So FIFA's hit a red card, for bribery, and the 2018 and 2022 bids. Bear with me, I'm not a big footie fan.
I don't blame people for having a go at bribery, especially when it's as blatant as it appears to be, with all the money having a yellow brick road to Mr x, ms. y and sir AN Other.
I just think that FIFA's going to keep doing the whole bribery thing, especially whenever they have a president, like Blatter, who has a football field of money and no common sense to even try and hide it. As it stands, he's been accused of, to quote the Telegraph, "presiding over 'rampant, systemic and deep-rooted corruption'."
Now, without pissing anybody off, I have to say we've been bribing each other ever since we were amassing collections of stone axes in caves in and around the world. "Oh, let me bribe you with this stone, which has some agreed value between us, for staring at my cows all day." Even by any other name, it's still bribery.
The whole point of this FIFA scandal is that there's too much money, and not enough sport. That might sound strange to say about a sporting organisation, but bear with me. Footballers all over the world are paid too much money. I am mostly talking about top footballers who, I'm assuming, will be the only people playing in either of the 20-whatever bids.
I mean, Wayne Rooney's contract at Manchester has him earning £300,000 a week. Even the average wage for Premier League players in the 2012-2013 season was ridiculous - £1.6 MILLION on average for kicking an inflatable pigskin around. That, by the way, equates to approximately £31,000 a week, which is more than the average UK worker earns.
WHY do they earn so much? Granted, they run around a lot, occasionally get serious injuries and all of that, but what do they really do? I mean, doctors are important and, as the second-oldest end product of a relationship BETWEEN two doctors, I can say that with some certainty. And yet, they are paid flip-all, since junior doctors earn an average of £22,500 a year. Granted, consultants can earn upwards of £75,000 a year, but...
That's a YEAR. Footballers earn that in a MONTH. This, to my mind, is stupid. Again, I'm not a massive footie fan, and I'm a woman, with all the "what's the offside rule again?" that that implies, but I dare any and all footballers to negotiate their contracts so they earn £22,500 - £31,000 a year. And if they can't, then at least donate SOMETHING of their stupidly enormous salary to a cause that is worthwhile. I don't care if it's the Red Cross, or Great Ormond's Street Hospital.
But to get back to the original point of this story, I think Blatter needs to realise that his time as FIFA president is up. Granted, he's still popular in Africa and Asia, but anyone who's compared to Vladimir Putin in the Telegraph's comments section, let alone being defended by Vladimir Putin against a "Western imperialist plot", should get out of that situation.
In the end, I'm just agreeing with Prince William who - good on him - has given a speech about FIFA, telling them that "FIFA... must now show it can represent the interests of fair play and put the sport first."
I just think that football hasn't really been about football for a long time. It's been about money, and that needs to change.
