Fifa paid hush-money to stop legal action
On the eve of the 2010 World Cup draw in Cape Town in 2009, Sepp Blatter made an ill-considered joke about absent friends from Ireland and then suggested that they might receive some kind of ‘‘moral compensation’’ for their national team’s controversial elimination from the tournament.
That could mean ‘‘anything from a compliment to a special award or a prize’’, the Fifa president said, but not, he insisted, ‘‘financial compensation’’.
Well, five and a half years on, it emerged yesterday that financial compensation was exactly what the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) received for its grudging acceptance – after a threatened legal challenge – of the Thierry Henry handball that, unseen by the match officials, helped France to qualify for the 2010 World Cup at Ireland’s expense.
Fifa paid the FAI US$5 million – initially a loan related to the construction of a stadium, it says, but later written off after Ireland’s failure to qualify for the 2014 tournament.
It is hard to know what dismays most:
1) that world football’s governing body can show such selective disregard for the sporting mantra that the referee’s decision is final;
2) that it has so little accountability it can offer compensation on such arbitrary basis; 3) that the FAI accepted it; or 4) that the lack of transparency in football is such that a deal was kept quiet, until after Blatter’s resignation as Fifa president.
At Fifa, money has long been the solution to any problem. The payment to the FAI can be classed as an out-of-court settlement, rather than anything close to a bribe, but it is entirely at odds with any code of sporting ethics.
It is a startling precedent for a sports body to set. Should the English FA seek compensation for Diego Maradona’s ‘‘Hand of God’’ goal for Argentina against England in 1986?
Or should Fifa reopen the case of the 1966 World Cup final, which England won after a much-debated goal by Geoff Hurst helped to beat West Germany?
Jack Warner, the disgraced former vice-president of Fifa, is set to follow Chuck Blazer in complying with the American investigation, threatening an ‘‘avalanche’’ of evidence to damn the Blatter regime. He made similar promises in 2011, only to fall mysteriously silent once the terms of his departure from Fifa were agreed.
Fifa’s culture has been to throw money at problems until they go away. Now, one after another, they have come back to haunt Blatter.