FIFA, FIGO AND FOIE GRAS
Fifa has only had three presidents since 1961 and – how shall we say this – none of them have been completely perfect. Stanley Rous bent over backwards to accommodate South Africa during the apartheid years. João Havelange was primarily concerned with erecting billboards advertising Heavily Marketed Red Global Concern, a popular multinational brand of fizzy brown drink. And the current incumbent, Sepp Blatter, has stockpiled so much foie gras at Fifa HQ in Zurich that cities as far away as Frankfurt, Munich and Genoa are on constant avalanche alert, in case the parfait peaks of the mountain finally give way, the resulting landslide turning vast swathes of the continent into little more than rich, buttery, gourmet rubble.
It’s time for a change, godd@mnit. The game’s holding out for a hero, and one may have arrived in the shape of Luís Figo,
who this morning at Wembley launched his campaign to succeed Blatter. Admittedly the Fiver is only basing this snap-judgment on how square Figo’s jaw is. But it is very square. As for his policies, well, they seem heroic enough too. He wants to spend half of Fifa’s $2.5bn four-year revenue on grass-roots football. He wants to redistribute two-thirds of Fifa’s $1.5bn cash reserves to the 209 nation states. He wants to increase the use of technology in the game. He wants to go back to the old, simple offside rule, where interference is by the by. He wants to stop Blatter sliding down Mt Force Fed Duck head first with his mouth open. And he wants to expand the World Cup to 48 teams, or perhaps 40, or perhaps do nothing and leave it as it is.
The last idea probably needs a bit more work, to be fair. And the penultimate one sounds like a pipe dream, no more, no less. But on the whole, Figo’s pitch is a clever enough gambit, with plenty promised to the traditionally smaller continents and nations, historically Blatter’s domain. For example, as well as the extra money, any additional World Cup places would be handed to countries outside of the delicate, high-calorie terrine formerly known as Europe. And there’s star backing:
David Beckham has given his support to Figo’s candidacy, which shows immense generosity of spirit when you think about it, the swoonsome Portuguese star having been the only player to have regularly upstaged Becks in team photos, making him look like
Jimmy Sirrel by comparison.
Yes, it’s quite a package. Time, then, to seal the deal. “Thanks to my football experience I am lucky to be an independent man,” trumpeted Figo. “I don’t owe anything to anybody, and this means I can serve as president in the interests of football.” Ah. Well, that’s blown it. And he was doing so well there, for a bit.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
OPEN LETTER OF THE DAY
“Let’s make sure that we don’t let anyone break our relationship, I promise you that I care ... I invite all of you to stay positive, to be strong, closer to each other and keep believing in what we started together last year” –
Gus Poyet pens an open letter to Sunderland fans inspired, apparently, by the lyrics of Celine Dion.
THOUGHT YOU’D SEEN THE LAST OF YOUR MUNDANE ENCOUNTERS WITH FAMOUS PEOPLE? HOW WRONG YOU WERE ...
“Back in the mid 90s I was waiting for some older lads to clear off before we could start football training when Gordon Strachan strode in. Gordon’s Premier League outfit Coventry had been embarrassingly knocked out of the League Cup by lowly Wolves (oh for those halcyon days Coventry supporters, eh?). Whilst crossing the lobby to pick up his son, Gord had to contend with the acerbic wit of a large posse of 12-13 year olds – one of whom coughed ‘Wolves’. Furious, Gord looked for his assailant. Instead he turned on me, dishing out what I can only assume was his interpretation of the ‘Hairdryer’ in front of my giggling team-mates. He proceeded to urge my team-mates not to pass to me because I was a coward, before eventually leaving, happy in the knowledge he’d given the youngsters a valuable life lesson. Which in fairness, he did. If you’re going to go nuts at child, best make sure it’s the right one. Or you look like a berk” – Richard Parker.
“I was recently travelling back from Johannesburg to Dublin via Dubai with an airline that sponsor a north London football club. I took full advantage of the copious amounts of free alcohol both in the airline lounge and on the plane. I woke shortly before landing in Dubai. I have no doubt I was snoring like a bear in the woods as when we landed I noticed a number of passengers giving me the evil eye. One seemed strangely familiar, then in my hungover haze I realised it was none other than Carlos Queiroz. I smiled and nodded, acknowledging him and was quite surprised when he simply turned away and ignored me. Still I feel that in that fleeting moment of eye contact we gained a mutual respect for each other and will no doubt be friends for life should we ever meet again, which I doubt we will as my company won’t let me travel business class anymore the fu...oops” – Jason.
“OK, now I have to agree with Steven Mintz (yesterday’s Your Mundane Encounters With Famous People, Chapter 923). Enough of the celebrity sightings. We get it. Your readers have met up with celebrities and, more often than not, they have made poor decisions during the meeting. Not unlike subscribing to the Fiver. It’s consistent behaviour. But this should be put to rest. Is the concept now blunted through repetition? You bet. Are the stories so mundane we now applaud the mention of the roadway a car was on when a child threw up in it? Of course. And do any of the stories mention the time that I was in my local pub in Toronto watching a Liverpool game while small-talking with Pete Postlethwaite OBE? Not yet they don’t. Please make this the last one” – Todd Van Allen.
FIVER LETTERS
“Tom Levesley is correct in thinking that it was corner-kick man in Subbuteo (yesterday’s Fiver Letters), but it seems the Fiver made the same discovery that I did in realising that corner-kick man could be redeployed as free-kick man. I used this tactic to great effect in the frequent games I played against my little brother, who didn’t seem able to master the technique” – Nick Plain.
“I’ve always understood agricultural challenges (yesterday’s Fiver Letters) to be the clumsy and crude shockers that often result in clumps of turf being kicked into the air, as well as the recipient of the tackle. Such challenges make the meaty sound of colliding muscle. In many instances the offender finishes the move with a hearty farmer’s blow in the immediate vicinity of the stricken opponent. On the other hand, I see industrial challenges as those efficient, high-speed slides that usually make the more modern sound of metal studs crashing against polypropylene. In most cases, players making industrial challenges simply get up and walk away as if nothing happened. If your MBM correspondents are looking for fresh adjectives for challenges, may I suggest ‘artisanal’ (for deft tackles that win the ball without even touching the dispossessed player) on one end of the spectrum and ‘Jurassic’ on the other” – Peter Oh.
“My proposed clarification re Ted Lee’s question on tackle terminology is as follows:
Agricultural – relates to the process of scything or mowing down of opponents, in the manner of primitive agricultural equipment performing a similar function. Exponents of the agricultural tackle were Chopper Harris, Tommy Smith, Vinnie Jones.
Industrial – indicates the evolution of manual agricultural tackling to mass production, eg Leeds United team of early 70s, Hunter, Bremner, Giles and co.
Technological – in theory, the translation of the aforementioned into a programmed, robotic style of tackling. The nearest implementation of this method in an overall football sense is the post classical tiki taka developed by Barcelona resulting in passing for passing’s sake. However, as Barcelona rarely let the opponents have the ball, tackling became obsolete, so a technological tackle in this context is actually an oxymoron” – Ian Tasker.
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BITS AND BOBS
Adam Lallana has come to the realisation that telling Southampton he wanted to do one to Liverpool last summer
may not have been an ideal way to go about things. “I’m not stupid enough to think the way I left didn’t leave a sour taste in a few people’s mouths,” he sighed, offering around his packet of Zappers.
And Pope’s Newcastle Rangers manager Kenny McDowall insists the club’s decision to decamp to their youth pitches to allow Inter full use of their senior training pitches and facilities is nothing to do with the fact the Italian side are playing the Queen’s Celtic in the Euro Vase this evening. “There is no doubt [some people will think that] but that’s not the case at all … It’s nice to be nice,” he smirked, fooling nobody.
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