Swiss media lambast FIFA culture, blame Blatter

FIFA president Sepp Blatter was not among those arrested in Wednesday's raid and will stand for re-election on Friday Keystone

Following dramatic dawn arrests of top football governing body officials in Zurich, Swiss media have chided FIFA for its “rampant corruption” and agreed its president Sepp Blatter’s time was up long ago.

Tabloid Blick most explicitly called for Blatter to step down, plastering the headline “That’s enough, Mr Blatter!” across its front page.

“Scumbags and corrupt officials come to Zurich. Blatter didn’t seek out these people. But under his leadership, a feudal system with terrible tentacles continued to fester,” wrote the Blick editorialist.

“It was only after 2010, following the laughable decision to award the World Cup to Qatar, that Blatter woke up and finally implemented reforms. But it was too late – the FBI had been on the case for a long time already.”

It concluded that “if Blatter loves football as much as he always reiterates, there’s only one option: that he immediately and definitively seeks a successor”.

The Tribune de Genève also demanded Blatter’s resignation, appealing to him directly.

“You have nothing more to do with FIFA,” the paper’s editor-in-chief wrote to the FIFA head. “Own up to your mistakes and take responsibility after 17 years of an undignified reign. Your actions reflect on Switzerland, whose international reputation was just undone.”

Corrupt history

However, the commentary in Zurich’s Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) did not mention Blatter’s name until the final paragraph, choosing instead to focus on the cases of corruption in the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups – to Russia and Qatar – as well as money laundering going back as far as 1991, seven years before Blatter assumed FIFA’s leading role.

The paper called it “unsurprising” that these two incidents attracted the attention of the FBI and triggered an investigation by Swiss authorities, with the leader writer most surprised that justice authorities had not acted sooner.

But the NZZ also called for a certain degree of scepticism with regard to the way Wednesday’s arrests and the announcement of a Swiss investigation came to pass, just before Friday’s FIFA congress.

“It was also a matter of [calculated] presentation, with state institutions – especially the American ones –  suddenly loving transparency in cases like this,” it wrote.

Finally, the paper questioned the quality of FIFA’s recent reform efforts and remarked that its “culture of corruption had not disappeared”, as it had wanted the world to believe. The NZZ’s commentator concluded that Blatter’s presidency would be tainted by the investigations and that “he carries the responsibility for [FIFA’s corrupt] culture, which he at the very least tolerated during his overly long time in office”.

‘The absurd world of FIFA’

Le Temps in Geneva agreed that Blatter should have stepped down long ago, stating that “at 79 years old, he missed his chance at a successful exit”.

“Even if he’s re-elected on Friday, the man from the Valais will remain associated with profiteering and corruption, two breasts that have fed his thirst for power for 40 years,” it wrote.

For its part, under the headline “The absurd world of FIFA,” the Tages-Anzeiger in Zurich wondered how Blatter managed to hold on to the association’s top spot for so long.

“How is it possible? First of all, he is incredibly clever. Secondly, it is possible that there’s really nothing behind the widespread belief that he’s also stuck in the morass [with those who were arrested]. But it does seem unbelievable that Blatter didn’t know anything about the many illegal dealings going on around him.”

“Blatter would not be tolerated in any other business environment,” the Tages-Anzeiger’s sports editor continued. “But at FIFA he can now play the role of the renewer, probably starting tomorrow for another four years. That says everything about this association.”

Clear-cut international reactions

Outside Switzerland, verdicts on what should come next for Blatter were clear.

“This time, FIFA should not be allowed to pretend that the problem is a few corrupt officials,” wrote the New York Times. “A first step is the immediate ouster of Mr Blatter and the restructuring of FIFA.”

Britain’s Financial Times welcomed the actions of the American justice authorities, stating that “even the hitherto docile Swiss authorities have opened criminal proceedings into the bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments – a process that has long begged for closer scrutiny”.

“True to form, FIFA’s longstanding president … seems determined to sail on, submitting himself for re-election on Friday. But it cannot be business as usual at FIFA…Mr Blatter should have resigned from the presidency long ago,” the paper concluded.

And The Guardian, which previously had memorably described Blatter as perhaps “the most successful non-homicidal dictator of the past century”, referred to Wednesday’s arrests in Zurich as the “ugliest day in the history of the beautiful game”.

“The only surprise is perhaps that it has taken so long. But, thanks to good investigative journalism, there has been little secret for years about the high-living corruption of the self-perpetuating freemasonry that is FIFA.”

It concluded: “Mr Blatter sits atop this steaming mound of graft. He may indeed be calm. But he is finished. Either he goes or FIFA collapses – or perhaps both.”