McBeth cried foul on FIFA first. He’s due a big apology
IN MAY 2007, John McBeth spoke out on FIFA corruption and was thrown to the lions. Events this week show why the SFA and the Home Nations owe a decent man an apology.
A former president of Scotland’s governing body, McBeth now lives quietly on the Ayrshire coast where the most ferocious Clyde storm is no match for the events of eight years ago.
Poised to become Britain’s FIFA vice-president, the Scot used an extraordinary press briefing to accuse African and Caribbean nations of propping up ‘ tricky customer’ Sepp Blatter’s corrupt administration.
It was fair comment then. In the aftermath of Blatter’s re- election for a fifth term as the president of football’s world governing body it still is.
Yet McBeth, a quietly spoken, committed Christian with a long history of service to football, broke the golden rule. He rocked the boat.
Accused of ‘ racism and bigotry’ by Jack Warner, the reprehensible, di sc r e di te d and vindictive CONCACAF president, McBeth was referred to Sebastian Coe’s FIFA ‘ Ethics Committee’ — a misnomer if ever there was one.
But the moral high ground occupied by Warner was no stronger than quicksand. McBeth has been proven right.
In March 2011, Warner was suspended for financial irregularities by FIFA. On Wednesday, he was one of 14 indicted by the FBI, appearing in court in Trinidad on 12 charges of taking bribes and kickbacks worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
Another of those charged is Nicolas Leoz. His name first came to light when the BBC’s Panorama alleged he accepted bribes before the vote to decide the venue for the 2018 World Cup.
I t was superb i nvestigative j ournalism. Vying to host the tournament, however, the English FA were incandescent — branding the broadcast ‘an embarrassment to the BBC’.
We should all remember this the next time Greg Dyke, Rick Parry or Stewart Regan are wheeled out to demand Blatter’s head on a platter.
They are all clamouring to follow McBeth’s lead now.
But none of this corruption is new. And for years they allowed it to happen. British football’s most senior figures have become brave after the event. When a former SFA president spoke up years ago, he was trashed and discredited.
The FA and SFA now argue that they opposed Blatter’s re-election in 2011. But only after the 2018 World Cup had gone to Russia. Before then they were complicit in the FIFA culture. They were part of the problem. By inviting Qatar up for a game at Easter Road this Friday, the SFA still are.
It needed an American law agency to muck out the stables. Not the people who stood back as a corrupt, putrid, deluded banana r e public carried on taking backhanders unhindered.
In the United States, they actually take corruption in sport seriously. In European football — Scotland included — we shrug and ignore it.
Wide boys and crooks routinely drift i n and out of f ootball boardrooms. Everyone has heard the whispers regarding certain clubs, certain chairmen, certain officials here and no one says a word. It’s easier that way. Fit-and-proper tests are a selective sham.
McBeth discovered that back in 2007 when the Home Nations — the SFA among them — rushed out a statement running a mile from his damning, piercingly accurate FIFA allegations.
Craven cowardice like this is one of the many reasons FIFA is now a toxic, fatally damaged brand. All it took for badness to happen was for good men to be silenced.
Ignorance serves as no defence. Led by the brave, tenacious Andrew Jennings, Fleet Street exposed Blatter’s regime time and again. The British vice-presidency could have ceased to be an anachronism by using the exposes to highlight wrongdoing.
The newly-appointed British vicepresident, Manchester United director David Gill, now says he will resign rather than serve in a Blatter regime. Jim Boyce, his predecessor, should have done that years ago.
That it fell to the Americans to t ake t he i nitiative i s an embarrassment to British and European football.
Contrary to what a delusional Blatter claims, the British did not cause the current crisis. But could they have done more to avert it? Yes they could.
For too long, the SFA, the FA, the Home Nations and UEFA looked the other way. The corruption was happening under their noses. But when McBeth said so he was excommunicated. In an interview with this newspaper last year, the Scot revealed his final conversation with Blatter.
‘I said to him: “There is life after football, but in my country it’s normally at Her Majesty’s pleasure for people like you”.’
If there is justice at the end of this, those words may yet prove prophetic.