Can a Journalist Overthrow Sepp Blatter?

This humble editor thought the ‘Grant Wahl for FIFA President’ tweets were all part of some elaborate joke when they appeared cascading in his Twitter timeline. But apparently, they’re not. Joe Tompkins reports:

Unless you live in the US, the name Grant Wahl probably doesn’t mean much to you. Wahl is a football (or should that be soccer?) journalist for the American magazine Sports Illustrated and has written a book about David Beckham’s time at LA Galaxy. But now he is making the headlines rather than writing them as he has vowed to run against Sepp Blatter in the upcoming FIFA presidential elections.

Sepp Blatter’s reign as FIFA President started in 1998 and has not been without controversy. Deliberating on cries to look into goalline technology and suggesting women footballers should wear tight shorts and low cut shirts is just the start of it. Besides the trivial, claims of financial mismanagement leading to losses of $100m have been made by a former deputy and the president of the Somali Football Federation says they were offered $100,000 to vote for Blatter in the 1998 election. The recent 2018/2022 World Cup decisions seem to have turned negative whispers into louder cries with many people disagreeing with the choice of hosts. Russia has a racism problem which has yet to be tackled and Qatar’s laws against homosexuality and alcohol have been well publicised since they won the right to host the 2022 competition.

So if Blatter really is unpopular how come he has been re-elected? In 1998 he won an election against former UEFA president Lennart Johansson and in 2002 beat off a challenge from Issa Hayatou, then president of CAF. In 2007 his popularity had fallen gaining approval from only 66 of the 207 national confederations but no one opposed him and he gained a 3rd term. But is a journalist the right choice to oppose Blatter? Surely there must be someone in football administration ready to step up to the plate?

There is, and that man is Mohammed Bin Hammam who is currently president of the Asian Football Confederation. He is yet to confirm he will definitely run but is widely believed to be considering it, however Wahl believes he will make no difference and is just a ‘FIFA insider’. But can Wahl make a difference? He has been eager to point out that he’s not doing this as a joke and has already made some election promises. He’s a big fan of video technology  and wants to scrap yellow cards for goal celebrations, citing the World Cup Final where Iniesta got the same punishment for taking his shirt off after the scoring the winner as Nigel de Jong got for kicking someone in the chest.

Another interesting promise is getting rid of quotas for referees at the World Cup, meaning that the World Cup will have the best referees no matter what nationality they are. He also wants to appoint a woman as FIFA Secretary General and impose a limit on the amount of terms a president can serve. He wants to make sure that no president can serve more than 8 years. Remarkably in the last 37 years there have been just 2 FIFA presidents. Wahl also wants to release the documents containing details of FIFA’s past dealings saying the organisation needs a ‘Wikileaks-type clean out’.

To take part in the election Wahl needs the support of at least one national federation but if he is going to win he will need the support of a lot more as each national federation gets one vote in the election. He has until April 1st to be nominated ahead of the election on June 1st. So can a journalist overthrow Blatter and ‘cure the Blatter infection’? Yes, but there’s a lot of campaigning to do.

FIFA, Sepp Blatter, The Media