Fifa is unfit for purpose, investigations abound but we’ve not seen convictions yet. The president has not been arrested, but, well, he has president over this enormous shambles, yet he refuses to resign. His resignation is needed to relieve the reputation of Fifa, the reputation of football itself. We all know this, but SFA chef exec, Stewart Regan said as much.
The SFA is Blatter’s role model. Regan conceded SFA president Campbell Ogilvie was horribly conflicted, as the Association dealt with the consequences of the biggest directorial negation of duty in Scottish football history – by Ogilvie, who was director and company secretary of the dysfunctional board.
Ogilvie never resigned. Ogilvie has still not resigned. Regan said nothing. Ogilvie’s supporters in the game rallied round, just as Blatter’s have today.
This is how human nature works. Ogilvie has been in enough committee meetings, pressed enough flesh, to ensure that despite the slaying he took at the hands of Lord Nimmo Smith’s SPL inquiry, he could brass it out. Accountability at the SFA does not exist. I get it. But, the SFA cannot have the audacity to make moralistic statements about the corporate accountability of others.
It is a depressing feature of Scottish life that we don’t have a culture of accountability, that the media are not sufficiently plural that such hypocrisy is exposed for what it is, that there isn’t a single elected representative prepared to disengage with the Scottish establishment on this today.
The new media are not there yet. We don’t have the authority of a broadcaster or politician to demand, and get, accountability. That’ll change in time.
1,464 Comments- Pages:
- «
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- ...
- 39
- »
LiviBhoy
IMHO
Motherwell were the worst team we played at parkhead this Season,though that new club are attrocious by all reports so it should be close,
Morrisey
Don’t get you?
Lily’s
PS, did you post that this was down to Israel, yesterday?
Motherwell face their former gaffer tonight. I would say they have no chance. I don’t see them winning either leg. They are dross.
LB
Blant’rrrr Tim:-)
Blantyre Tim and Karen. Best wishes on your anniversary.congratulations.
———————————————————————————
HebCelt
St Kilda.enjoy your selves mate,when you come back i will get a few pics of you if you dont mind.Have you ever been to Mingulay?.the 700 foot cliffs there look great. 2 places on my list to do mate.happy birthday to Mrs Hebcelt.
hail hail :-)
Happy 40th Lorna Winklepicker:-)
Hope you are having a cracking day.
Happy birthday also to bognorbhoy and the Queen of the black pudding isle.
Hail Hail to you all.
A motherwell pumping of the huns would be a nice wee pressie for you all.
burgas hoops-thanks for that
Just under 0.20% of males in the UK have been to the Edinburger tattoo.
99.80% CSC
AT-Thanks, will have a read at that.HH
Motherwell have traditionally bent over and spread ’em for the Hun. Here’s hoping the financial motivation of staying in the top flight keeps their cheeks together and their posture upright …
GM-Home and away, Motherwell are gash
lilys grandpa @ 17:34
I understand your point and note it. Those who upset Zionists are punished. It’s all around us and easy to see.
I never posted on CQN yesterday. I do know the sinner is always punished. ;)
I hear that Steven McManus’s standards have dropped considerably….. so much so that he is only liable to give one good game per season…
Well tonight’s ur night big man.
glasstwothirdsfull
“For every VISA there is a MasterCard”
True story, I know. I just can’t see him coming out of this clean and on top.
Many people are hoping for some kind of karma tonight with Skippy playing a pivotal role. Personally, I think it’ll be more korma than karma. Skippy will either disappoint or be sent off by a ref trying to curry favour. It’s just the way it works.
leftclicktic
Ogilvie is Mr Smug personified.
Regan is Mr HowTheHellDidIEverLandJobLikeThis-JolliesAPlenty-HaHaHa!?!
I take it the guy in the middle is their role model…
I have a pal who is highly confident the Mothers will prevail over the 2 legs, nothing I say will sway him from his opinion their players are just as good if not better than sevcos and are playing for their futures and will drop to a pittance in wages if they fail.
Ps he is a big Tim
An T, from last blog. Celtic could and should have killed the new club / same club debate stone dead the day the dead club liquidated. A measured statement welcoming them back as a new entity (properly worded by Celtic legal eagles), whilst hammering it into them that they would be a new club would have gone unchallenged. They and their support as well as the SPL and SFA were in shock and in no position to dispute the truth.
Celtic let us down big time and now we have the constant pish including holding company, company running corporate affairs blah blah.
Its never going to happen now and its a real shame they did not take a stance when they had the high ground.
Hope you’re well big fella.
Morrisey
Ok, point taken and understood. We’ll see how things transpire, take care.
Lily’s
“I’d signed a four-year contract and committed my future to the club, then it all went wrong.
“Obviously they went bust, they had to start all over again in the Third Division. For my own career, I had to move on.
B.Whittaker.
well it sure beats Celtic players past and present answering the meejjahz boxed questions.he was there.
HH
For anyone interested in the latest shenanigans at FIFA I would recommend the book I am currently reading.
The Ugly Game:The Qatari Plot To Buy The World Cup by Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert.
About 25% in and very good so far.
One thing which has struck me is just how blatant and obvious the corruption was.Almost as if it was so ingrained in the culture with people behaving like they were above any laws or rules that ultimately they weren’t even trying to disguise it.
The parallels with those who are custodians/administrators in Scottish football is remarkable
lilys grandpa @ 17:48
Forget me. Remember my fate.
!morrisey
Deal
Lilys
The football bureaucrats of the world were probably expecting to make global headlines as they gathered for the Fifa Congress in Zurich.
But the news so far has been bigger – and worse – than they can possibly have imagined.
The US investigation into corruption at the highest levels of the world’s most popular game will have far-reaching implications for how the game is run – and who runs it.
As news of arrests at the top of Fifa began to sink in, the organisation said it was planning to go ahead as scheduled with the election of its president – which was expected to result once again in a kind of coronation for Sepp Blatter, the great survivor of world sports administration.
But there’s another item on the agenda too – one that may still be troubling delegates far into the future when Mr Blatter is eventually gone and the corruption story has played itself out.
The Palestinian delegation wants Fifa to suspend Israel from world football.
‘Internationalisation’
This is not just about sport of course.
The Palestinians are pursuing a strategy they call “internationalisation” – which means bringing their grievances against Israel into as many international arenas as possible. And arenas don’t come any bigger than Fifa.
The issue has been raised in previous years but some sort of deal was worked out to prevent the issue from coming to a vote.
This time the head of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA), Jibril Rajoub, says nothing will persuade him to remove the request from Fifa’s formal agenda. There won’t be any backroom deals – there will be a vote.
“I am going to end the suffering and the humiliation of the Palestinian footballers,” he told me. “It is our right.”
The Palestinians believe their case is strong.
They complain about how police and army checkpoints which restrict freedom of movement around the occupied Palestinian Territory of the West Bank hamper the ability of players and officials to get to games.
The point is illustrated in a video presentation in which a middle-aged Palestinian called Farouq Assi is captured on the cameras of a human rights activist blindfolded, handcuffed and in custody at an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank.
in the presentation because Mr Assi is a football referee and he was on his way to take charge of a game in Jericho when he was detained. The match was abandoned.
Palestinian territory is divided into two parts – Gaza and the West Bank. Israel controls all movement into and out of the West Bank through a series of checkpoints and it maintains strict controls at its crossing with Gaza through which players and officials have to travel to play West Bank teams.
Bringing politics into football
Israeli sports officials argue they have no control over the policies applied at those checkpoints by Israeli security and intelligence agencies.
Mr Blatter made a trip to Israel and the Palestinian Territories ahead of the Fifa Congress in what appears to have been a failed attempt to stop the issue from being pushed to a vote.
Not long after he left an incident at an Israeli-controlled border crossing with Jordan illustrated the problem.
leaving through the checkpoint on its way to play an overseas fixture – it flies through Amman in Jordan, a short drive across the desert rather than from Israel’s main airport in Tel Aviv.
As they were leaving there were reports that one of their players, Sameh Maarabe, had been arrested by Israeli officials.
Israel explained later that Maarabe had been convicted last year of using an overseas trip to smuggle money and messages back into the West Bank on behalf of the militant group Hamas.
To Palestinians that’s a story about the harassment of a footballer – to Israelis it’s about issuing a warning about re-offending to someone who has a criminal record and who happens to be a footballer.
including the presence on Occupied Palestinian Territory of teams from Jewish settlements which are allowed to play in the Israeli league.
But Israel feels it has a positive story to tell about sport.
There are Arab players in the Israeli national team and at most top-flight clubs – although there is an exception in that Beitar Jerusalem has often attracted criticism for the racism of its nationalist fans.
star Yossi Benayoun, who’s arguably Israel’s best-ever player, told me: “Sport is one of the only things that brings people together. In my experience I played with Muslims, Christians and any other religion and it’s the same in Israel – during my time in the national team we always played with Arab players and it was the same for them.
“I hope it doesn’t come to this decision, because it’s nothing to do with sport.”
Two-thirds majority
For now the Israeli sports authorities have left their argument at that, but not everyone in Israel has been so diplomatic.
The well-connected Israeli legal campaign group Shurat HaDin, for example, has drawn attention to Jibril Rajoub’s membership of the central committee of the Fatah movement, which has an armed wing.
from Mr Rajoub talking about the Palestinian conflict with Israel and has written to Fifa demanding that he should be expelled, instead of the Israel Football Association (IFA).
Their letter is an illustration of the fear inside football that giving in to one expulsion request is bound to trigger others – what if Ukraine should demand the suspension of Russia over the annexation of Crimea for example, when the Russians are scheduled to host the next World Cup?
Within the world of sport there’s always a tendency to keep difficult issues at bay by arguing that sport and politics don’t mix – but of course in extreme cases they do.
Both apartheid-era South Africa and the now-vanished Yugoslavia led by Slobodan Milosevic were expelled from international bodies – the Palestinian chances of success at Fifa will depend on persuading enough delegates that their case matches those precedents.
Israel for now seems confident – partly because Sepp Blatter has clarified that the rules for suspension require a 75% majority, and partly because, in the words of the Israeli expert on international law Alan Baker, this is “a familiar grievance in a new forum”.
The dramatic arrests which overshadowed the start of the Fifa Congress may have shifted the spotlight from the Palestinian case for now but this is an issue that won’t go away.
Whatever happens to the proposal in 2015, there is nothing to stop the Palestinians from putting it back on football’s agenda in the future.
Does anyone know if the transfer window opens on a specific date, or are clubs free to conduct their business from now, as the season is finished ?
ACGR, Hiya Pal, If Celtic had issued a measured Statement declaring them a new entity they would have screamed blue bloody murder and demanded a declaration from the SFA stating that they were in fact the same Club. They would have got it too.
Ruggyman
Pretty sure it is June 1st.
LB
The ole transfer window swings open officially on 01/07/15
Tonight will be a draw.
TT
Cheers L.B
The Dutch defender we have been linked with seems a curious one.
Why he would go back to Ajax, a team that he was sold from only 12months ago. Seems odd.
That would be like Celtic trying to buy Marcus Fraser this January coming..
Anyone else totally baffled by the media’s efforts to squeeze the Scott Allan story past us today?
http://www.onfieldsofgreen.com/no-contest-scott-allan-celtic-and-another-media-invention/
Good evening friends.
All Well I trust?
medtim @ 17 50.
The Ugly Game.
IMO – a very good book – the corruption / the symbiosis / the trade agreements / the favours / the politics .
Re – entered my mind today when Italian radio stated that Spain was one of the few members of UEFA likely to vote for Blatter tomorrow.
Gers swoop whilst Celtic dither
Ruggyman.
Aye .
A bit mad.
Mulgrew was emptied by Strachan.
Brought back by Lenny.
TT
Ruggyman
Looks like I may be wrong. We can bring in free agents though. Be a lot of them out there.
Big pull for a Dutch player going to Ajax. May have been their intention to bring him back. We done something fairly similar with Charlie Mulgrew.
LB
Old Sepp determined to continue on, oblivious.
I wouldn’t wish for anyone to lose their lives under any circumstances, however if and when old gangster number one is found guilty – there isn’t any other alternative to the death penalty.
If he does end up being executed… he can’t honestly say that he didn’t deserve it.
HH.
James Forrest: Link did not work. ;-)
http://www.onfieldsofgreen.com/no-contest-scott-allan-celtic-and-another-media-invention/
Hugh Keevins; “Do you feel confident in winning 10 in a row to beat Rangers achievement of 9 in a row?”
Kris Commons; “That was the old Rangers.”
Keep the Faith!
Hail Hail!