Did you know the name “Sepp Blatter” before last week? Probably not. He was, until this Tuesday (when he resigned) the president of FIFA, the world’s governing body for international soccer. Then, last week, the FBI and other international agencies arrested a whole bunch of high ranking FIFA officials on corruption and bribery charges, amongst other things, so you figure, with Blatter up for re-election, there would be a change at the top. Nope! Blatter, the arrogant, cartoonish figure-head of FIFA, was re-elected president. He then stood there and told us all, “I am the president of everyone.” Really? Well, not really. Tuesday, days after his re-election, he announced his resignation, citing the need for new leadership. WOW. I don’t know who the new FIFA leader will be. I don’t know if anything will change. I’m assuming some big international sponsors threatened to pull millions and millions of dollars because international soccer is a mess. There is the assumption that the investigation is closing in on Blatter and he got out before the posse. All or none of that may be true. Still, I’m not convinced anything is going to change until FIFA as a body realizes it has a problem and decides to change. There are a lot of people running that organization who have received a lot of money. Money is addictive and it’s going to be hard to change. The names may change, but I’m not convinced the way they do business will change any time soon.
