miércoles, 27 de mayo de 2015

miércoles, mayo 27, 2015
Why FIFA Can’t Get Out of Its Own Way

Soccer’s world-wide governing body has an ultra-democratic election system—a setup that also stifles change

By Joshua Robinson in London and Jonathan Clegg in New York

Updated May 21, 2015 5:39 p.m. ET 
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 Mesut Özil of Germany and Lionel Messi of Argentina during the World Cup final in Brazil last year. Photo: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images 
              
 

In the world of international soccer, Germany and Anguilla are as far apart as two teams can get.
 
Germany’s team is ranked No. 1 world-wide and is a four-time World Cup champion. Anguilla, a British overseas territory in the Caribbean, has won four games in its entire history.

FIFA delegates will soon meet to a elect a new president. But what looks like a democratic process isn't without criticism. WSJ's Jonathan Clegg reports. Photo: Getty
 
On the field, these two teams are so hopelessly mismatched that they are barely playing the same sport. But for all those differences, there is one arena where they are equals: world soccer’s presidential elections.

On May 29, delegates from across the world will convene in Zurich to elect a president to lead FIFA, the sport’s global governing body, for the next four years. Under election protocol, each of FIFA’s 209 members receives a vote and, no matter how big or small, each one is worth the same. Which means Germany’s vote counts the same as Anguilla’s. Brazil’s is no different than Bhutan’s.

There is no doubt that this is the most democratic arrangement. But as one of the most embattled figures in sports stands poised to be elected for a fifth consecutive term, the consequences of the system have become clear. In recent years, the FIFA system has helped preserve the status quo atop the world’s most popular sport despite gaffes, controversy and allegations of corruption among its leaders.

On Thursday, two of the three challengers in the election dropped out of the race, with one, decorated former midfielder Luis Figo, calling FIFA “a dictatorship.”
 

The likely winner of next week’s vote is incumbent Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, a 79-year-old former watch company executive. He has presided over FIFA, the nonprofit custodian and organizer of the World Cup, since 1998. The sole other candidate is Prince Ali bin Al Hussein, a FIFA executive committee member who has called for change.

FIFA declined to answer specific questions about any candidate, and declined to make Blatter available for comment.

“I have tried to think of another system but I can’t find it,” said Harold Mayne-Nicholls, a former president of the Chilean soccer federation and FIFA official who wasn’t in the running.

“If you go to the number of people that live in the country, it will not be fair. If you go on the number of football players, [it is] the same. I can understand that people get frustrated, but on the other hand, I don’t see any solution.”

During his tenure, Blatter has overseen the World Cup’s growth into a quadrennial cash cow for Swiss-based FIFA through the shrewd sale of television and marketing rights. As of 2014, its cash reserves stood at $1.52 billion. During the 2011-14 cycle, it generated $5.72 billion of revenue, according to FIFA’s most recently published financial results, the most in its history.

But Blatter’s 17-year reign also has been marked by controversy. There have been allegations of bribery surrounding the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, a high-profile lawsuit by MasterCard MA -0.23 % in New York federal court and the ousting of at least eight members of FIFA’s executive committee, along with public-relations faux pas on topics from fan racism to women’s soccer uniforms.                                                        
              
In 2004, a U.S. District Judge ruled that FIFA had breached a contract agreement by dropping MasterCard as a sponsor in favor of rival Visa V 0.36 % and sharply criticized the organization’s business tactics. MasterCard and FIFA reached a $90 million settlement. Blatter also has attracted criticism for his suggestion in 2011 that instances of on-field racism could be solved with a handshake and for his remarks in 2004 that female players could wear tighter shorts to help market women’s soccer.

FIFA has denied wrongdoing in relation to the MasterCard case and Blatter later apologized for the comments on racism and women’s soccer.

When the votes are cast next week, Blatter is almost certain to be swept back into office on a surge of political support from FIFA members across Africa, Oceania, Central and South America and large swaths of Asia, who have publicly declared their support.

“To us, he is still the man of the moment,” African Football Confederation president Issa Hayatou said at its congress this spring. “Dear Sepp: Africa is comfortable having you.”

To some soccer fans, another re-election might seem inconceivable, considering the negative attention FIFA has drawn since December 2010, when it chose Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup.

The furor over the bidding grew so loud that FIFA appointed Michael J. Garcia, a former U.S. Attorney, to investigate. His report led to the opening of ethics proceedings against three sitting members of the executive committee. (At least one has been closed, clearing Michel d’Hooghe, while FIFA declined to comment on the details of the other cases. All three members denied the ethics charges against them.) There were no allegations of impropriety against Blatter in the report. FIFA’s ethics committee said the report cleared Qatar of wrongdoing, without discussing specifics of the investigation. Garcia resigned from his role as investigator in December to protest the organization’s handling of his report.

The full report was never published, though a person familiar with it said that it heavily criticized a “culture of entitlement” among FIFA’s upper management. The executive committee announced in December that it would be released, in some form, this year. There is no sign of it coming before the election. FIFA said Thursday that it wouldn’t be published while cases remained open.
  
Africa’s support of Blatter has been echoed by federation presidents across the planet. Oceania committed its 11 votes to Blatter in January; South America followed suit with its 10 votes in March.

Concacaf, the confederation of North America, Central America and the Caribbean, expressed its support for the incumbent along with tributes in which Blatter was compared with Jesus Christ, Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King Jr.

Not every region has been so complimentary. In Europe, home to the game’s richest and most televised professional leagues, his tenure has been regularly and loudly denounced. Michel Platini, the head of European soccer’s governing body, has led the calls for “fresh air” at the top and accused Blatter of ruining FIFA’s image.

Before last summer’s World Cup in Brazil, a series of speakers at the UEFA Congress called on Blatter to make his current term his last. UEFA didn’t respond to requests for comment; FIFA declined to address his candidacy.

What Blatter’s imminent re-election makes clear is that the path to the FIFA presidency no longer runs through the game’s traditional heartland. Over the past four decades, FIFA has redrawn the soccer map by enfranchising smaller federations across the developing world.

Since 1975, when Blatter was named FIFA’s technical director under then-president João Havelange of Brazil, the first non-European in that role, FIFA membership has jumped from 141 nations to 209, an increase of more than 48%. In the process, it overtook the membership of the United Nations, which stands at 193. Countries that aren’t, strictly speaking, independent countries, such as the U.S. Virgin Islands and New Caledonia, will be represented at the FIFA Congress, the organization’s annual meeting. 

          
The regions that experienced the most growth during this period were Concacaf, which has increased from 22 to 35 members, and Oceania, which has nearly tripled its membership, from four countries to 11 currently.

The upshot has been a radical reconfiguration of soccer’s power structure.

Before Blatter joined FIFA, the sport’s traditional base of Europe and South America accounted for 35% of total votes in FIFA’s Congress and their 49 combined votes were just 22 short of a majority.

Today, their combined share of 63 votes comprises just 30% and they require an additional 42 votes to form a majority. In other words, it is now possible for a candidate to collect the requisite two-thirds of all votes necessary to be elected president on the first ballot without receiving a single vote from soccer’s hotbeds.

“Some Europeans do not understand that the world has changed,” said Jérôme Champagne, a former FIFA executive from France who worked alongside Blatter for 11 years. FIFA said that the expansion of its membership “reflects the evolution of our sport and the evolution of the world. Over the last decades, new members have joined in all confederations.”

Blatter understands soccer’s new world order better than most. In interviews with FIFA executives and federation officials around the world, a pattern emerges of Blatter specifically enfranchising and providing financial assistance to smaller nations, particularly in the developing world.

FIFA says that its “Goal” projects, which allocate funds to be spent on soccer-related infrastructure, are disproportionately awarded to developing nations because one of the purposes of the program is to “reduce the gap between member associations.”

“The payment of development funds to member associations reflects FIFA’s statutory objective to promote football globally,” a FIFA spokesperson said in an email. “This is FIFA’s main goal: Share the benefits from the FIFA World Cup to develop football all around the world.”

Blatter implemented the Goal Programme, in which national federations can apply for up to $500,000 at a time for specific soccer-related projects. (That figure is rising to $600,000 this year.) Through all of its development programs, FIFA now distributes some $180 million a year for soccer development programs around the world, excluding any extraordinary payments, according to its records.

“He’s more of a humanitarian than administrator,” Mokhosi Mohapi, the general secretary of the Lesotho soccer federation, said of Blatter. “That makes him want to hear the plight of all the countries.”

Since 1998, 205 of the 209 associations have had Goal projects accepted, with $36.6 million approved last year alone. They have covered everything from video production of national youth-team games in Italy to the purchase of association headquarters in Andorra, though figures from FIFA show that much of this funding has been directed at some of soccer’s smallest nations. Since 1999, the 11 countries that make up the Oceania confederation have each received an average of 4.6 Goal payments. By contrast, European nations have received an average of 2.6.

Critics have accused FIFA of using the program as pork to secure support come election day, an allegation FIFA firmly denies.

“People in Western Europe complain, ‘ Mr. Blatter is re-elected because of development programs buying votes,’ ” said Champagne, who intended to run for president but failed to collect enough nominations. “But this is really an analysis, a point of view, coming from people where the fields have green grass.”

Blatter’s would-be opponents in the election realized the weight that development programs carry in this system. The other candidates all made increasing financial aid a key plank of their campaigns before the field was whittled down. In his manifesto, Dutch federation president Michael van Praag pledged to boost assistance payments from $250,000 to $1 million a year.

Figo went for $2 million. Bin al Hussein also pledged to boost funding.

Van Praag and Figo both pulled out of the running on Thursday, throwing their support behind bin Al Hussein.

Blatter has declined to speak directly about the election and hasn’t published a manifesto. “I am 40 years in FIFA,” he said in Zurich in March. “I am 17 years the president of FIFA. This is my manifesto.”

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