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Blatter’s ploy to dump Shamed Warner
By Andrew Jennings
President Sepp Blatter is a tricky operator. For a decade he has relied on the 35 votes that Jack Warner controls in the Caribbean and North and Central America to hold on to power at FIFA. In return he has allowed the Warner family to become millionaires, plundering regional football and FIFA itself.
The Warner-controlled bloc of votes (including the USA) has come at an increasingly high price. Warner’s gross World Cup ticket rackets, his robbing the Trinidad Soccer Warriors national team, his blending of the finances of FIFA and his private companies – coupled with his vituperative assaults on his critics – brings global shame and embarrassment on FIFA.
Blatter wants to rid football of the burden of Warner and replace him with Cayman islands’ Jeff Webb or Jamaica’s Horace Burrell, both compliant but less scandal-prone. So it was a smart move, while Warner is diverted trying to buy a general election in Trinidad, to launch a second front against him, via a prestigious anti-fraud and corruption conference in Miami, a presentation highlighting Warner’s appalling activities.
It worked. The conference was inundated with media requests for advance knowledge of the corruption allegations to be made against Warner. A live satellite hook-up to the region was arranged – and then the signal mysteriously went down.
Artfully rubbing salt in Warner’s wounds, Blatter issued a fulsome statement of support for the man known to football fans as Jakula. ‘For Jack Austin Warner and Joseph S. Blatter to be separated,’ the President declaimed, ‘It would require more than an iceberg, a volcano or an earthquake . . . it would need a miracle for that to happen! But since all miracles have been proven to be positive, that won't happen either.’
Not only has Blatter put Warner’s future at FIFA into play, he gave the kind of reassurance that makes managers of failing clubs know they will be unemployed within days.
By Andrew Jennings
President Sepp Blatter is a tricky operator. For a decade he has relied on the 35 votes that Jack Warner controls in the Caribbean and North and Central America to hold on to power at FIFA. In return he has allowed the Warner family to become millionaires, plundering regional football and FIFA itself.
The Warner-controlled bloc of votes (including the USA) has come at an increasingly high price. Warner’s gross World Cup ticket rackets, his robbing the Trinidad Soccer Warriors national team, his blending of the finances of FIFA and his private companies – coupled with his vituperative assaults on his critics – brings global shame and embarrassment on FIFA.
Blatter wants to rid football of the burden of Warner and replace him with Cayman islands’ Jeff Webb or Jamaica’s Horace Burrell, both compliant but less scandal-prone. So it was a smart move, while Warner is diverted trying to buy a general election in Trinidad, to launch a second front against him, via a prestigious anti-fraud and corruption conference in Miami, a presentation highlighting Warner’s appalling activities.
It worked. The conference was inundated with media requests for advance knowledge of the corruption allegations to be made against Warner. A live satellite hook-up to the region was arranged – and then the signal mysteriously went down.
Artfully rubbing salt in Warner’s wounds, Blatter issued a fulsome statement of support for the man known to football fans as Jakula. ‘For Jack Austin Warner and Joseph S. Blatter to be separated,’ the President declaimed, ‘It would require more than an iceberg, a volcano or an earthquake . . . it would need a miracle for that to happen! But since all miracles have been proven to be positive, that won't happen either.’
Not only has Blatter put Warner’s future at FIFA into play, he gave the kind of reassurance that makes managers of failing clubs know they will be unemployed within days.