The Future of FIFA

Now that some of the dust has settled following the FIFA presidential election and allegations of corruption and poor governance in the governing body of world football, it is a good time to review what has happened and what the future might hold.

I have some relevant knowledge in this area as I have some experience of international organisations.   I am vice-president for Europe and Africa of an international organisation headquartered in Montreal where there is a small full-time group of staff members.   I am also the organiser of its next world congress.   It’s not as important an organisation as FIFA and it operates in the field of education.

Nevertheless, serving on its executive committee for five years has given me some experience of how one works in this kind of setting.   It is not easy because different national cultures persist in the world.   The Japanese or Korean approach to an issue is very different from the American one.   The difficulties are not so much linguistic challenges because business is generally conducted in English, although in informal discussions people resort to French, Spanish or German.

I have, however, learnt two lessons.   First, bringing about change is a slow and difficult process.   Like most international organisations, the statutes are complex and not easy to navigate through.   This is in part deliberate to create a consensual form of decision-making.   In our Council there is a partial system of weighting on the votes of country members which is in effect resource related, although not to the extent of the quotas in the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  

In the case of Fifa, the European members agreed to some fifty years ago to a one country, one vote system.   This means that the smallest Pacific or Caribbean nation has as much weight as Germany or the United States: the UK is specially favoured because the four national associations are still recognised, reflecting its role as the home of football (although Sepp Blatter has recently claimed that it originated in China).   Quite rightly, FIFA has a series of schemes to help football in the developing countries.   However, the downside of these arrangements is that they create a web of patronage that can be strongly influenced by the president, thus creating a series of favours that can be called in.

The second lesson I learnt is that you need to build coalitions to bring about change and this is not an easy process.   People who you thought might support you can default, often for entirely valid reasons.   It is important to have support from outside Europe or North America.   You can’t decide at the last minute as the Football Association apparently did that something needs to be done and mount a challenge to the leadership that ends in ignominious failure.

A general problem with international organisations is that they are not really accountable to anyone other than their own members.   Ethical standards have to be policed internally and there are incentives not to take this too seriously.   In some organisations, the IMF being a classic example, there are effectively ‘hegemons’ that impose standards of conduct on the organisation as a whole.   The US and the leading European countries play this role in the IMF, but they are increasingly being challenged by the emerging countries.   The only hegemon in FIFA is Sepp Blatter himself and he has his own personal agenda.

The media can bring some pressure on international organisations to be accountable, but their ability to do so depends on a certain level of transparency in the first place.   Fifa is a very opaque organisation although investigative journalists have attempted to penetrate it.   But the most consistent interest has been shown by the British media and it can be argued that England in particular has a sour grapes agenda. I did notice, however, in the recent crisis (although Sepp Blatter did not think it was a crisis) that the German media was taking a close interest in what was going on.

I watched Sepp Blatter’s conference live and it was like watching an East European Communist dictator thinking that he was still in charge when everything was collapsing around him.   Blatter was clearly shaken by some of the questioning, but yet he has survived, if not unscathed, then still in charge.   He thinks he can resolve the problems through such half baked schemes as recruiting the 88-year old Henry Kissinger to sort out Fifa.   At the time of writing, it was unclear whether the nuclear era sage would accept this somewhat poisoned chalice.

Of course, football is a very much a closed world and there were many references during the FIFA Congress to the ‘FIFA family’ and the need to sort out any quarrels privately away from the public gaze.   The English, it was implied, were always rocking the boat.

Who can bring about change?   The Swiss Government is concerned about the bad publicity that FIFA has brought it: Switzerland gets enough bad publicity as it is about secret bank accounts.   A new legal framework is being drafted for international organisations based in Switzerland (of which there are many) but what its effect will be remains to be seen.

Perhaps the greatest hope for the change lies with FIFA’s sponsors who want their brands to be boosted by a relationship with football, not besmirched.   Of course, the World Cup (which has just got under way with a match between Montserrat and Belize) remains a fantastic global brand: it is just FIFA that has been tarnished. But there are signs that leading sponsors have made it clear that they are not happy.

Indeed, there has been speculation that Sepp Blatter might step down halfway through his presidential term, making way for Michel Platini of UEFA.   Somehow I can’t see Blatter letting go of the levers of patronage and power.   Until he goes it is difficult to see FIFA really cleaning up its act.

Wyn Grant is a regular contributor to Albion Road and also the publisher of footballeconomy.com, a website covering the business and economy of the game of football.