By Peter Alegi
In a few hours WikiLeaks will release thousands of secret FIFA documents detailing World Cup match fixing and widespread corruption within football’s governing body.
Never before have such confidential documents been released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into FIFA’s activities on the shores of Lake Zurich.
The documents, which date from 1998 to 2010, contain 15,652 confidential communications between FIFA executive committee members in Zurich and corporate sponsors, media networks, and other football officials throughout the world.
But seriously, on Thursday, December 2, FIFA’s ethically challenged executive committee will award the hosting rights for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup. The stench emanating from the bidding “process” has been overpowering to the point that we — the citizens of FootballWorld — would benefit greatly from the assistance of Julian Assange and the people behind WikiLeaks.
As the work of Andrew Jennings showed, revelations of overt facts can damage the image, if not the profits, of FIFA and its corporate allies. Such information would give a vital boost to good governance in the game and instill hope for a healthy football community.
* From Football is Coming Home.
Not to defend corruption but this Wikileaks stuff is getting kind of old. If it turns up real misdeeds then great, it will have provided a very valuable service. And nobody should be trying to shut the operation down. But so far there haven’t really been any bombshells. In the case of FIFA, how could the selection process not be “corrupt”? Can there be “objective” criteria by which to make such a selection? It will always be ugly sausage making and only the willfully naive could pretend otherwise. So far reading wikileaks is like reading a celebrity gossip tabloid. Its all juicy details that no one really needs to know. The feigned (or worse real) indignation of people when they learn that some diplomat spied or said not nice things is pretty hard to take seriously. I expect the FIFA documents will be more of the same.