Sepp Blatter, FIFA President: "If we're not careful, football may degenerate into a game of greed - a trend I will vigorously oppose."
I try and not to blog sport, but this one really tickled me. May? ROTFLMAO!
Posted by Joe at December 17, 2003 10:30 PMI think Holland might be a little different, but certainly "greed" is a very good word to define football in the UK. It starts with the Premiership clubs and their efforts to keep the 1st Division (and other) clubs poor, and of course the players and their wages, and goes on in any manner of ways. I've been waiting for the bubble to burst in English football finance circles for a long time, but it still hasn't done properly yet. Too long and boring a subject to go into here though Steven.
Posted by: Joe at December 19, 2003 01:27 PMWell, certainly it hasn't gone as far as most american sports yet (commercial breaks after every action in the NFL...) so perhaps the worning was correct.
I wonder if teams like Man. United and Real Mardid are an example, with their humongous commercial campaigns (e.g. you can buy a Manchester United razor at 7-11 in Japan...) but most soccer teams are not yet on their level, so perhaps a warning comes at the right time.
But then again, Blatter goes on about colonization and enslavement by European teams which I think is going a little to far. You probably could have expected this anyway from a FIFA president how owes his reign mostly due to elections from small footballing nations.
Posted by: steven at December 19, 2003 03:39 PMAnother place where my comment got out of sync. Ho Hum.
Good to see Rio get off lighter than he deserved, but get a harsher penalty than he (and his team) thought he'd get!
Posted by: Joe at December 20, 2003 09:20 AM