselves and with the candidates present whom they will back in the election, was in reality a mind-bogglingly dumb rhapsody session for the reigning president. From the Guardian:
Blatter received pledges of support from 10 federations as the congress quickly turned from a business meeting into a rally to support the incumbent president of football’s world governing body.
There were no speeches in favour of any of the opposing candidates, the former Portugal international Luís Figo, the Dutch FA president Michael van Praag and the Jordanian Prince Ali Bin al-Hussein, all of whom were present as observers.
“I think Concacaf membership is sending a clear message that we continue to support president Blatter,” said the body’s president Jeffrey Webb, who was later re-elected, unopposed, as head of his body. The Fifa presidential election will take place in Zurich on 30 May.
It was the Trinidad and Tobago FA president Raymond Tim Kee who praised Blatter as the “father of football” while the president of the Dominican Republic federation Osiris Guzman compared the 79-year-old Swiss to Moses, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King as well as Jesus and Mandela.
The “father of football,” eh? Good ol’ Churchill, Lincoln, and Moses, too? Not exactly who the name Sepp Blatter calls to our minds. With Blatter’s penchant for propaganda, his direct financial support of modern-day slavers, his...curious interpretation of democracy, his willingness to conjure apocalyptic boogeymen to drum up votes, his uninterest in rooting out the rampant and obvious corruption until it can be ignored no longer, then his attempts to conceal said evidence of corruption when he is forced to unveil it—his track record would lead us to compare him to other historical leaders, is what we’re saying.
[Guardian]