The FA are like Basil Fawlty, licking boots one minute, spitting poison the next . . .
RUDY AWAKENING ON TRANSFERS
At least we now know why FIFA made bad, often inexplicable, decisions. they were bent. Michel Platini, sadly, seems willing to perform the same service for free.
Platini is a bad idea machine, whether voting for Russia and Qatar, or saturating the European Championship with mediocre qualifiers. His grand overhaul of football’s economic structure, Financial Fair Play, was so poorly conceived and biased towards the existing elite that it collapsed under the weight of legal challenge and its own incompetence in little more than a year.
His vision for the Europa League has inspired some coaches to actively hope for an early exit, while the riches from the Champions League are so iniquitously divided they have turned domestic competitions across Europe into virtual monopolies.
Yet this is the man the Football Association is angling to put into power across world football — without even viewing his manifesto, or listening to the case for the other contenders.
Platini had barely declared his candidacy to replace Sepp Blatter at FIFA when Greg Dyke revealed the FA’s support.
‘We understand there will be a number of candidates, which should result in a strong and healthy debate,’ added Dyke. ‘It’s just that I’m not interested in hearing it.’
Actually, he didn’t say that last part. He should have, though, because it’s the bottom line. When the conversation begins over the way forward for world football, our FA must sit mute having made their choice from an incomplete ballot paper and a manifesto of neatly stapled blank pages. Maybe they think we’ll get a World Cup out of it — the centenary one, in 2030, is our next target.
And here we go again. We’re the Basil Fawlty of global sports politics. ‘You never get it right, do you,’ Sybil tells him. ‘ You’re either crawling all over them, licking their boots, or spitting
IT IS quite remarkable that Sky are willing to lose coverage of La Liga to BT Sport this season. Added to their Champions League clean sweep, it will mean their rivals can rightly claim to be the only place to watch Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo every week. As this constitutes probably the greatest head to head in football’s history, that is some coup.
poison at them like some Benzedrine puff adder.’ that’s us. One moment we’re showering the Warner family with designer handbags and setting up Chuck Blazer at the Dorchester, the next we’re denouncing FIFA from its own podium while wondering why we can’t buy a vote from the executive committee. We can’t decide whether to play the game or hate it.
true, it is not as if the men jockeying to replace Blatter are much of a beauty contest. Brave, reformist delegates were not previously much in evidence at FIFA, but now he is on the way out, here they all come.
Among the candidates is South Korea’s Dr Chung Mong-joon, who recently denounced Blatter in the strongest terms. ‘President Blatter is like a cannibal eating his parents and then crying he is an orphan,’ he said. ‘He tries to blame everybody but himself.’
Well, the good doctor would know all about that. Blatter has worked with him since 1994, as general secretary until 1998 and as president ever since, and not a dickey-bird of dissent out of the South Korean until this point. Great statesmen are not football’s strong suit.
Even so, it might have been worth waiting until all the candidates had declared. the FA’s desperation to ingratiate themselves with the new boss is ugly and transparent. Now Platini looks a likely winner, the FA scrambles to be the first by his side, pledging allegiance.
‘Mr Platini has been supportive of English football in recent years,’ said Dyke. ‘We continue to have discussions with him about dwindling opportunities for homegrown players — a concern he shares.’
Is that it? Does Dyke simply want Platini to curb the big Premier League clubs that are too powerful for FA control; or is he merely flattered that UEFA have taken a shine to Wembley Stadium because it has no sponsor and no branding and is therefore the perfect blank canvas for its logo-fest finals? Without doubt, there is also a bigger prize on offer long term, with the award of the centenary World Cup likely to fall during Platini’s tenure.
the first tournament was held in 1930 in Uruguay, but that country is too small to hold the current festival. It would certainly be overwhelmed by the future, 40-team incarnation that will almost certainly be Platini’s way of clinging to power, just as tournament expansion has been his election tactic in Europe.
Julio Grondona, the Argentinian FIFA executive, used to boast that 2030 would be Argentina’s tournament, with the final held in Montevideo, Uruguay, as a gesture of commemoration. But as he turned out to be a crook and is now a dead crook, the identity of the hosts is back in play.
England, home of football, would love to welcome the world — and would do a fine job, no doubt — but may feel they have some catching up to do politically.
Why would FIFA mark the centenary of their greatest idea by taking it to a country that had actually resigned its membership of the organisation when the first World Cup took place?
Enter Platini, the FA’s new best friend. If Dyke and the blazers can make England his most eager allies, is there a chance he will return the favour when the location of the 2030 World Cup is decided some time around 2021?
Could be. Yet even on those grounds, is it worth voting for a man without first seeing his policies or hearing the whole argument? Never get it right, do we?
THAT the Europa League can be a hard slog for a lower-ranked Premier League club is well known. It doesn’t, however, have to be as hard as West Ham are making it. The injury to Enner Valencia is unfortunate — to have three players and the manager sent off in five matches, by contrast, is sheer stupidity. One of the reasons West Ham took so long to get round to appointing Slaven Bilic was the fear that he could be too volatile on the touchline. Losing it to this extent in a third-round Europa League qualifier does not bode well for those times in the season when the pressure is really on. Still, at least West Ham have ensured there can be no repeat of the ordeal next season. With the disciplinary record as it is, a Belmarsh Select XI would have more chance of getting UEFA’s fair play nod than another Premier League team.
LONG before his text message scandal, it was Malky Mackay’s transfer dealings at Cardiff City that were under greatest scrutiny. Vincent Tan, the owner, was scathing about the expense and status of some of those buys — and, yes, some were poor value indeed.
Playing the transfer market, however, has never been an exact science — as this little coda reveals.
One of Mackay’s first buys at Cardiff was french-born striker Rudy Gestede. Mackay took over on June 17, 2011 and that summer Gestede had a trial during a pre- season camp in Seville.
He impressed and his transfer was completed on July 23.
Gestede helped Car- diff win promotion to the Premier League in 2013, but could not regularly make the side from there.
On November 26, 2013, he was sent on loan to Blackburn Rovers. By then, Mackay’s relationship with Tan was toxic. He was sacked as Cardiff’s manager on December 27, 2013. So it could not have been Mackay (left) who sold Gestede to Blackburn permanently for £200,000 on January 1, 2014, nor will it have been Mackay who did not include a sell- on clause as part of the deal. Meaning it won’t be Mackay now looking with horror at Gestede’s £6m transfer to Aston Villa; it will be one of those executives who thought this transfer lark was a cinch.