It would be foolish to see the tainting of football as merely an English problem - the varying impacts of corruption, criminal groups, the inappropriate power of supporters groups, regulatory capture, ineffective administration and illegal gambling are global phenomena. Our prime issue is to push the first world football nations into an acceptance of their corrupt realities rather than their focus being exclusively on the systemic corruptions of the supposedly lesser nations. However, it is a positive process to assess the degree of malaise undermining the global game and, consequently, in this post we take a quick European survey of the plight of the game.
* Netherlands - AZ Alkmaar's coach, Louis Van Gaal, stated after his team had been denied a Champions League place by the infinitely more powerful G14(18) team Ajax and some creative officiating "AZ must have to be the far better side so that such decisions won't be to our disadvantage".
* Switzerland - Basle win the Cup Final with a hilarious injury time penalty and sending off decision when Scott Chipperfield was allegedly fouled by keeper David Zibung. Guess which team is the more powerful?
* Montenegro - Both the top two sides in the nascent independent Montenegrin league were accused by the other teams of "buying games". Zeta and Budocnost Podgorica finished an astonishing 27 points clear of the third placed team. After one particularly hot little event against Korn, the Budocnost coach, Bozo Vukovic, was asked whether the game had been regular. His response exhibited clinical economy of truth: "As far as I'm concerned it was, but I can't answer fully this question".
* Macedonia - The rebel federation group named the Board for Change has taken control of Macedonian football risking FIFA sanctions as the takeover process has been a pea-souper of opacity.
* Israel - With a French arrest warrant for illegal arms dealing hanging over his head, Arkady Gaydamek chooses to own Beitar Jerusalem directly and Portsmouth indirectly via a compliant son. Harry Redknapp should note that the Beitar coach Yossi Mizrahi was recently sacked by cuddly Arkady despite winning the league title for the first time in nine years. Arkady muttered something about a lack of exciting football being the reason which is obviously significantly preferable to a lack of exciting betting, I suppose...
* Albania - Former SK Tirana president, Lufti Nuri, is now the Albanian federation vice president and it will come as no surprise that rival coaches are finding the situation "intolerable" in the words of Partizani Tirana boss Albert Xhani. "We can fight against Tirana, but not against the system that made them champions" he axe-grindingly added.
* Turkey - Another fan was shot dead after the Fenerbahce v Galatasaray game which determined the Turkish title race. Istanbul governor Muammer Guler complained: "Explosives and weapons were brought into the stadium in advance, in an organised way. It is not possible to explain this away as neglect or a simple mistake".
* Ukraine - Racist bigot and national team boss, Oleh Blokhin, has moved beyond the intellectual capacity required to make offensive comparisons between Black footballers and members of the ape family by threatening to quit if the number of foreigners in the Ukrainian league is not reduced to five players by 2010. "If the situation does not improve, I'll step down as Ukraine coach". See ya, pal!
* Poland - Fellow Euro 2012 hosts Poland completed a year of domestic footballing controversy when the title was decided by referee Hubert Siejewicz on the last day of the season following FA takeover nonsense and a match fixing scandal that saw two teams forcibly relegated.
* Bulgaria - Alexander Tassev became the third Lokomotiv Plovdiv president to be murdered in the last two years.
Parallels exist for all of the above examples in the so-called developed football nations. This season alone has brought us calciopoli, another Athenian fan death, the Catania/Palermo incident, Aragones and his enlightened racism, West Ham United's regulatory capture, Barthez and Nantes, the full impact of the Hoyzer refereeing scandal in Germany, the bungs affair in English football, the mass takeover of leading English clubs to open the sluices to Far East gambling markets, suspicions of EPO usage in Spain, Germany and France etc etc.
The illnesses that undermine football (and other leading sports) are shared with society at large. The systemic scams share equivalence of hierarchy, structure and form. No finesse just power play.
To requote Baudrillard "Power is only too happy to make football bear a facile responsibility, even to take upon itself the diabolical responsibility for stupefying the masses."
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
