The FIFA File: Why did it take so long to Blatter seedy sexist Sepp?

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON CHRISTMAS DAY 2010, A FEW MONTHS AFTER THE WORLD CUP IN SOUTH AFRICA. THE QUESTION IS, WHY DID IT TAKE SO LONG FOR THE AUTHORITIES TO BLATTER SEEDY SEPP AND HIS CORRUPT REGIME?

During Spain's march to glory in last summer’s World Cup, I wrote a magazine article in which I described Sepp Blatter, the most powerful administrator in world football, as ”an ageing plonker”. I now accept that at the FIFA chairman is not ageing. He’s decrepit.

Sepp Blatter...decrepit and sexist

Indeed, he is so far past his sell-by date that I suggest his native Switzerland considers putting him out of his misery. Euthanasia is perfectly legal there, after all.

Now I love football but, like just about every fan in the world, I think its administrators are in another world when it comes to moving into the 21st century.

Even if those decisions are patently wrong and unfair, as they often are.

Take England’s disallowed goal against Germany, for instance. Frank Lampard’s rocket shot bounced down off the crossbar at least a yard over the line and then came out of the goal – and the referee and linesman were seemingly the only two people in the stadium who failed to spot it.

The German goalkeeper knew it was a goal, of course. But since honesty is the last thing one expects from professional footballers (we won’t mention being faithful to their wives), there was no way he was going to tell the referee. Let’s face it, England would have done exactly the same had it been the Germans who scored, so dishonours even there.

However, had the referee merely been allowed to consult a video replay, as are officials in other major sports, justice would have prevailed. As it was, nobody knows what might have happened had England been level at 2-2 at halftime rather than 2-1 behind. Why, they might even have won. (well, in my dreams).

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a player or manager speak AGAINST the use of video playbacks to confirm or over-rule controversial refereeing decisions. And the argument that the delay would detract from the game has long since been shot down by the evidence of other sports. In rugby and cricket, for example, the anxious wait for decisions like ‘not out’ or ‘no try’ to appear on the screen invariably ADD to the excitement rather than detracts from it.

Time you went to Specsavers, ref...Frank Lampard's blinding shot is a good yard over the line

Yet Blatter and his fellow FIFA duffers have consistently resisted calls for any sort of technology. And that has inevitably led to people like myself asking ‘Why?’

And in the absence of a logical reason, I can’t help pondering the recent corruption allegations over FIFA’s decision to award the 2018 World Cup to Russia.

Now I am well aware of the laws of libel, so I am not saying someone is bribing Sepp and his sidekicks NOT to say yes to the technology companies. But it makes you wonder, particularly as Blatter’s election in 1998 was later sullied by allegations that an African federation official had been offered a 100,000 dollar bribe to vote for him.

Certainly, Blatter’s logic seems to be at variance with the entire population of the world. Apart, perhaps, from his cronies in Geneva, all of whom are presumably blokes. And that brings me to another negative aspect of the man’s background.

Seedy Sepp does not seem to hold women very high in his esteem. Indeed, he seems to see us merely as sex objects. According to Wikipedia, in the early 1970s he was elected president of the World Society of Friends of Suspenders, an organisation which tried to stop women wearing tights instead of stockings and suspender belts.

Then, in 2004, he angered female footballers when he suggested that women should “wear tighter shorts and low cut shirts… to create a more female aesthetic” and attract more male fans.

I’ve got news for Mr Blatter. If he spent more time sorting out football’s injustices and less on ogling the girls, then it might start living up to its billing as ‘the beautiful game’.

He could start by introducing a law that works wonderfully well in rugby and ensures that cheats who illegally prevent a certain score don’t prosper. In such circumstances, referees can award a ‘‘penalty try’’ – yet in football, the worst a team can suffer is a red card for the offender and a penalty kick for the cheated side.

When a Uruguay player prevented Ghana winning their World Cup tie by deliberately stopping a goalbound shot with his hand, the correct decision should have been ‘goal’ – even though the ball did not cross the goal line. The incident happened at the very end of extra time, so the red card did not help Ghana in any way.

And when they missed the resultant penalty kick, any advantage was completely wiped out.

Uruguay celebrated their reprieve by winning the penalty shootout that followed and Africa’s last representatives in the tournament were on their way home when in the eyes of every fair-minded person they were really the victors. But the concept of introducing a ‘penalty goal’ award to foil the cheats has probably never crossed Mr Blatter’s mind.

Ghana did not get justice, they were robbed because the laws are an ass. It’s the sort of thing that makes football appear even more stupid than the heads-in-the-sand brigade who run (or should that be ruin?) the game.

So how is football ever going to be dragged into the 21st century? Maybe we should offer sleazy Sepp an inducement to hand the whole caboodle over to us girls. Then we could sort it all out in no time and let him concentrate on whatever else he does for kicks.

Football beware! Rugby's rising sons have sparked a sporting revolution

IT is arguably the biggest giant-killing act in sporting history – but Japan's Rugby's World Cup slaying of mighty South Africa was more than that. It was the ultimate game-changer, a result that introduced the public to global sport's Brand of the Rising Sons.

While football remains the most popular ball game on the planet, the emergence of Japan as a major rugby union force signals a huge breakthrough for the oval-ball code.

Yes, the Beautiful Game is being threatened by Beauty and the East.

Forget the 45-10 hammering the Oriental upstarts took from Scotland in Gloucester on Wednesday. The bigger, fresher Tartan troops were always favourites against a team weary from their history-making exertions four days earlier.

Full of  Eastern Promisee: Japan's Rugby World Cup heroes celebrate victory against South Africa

It was the South Africa result that put down the marker for the future of the game at world level.

In the words of Japan coach Eddie Jones, the man who steered Australia to the 2003 World Cup Final, “With an Asian team beating a top-tier country, that really makes it a global sport.”

Football remains No.1 with the public thanks largely to a complex coaching net that has elevated the top 50 or so nations to a level where their international teams are all capable of beating each other. The scene is changing, however, amid the chaos of Sepp Blatter's corrupt crew and FIFA's continuing refusal to adopt new technology that rugby, tennis and cricket have been utilising for a decade.

Rugby has long held the moral high ground when it comes to respect for officialdom and use of technology to ensure that try-scoring and disciplinary decisions are always correct. Professional leagues thrive in all the major rugby nations, with sponsors queuing up and the lure of big money attracting the world's best players. And crowds at top rugby Premiership games in England attract crowds of Manchester United and Arsenal proportions.

Until last weekend, the main thing holding a genuine popularity challenge to football back was the absence of a meaningful rugby presence beyond the traditional hotbeds of the British Isles, France, Australasia, South Africa, Argentina and, to a lesser degree, Italy.

The qualification process for RWC 2015 involved no fewer than 83 nations, the majority of them rugby's equivalent to European football's newest whipping boys, Gibraltar.

Gibraltar beating England in the World Cup finals? Pure fantasy, of course. Yet that is what Japan effectively achieved by beating the Boks with a bit-part team made up of physical midgets and journeymen pros from overseas who qualify for Empire status on residential grounds.

In fairness, Japan's rugby minnows weren't exactly devoid of professional assistance. The game has long been hugely popular in the Land of the Rising Sun, and a coaching team led by former Wallabies chief Jones and ex-England captain Steve Borthwick knew exactly what was required to make the team genuinely competitive.

Way back at RWC 1991, I remember Japan's charismatic manager Shiggy Kono lamenting after a World Cup defeat at Murrayfield at the physical limitations of his players. “Our backs are as good and as quick as any other nation,'' said the man who claimed to be his country's only failed kamikaze pilot. “The problem is finding Japanese players who are physically as big and tall as those in the leading rugby nations.''

London-educated Kono, who died in 2007, reckoned he was such a bad pilot that his wartime kamikaze unit bosses refused to send him on a mission. A mission where survival would have been as likely as the Japanese rugby team beating the 1995 and 2007 world champions.

Even with the absorption of foreign-born forwards, Japan's tallest player at the World Cup is a mere 6ft 4in – that's four or five inches shorter than the average Bok, Kiwi or English second-row giant.

Japan can still qualify for the quarter-finals for the first time despite the defeat by Scotland - but even if they miss out, no-one can take from them the fact they achieved the unachievable.

The little big men have also lifted the game of rugby into a new era of global competition.

PS to England as they prepare for Saturday's Twickenham showdown with 2011 semi-finalists Wales. Beware of wounded Dragons...they are likely to catch fire and reduce you to cinders.

St George is still recovering from the burns inflicted by Wales in the 2013 Six Nations championship. In case anyone has forgotten, the written-off Taffs thrashed England by a record 30-3 margin and went on to lift the European crown for the fourth time in eight years.

Saturday's confrontation has a familiar look about it. England start hot favourites with Wales decimated by injuries to key playmakers Lee Halfpenny, Rhys Webb and long-term casualty Jonathan Davies.

The game will be a doddle for Stuart Lancaster's sweet chariot, predict the fans in the white shirts and rose-coloured spectacles.

Bu will it – particularly following the loss of England's midfield try machine Jonathan Joseph?

Wales, for all their injuries, feel they can exploit a juggled English back line which includes relatively untried rugby league convert Sam Burgess replacing Joseph. With Lancaster also handing George Ford's No.10 jersey to Owen Farrell, the Welsh will feel they can exploit what they see as England's soft midfield under-belly.

Have Farrell, Burgess and St George gut what it takes to slay the Dragon? Tune in to ITV at 9pm Spanish time on Saturday to find out.

Arsenal 1 Birmingham 2: Why football clubs are buying the wrong players

I used to hate Birmingham City when the club was owned by the seedy David Sullivan.  But their Carling Cup Final victory over Arsenal had me cheering.

That’s because Alex McLeish’s glory boys proved at Wembley that British footballers can compete with the best in the business. And also that Premier League clubs do NOT need to spend a fortune on continental imports rather than buy the finest young talent from England’s lower divisions.

Anyway, as a lifelong footy fan I thought  Birmingham fully deserved their win, even if I could have scored Obafemi Martins’ winning goal myself. I said could have, not would have!

To me it was a special occasion as the British bulldog spirit conquered supposedly one of the best club teams in the world. The experts predicted an easy win for Arsenal – and instead saw them sunk by a Churchillian effort from the boys from the Midlands.

The Wembley war was won by the true grit of a Birmingham team whose starting line-up included EIGHT players from the UK and Ireland. And that is rare indeed for a Premier League team, the majority of which are packed with megabucks signings from overseas.

Please don’t label me a racist, because that is the last thing I  am. But while I love the way Arsenal play - indeed I think they are the best side in the Premier League -  they are not an English team. They are a World XI that just happen to be based in London.

Sometimes Arsene Wenger’s team take the field without a single Brit but on Sunday the Frenchman’s World XI did at least have Jack Wilshere in the line-up. (OK, I accept that if Theo Walcott had not been injured, there may have been two Englishmen in the side).

I  believe England’s flop in last year’s World Cup was largely due to the fact so few homegrown players feature in the top club sides. And I am convinced things would improve if  Premier League bosses stopped buying abroad and started investing in the Championship – the second tier of the English game – which is packed with talented youngsters.  

Birmingham centre-back Roger Johnson, one of Sunday’s bruised and battered Carling Cup heroes, is an example of what I mean.

Not because he was my hero before my beloved Cardiff City sold him for £5million a couple of years ago - and not because of the 6ft 3in defender’s special courage in the face of giant odds at Wembley. Unable to train all week, he hobbled defiantly through the last half-hour after taking a knock that would have seen many lesser players carried off.

The fact is that Johnson turned in consistently brilliant performances for Cardiff week after week – yet until Birmingham came in for him, he might as well have been playing on the moon.

Not that we Bluebirds fans were complaining at the lack of interest, of course. While the big boys were looking abroad to strengthen their defences, Roger was lifting us towards the Premier League.

Now, after less than two seasons strutting his stuff at St Andrews, he is probably rated at £20m and being touted as a future England centre-back.

What I want to know is why was Johnson not poached by any of the Premier League giants much earlier when he was turning in consistently brilliant performances week after week for Cardiff?

Ironically, a few months before Roger’s move to Birmingham, Wenger had forked out £5m himself for Cardiff teenager Aaron Ramsey. Yet the names of the players that have since moved in at the Emirates continue to be as unspellable as ever.

At least Arsenal’s sorry losers still have something to celebrate after their Carling Cup misery. European Union law is apparently standing in the way of the desire by FIFA President Sepp Blatter and his UEFA counterpart Michel Platini to impose limits on the number of foreign players in a team.

Perhaps the solution would be a friendly agreement between the Football Association and Premier League clubs to field no more than five or maybe six overseas players in the team at any given time.

But I’m a woman. What do I know about football?