This post was meant for yesterday but it has to come this early because I wasn’t chanced to feed my esteemed readers with their daily Arsenal digest due to the fact that I was out all day. Another post will come up later in the day. Guinness Nigeria placed a lot of adverts on the web about the match that was going to come up between Nigeria and Argentina. Before the game kicked off around 7pm, we the fans were told that Argentine juggernauts like Little Wizard Messi, Carlitos the TeveDracula, Di Maria, Aguero and the rest of the big names were not going to grace our National Stadium due to reasons best known to Maradona who is probably swimming in an oil well in UAE. Sergio Batista used the tie to hand debuts to some younglings but a few notable names were still present in the starting 11. Man City’s full back whose hair drops off any time he rubs his head was the captain of the day. The other players were not household names but they were the kind of players you would call up in Football Manager if you were the coach of the Argies. They include Federico Fazio, Ezequiel Garay, Fernando Belluschi and Mauro Boselli.
The home side also had some heavyweights that didn’t grace the occasion yesterday night. The Premier League’s highest scoring African this concluded season Peter Odemwingie was missing. That bloke cost West Brom £2.5m but he banged in goals that a basket couldn’t contain. £50m Torres on the other hand was a complete shadow of the El Nino that scored 24 goals in his debut season at Liverpool. Nigeria’s own nomadic Frodo Baggins that bought the country’s ticket to last summer’s World Cup with 2 goals against Kenya and destroyed Arsenal hearts with the 89th minute winner in the Carling Spoon final wasn’t in the party so Sergio Batista paid the price for fielding rookies because Nigeria ran riot to place their own mark in history. They walloped the 2-time World Cup winners in a convincing 4-1 victory and would have scored more goals if not for their profligacy. Ikechukwu Uche of Zaragoza netted a brace while West Ham loanee Victor Obinna converted a spot kick. The pick of the bunch was a cheeky lob by debutant Emmanuel Emenike. The 4th official signaled for a 3 minute stoppage time but in the 95th minute, the ref decided to have a Phil Dowd/Martin Atkinson moment by awarding the visitors a consolation penalty when he ought to have blown his whistle to end the match. Nigeria is currently ranked in 39th place and is labeled as the 5th best team in Africa behind Ghana, Egypt, Farmer Eboue’s planting home and South Africa so this victory will surely do wonders for my country’s rankings that’ll probably be decided by that corrupt organization called FIFA.
We all know that Sepp Blatter beat Sepp Blatter in the FIFA Presidential elections that held yesterday but I’ll like to take you behind the scenes to give a detailed info of how it all began in the organization that’s supposed to be responsible for fair play as they always preach.
On the 5th of November, 2009, FIFA VP Jack Warner revealed that he had returned a $370 handbag that the English bidding team had given to his wife. He labeled it as a symbol of derision, betrayal and embarrassment. A month before this incident happened, he had criticized England for providing goody bags for the delegates as Australia and Qatar had done. On the 5th of March, 2010, FIFA’s ethics committee under the new chairmanship of Claudio Susler agreed to send letters to all the bidding nations reminding them of the rules involved in bidding for the rights to host the World’s biggest sporting event. Blatter declared that “football is more than a game. It’s a socio-cultural approach that brings emotions”. The president ended it all by saying that football is a school of life. 4 days after sending the letters, FIFA rejected Indonesia’s bid to host the 2022 World Cup because of the lack of sufficient support from the country’s government. This made Indonesia to support Australia in the country’s bid.
On the 14th of May, 2010, FIFA showed the World the official bidding documents of Australia, England, Netherlands/Belgium, Japan, Korea, Qatar, Russia, Spain/Portugal and USA. Blatter also announced that the inspection of the bidding nations will span through July to September. 2 days later, it was unveiled that England’s bidding Chief David Triesman was secretly recorded when he was making comments about alleged attempts by Spain and Russia to bribe referees in the tournament that was starting the next month in South Africa. This scenario coupled with other events made Mr. Triesman to step down as England’s bidding Chief. He also had to vacate his post as the English FA Chairman.
Two months after the World Cup, the FIFA inspection team arrived in Moscow and they met with the country’s Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin. Two months after that the Russian bidding team denied allegations that Nigeria’s Amos Adamu had been offered ‘co-operation’ by them in return for his vote in their 2018 World Cup bid. In October 15, USA withdrew their 2018 bid to re-route their resources into launching a bid for the 2022 World Cup.
On the 20th, Blatter didn’t have nice words to say about the allegations pressed on his organization but he summarized it all by saying,
“It is a sad day for football”.
This was in response to the words uttered by UK’s Prime Minister, David Cameron.
“Our society is full of devils and you’ll find these devils in football. We have to fight for fair play, respect and we have to fight the people in charge of FIFA behave as they should do and if this is not the case we have to intervene”.
That same day, a former Tahiti footballer named as Reynald Temarii was accused of asking for $2.3m to build a youth academy for the Oceania Football Confederation. Temarii had been on the helm of affairs of that organization since 2004. He said,
“I have no intention of resigning and I have been asked for a personal hearing by the Ethics Committee. You have heard only 15 seconds of the interview, maybe you should hear the full 45 minutes and you’ll under everything.”
FIFA then suspended Temarii and West Africa Football Union’s chairman Amos Adamu provisionally due to reports that they offered to sell their World Cup votes. Amos Adamu denied that he demanded for $800,000 to be paid to him directly so that he would construct 4 artificial pitches back home in my country, Nigeria. He declared his innocence saying,
“I am confident that my actions, the full and true extent where not detailed in the story published and I will demonstrate not only my innocence and integrity but my commitment to football and FIFA.”
On the 18th of November, 2010, FIFA confirmed the suspension of Amos Adamu, Reynald Temarii and four other officials that were facing bribery and corruption charges. WAFU’s Chairman received a 3-year ban and a $10,000 fine while Temarii received a 1-year ban and a $5,000 fine. FIFA also said that there was no evidence to support allegations of collusion between rival bid teams. Adamu intends to appeal.
A week after Adamu, Temarii and the rest were banned, fresh claims emanated from nowhere saying that CAF president Issa Hayatou and two South American delegates (Nicolas Leoz of Paraguay and Ricardo Teixeira of Brazil) took bribes from the company that secured the rights for the 1990 World Cup that was won by Germany. These reports shook the footballing World because the aforementioned delegates were also going to be involved in the voting for the World Cup bid that was to take place in 3 days’ time. A day after this the International Olympic Committee announced that they’ll launch an investigation into BBC’s Panomara that indicted Hayatou, Leoz and Teixeira. FIFA announced that the case was investigated and closed but Hayatou said that he’ll take legal action against BBC.
The day of reckoning came on the 2nd of December with Russia and Qatar winning the rights to host the World Cup in 2018 and 2022 respectively.
Britain’s Parliament launched an inquiry towards England’s shameful failed bid then last month reports came out again that Issa Hayatou and another delegate were paid by Qatar but FIFA denied these allegations. I recently wrote about Bin Hammam and Jack Warner’s involvement in bribery when they offered Carribean officials $40,000 to get votes for Bin Hammam in the presidential elections. Both men have been suspended from any footballing activity but Bin Hammam let the cat out of the bag by saying that Sepp Blatter was aware about the payments but the 75-year old was cleared after facing a hearing by the Ethics Committee.
Jerome Walker had emails that showed Qatar’s involvement in buying the rights but the Arab nation denied all the claims. Walker said soon after that the “comments were taken out of context”. England and Scotland’s FA appealed for the presidential election to be postponed pending further investigation but they were outnumbered 172-17. This meant that Sepp Blatter contested against Sepp Joseph Blatter to enter his 4th term unopposed making him football’s own Gadhafi in terms of years spent in office not the killings and maimings.
Gadhafi………….Blatter has started making promises that he intends to use to appease the gods with the standout promises being allowing all 208 member nations to vote instead of 24 and creating another committee that will have a figurehead like Johan Cruyff at the helm of its affairs. If Blatter likes, let him say that there’ll be no extra time, improved goal line technology or the game would be stopped for camera replays like Rugby and Tennis when referees are in doubt, he can’t change was has happened to FIFA in recent weeks. The suspension of all the delegates involved are just temporary meaning that when they come back they might be on a revenge mission or they’ll pick up where they left off with more corruption. I can never look at FIFA with a clear eye again.
To the news of my darling Arsenal, I’ll start with the not so good news and trust me, they are many. Arsenal’s midfield maestro Samir Nasri is still stalling his contract talks with the club. I thought that the reason for his stalling was best known to those Aliens that want to attack the Earth but are scared because of Chuck Norris existence but I’ve found out that Nasri doesn’t want to play for us for the passion; he’s concerned about his pocket. Arsenal has offered Nasri £90,000 pounds per week but the Frenchman wants his shoulder level to be the same with Cesc Fabregas who earns £110,000. Nasri now reminds me of how Emmanuel Greedybayor was when he talked himself into a new deal but was utter shite the next season. He called AC Milan his Beyonce and Barca his Rihanna. At this point in time, I’m quite pissed with Nasri so if I wants to go to Inter or Bayern, he should be my bloody guest as long as we command an outstanding fee for his departure. AW has made it clear that he’ll not enrich Man Utd with some of Nasri’s Super Snood powers. Speaking of fees, Nicklas Bendtner’s fagent (as Arseblogger named him) or father and agent has said that his son can command a fee of at least £10m. Be the judge of that.
I bring more not so good news with our target Falcao saying that he’s more than happy to stay at Porto. There’s also an article of Arsenal’s living legend Thierry Henry telling the media Vultures that it kills him from within seeing Arsenal collapse but AW is still the right man for the job.
The only news that’s not so bad involves our youngling Ryo Miyaichi. That club that received a 10-0 spanking from PSV says that they want to retain his services next season and with his work permit being an issue I feel it’s in the club’s best interests to let the young Jap strut his stuff in Holland.
That’s enough for one post.
This blogger needs some sleep.
It’s already 2am
Sayonara
