Fikile flubs Fifa fixing face-off

The sordid scrap over just who will adjudicate on the match-fi xing scandal which has tainted the already besmirched reputation of this country’s soccer has sent Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula into pitbull mode. Fifa, who run the game on a global basis, say they will run any investigation into allegations involving warmup internationals before the 2010 World Cup, and used the world body’s secretary-general, Jerome Valcke, to make this crystal clear during the French football administrator’s flying visit to South Africa this week.

Five high-profi le South African soccer administrators – former Safa president Kirsten Nemetandani, Denis Mumble, Ace Kika, Adeel Carelse and Barney Kujane – were implicated, and Valcke has named former FBI agent Michael Garcia to take over the investigation.

Even though Garcia heads Fifa’s inaptly-named ethics committee and the South African government has signally failed to establish the promised commission of inquiry, this has stuck fast in Mbalula’s very vocal craw. The major sticking points, though, are much like looking the wrong way down the twin barrels of a loaded shotgun.

Fifa is itself a discredited organisation in many respects, and though the sports minister has some weight on his side in preferring a governmental revue of the match-fi xing debacle rather than leaving it to the proven ineptitude of Safa, which runs the game in this country, he has missed one important point.

Fifa has very specific statutes, which hold that direct government interference in the affairs of a national soccer federation will not be countenanced. Kenya was suspended from world football in 2004 and again two years later for infringing this imperious edict.

The real issue, though, is that both Fifa and Safa would probably rather see the whole match-fi xing saga ride unbidden into the sunset. But that would be a resolution which would be even more harmful to the game than the present standoff.