Tag: FIFA

BREAKING: FIFA announce Suarez ban

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NOTE: There’s a more serious take on the calls for a lifetime ban for Suarez here.

But first, read my scoop on FIFA’s report on the Luis Suarez incident:

In an effort to limit the damage done to the otherwise shining reputation of football, FIFA instructed its Disciplinary Committee to move fast in considering and announcing the punishment to be given to Uruguay striker Luis Suarez after the apparent biting incident in the game against Italy on Tuesday.
This order seems to have come from the very top, where Sepp Blatter took time out of his busy schedule to begin throwing stones in his predominantly windowed mansion overlooking Rio de Janeiro to hurry things along. Unsurprisingly, given the gravity of the situation, the outrage across social media worldwide and the necessity to be seen to be doing… well… something, it appears that the footballing body has come down hard on Mr Suarez.

Herewith the important bits of their statement.

We have reviewed the video footage of the latter stages of the Uruguay versus Italy game on Tuesday in Natal, specifically the apparent bite by Uruguay’s Luis Suarez on the left shoulder of Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini. In considering any disciplinary action (and the severity of that action), we have taken several factors into account, these being:

  • The injury suffered by Mr Chiellini and the effect on his future ability to play football.
  • The damage this causes to the image of football worldwide.
  • The baying for blood of the ‘pitchfork mafia’ lynch mob on twitter and uninformed people in the USA generally.
  • The fact that once, in the 1994 World Cup, we banned an Italian player for 8 whole games after he deliberately smashed an opponent in the face with his elbow, breaking his nose, leaving him concussed and meaning that he lost over a pint of blood on the pitch; a punishment which gives precedent and a benchmark to this committee’s decision.

We would like to make the following points regarding this incident:

  • Firstly, this was a wholly unjustified, unwarranted and heinous act. There can be no excuses for biting an opponent during a game of football. I know it’s fairly commonplace in rugby, but this isn’t egg-chasing, is it?
  • Secondly, due to this incident, Mr Chiellini’s career is at an end. He will never be able to play football agai… what?… he did? Oh, apparently, he was able to get back up and play on immediately, but surely only once he’d mopped up all the blood off his shir… sorry? …no blood? oh… right.
    Anyway, the mental scars and the slight, rosy dimples on his shoulder will possibly haunt him forever. At least he can get them treated promptly and locally as he arrives back home in Italy with the rest of their squad later today.
  • Thirdly, we’ve had loads of correspondence from well-informed fans around the world, on Twitter and then on Facebook when they caught up with the news today, telling us that we must ban Mr Suarez from football for a season, two seasons, two years, and/or forever. We’ve also had a lot of people telling us that Qatar is a really stupid place to hold the 2022 World Cup, but we chose not to listen to them.

Herewith the sanctions imposed by the Disciplinary Committee:

THESE SANCTIONS ARE BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE TOURISM BUREAU OF QATAR.
“Qatar: it’s a great place to be. (Unless you’re a migrant worker trapped in a poorly-paying,
dangerous job and your passport has been taken by your employer.)”

  • Luis Suarez will be banned foreverever. And ever. Seriaas. He will never be allowed to play football again in any professional capacity. Or any unprofessional capacity. Neva, baas! It’s over!
    Nothing less than this will placate the baying hordes, and we need to placate them so that they continue to supply us with viewership and advertising revenue.

But wait… there’s more.

  • Luis Suarez will also not be allowed to watch any football and must wear a blindfold whenever he finds himself in any situation where he might reasonably expect to see a football. Except while driving.
    No. Wait. Even while driving. All the time. All of it.
  • Luis Suarez’s family (including, but not limited to his mother, father, wife, sons, daughters, in-laws, uncles, aunties, cousins, second cousins, neighbours, real friends, facebook friends, plumbers, doctors, the sales assistant in Next in Liverpool who sold him that jumper, gardener and the air conditioning maintenance engineers who worked on his house during or before the time he purchased the property) will also be banned from playing football and – just in case – tennis and possibly golf, as well.
  • Luis Suarez’s cat to be declawed.
  • Anyone with the initials “LS” will also be banned from playing football. We have also received several requests from England fans to extend this ban to anyone with the initials “WR”, too. We are happy to do this.
  • Finally, the Uruguayan Football Association must pay for immediate dental work on their entire squad, so that they no longer pose an oral threat to opposition players. This work must be carried out before the 2-0 defeat that Mr Chen has arranged against Colombia on Saturday.

We believe that these sanctions, though harsh, are completely reasonable, especially when put into context. After all, we gave Zinedine Zidane a three game ban for his 2006 headbutt, Nigel De Jong got a whole yellow card for his chest-high, studs-up, karate-style lunge at Xabi Alonso in the 2010 final and we did absolutely fuck all about Diego Maradona’s 1986 ‘hand of god’ goal.

So a lifetime ban for everyone and everything seems completely reasonable here. It’ll make us ever so popular, too.
And it’ll take the heat off (LOLZ, no pun intended) that dodgy Qatar decision for a while.

That concludes this press conference. Sorry, we don’t have time for any awkward questions.

The Morning After

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And so, the dream that never was anything more than a dream is now over. And while we English lick our wounds and think about what might have been, it’s only right that those readers and tweeters who have asked for my considered opinion on matters football get their manna from heaven.
I’ve thought long and hard about how best to put my thoughts in some sort of rational order. I had plenty of time to do this last night because the neighbourhood dogs kept everyone awake all sodding night. Again. But I digress.
Anyway, I couldn’t come up with any rational order, so I’m just going to do a quick  memory dump on stuff which occurred to me yesterday and in the intervening period between then and now.

I’m angry. This is in marked contrast to when Bafana Bafana bowed out (which was essentially after their 0-3 to Uruguay) when I was sad.  To go out fair and square is disappointing. To go out because of refereeing ineptitude is infuriating.

FIFA have to introduce video technology to help refs out. Yes, I recognise that “Write to Sepp” is on every English person’s agenda today, but I’ve said this before. FIFA’s continuing refusal to instate video replays into football is frustrating and foolish. And that’s without a whole lot of other f-words I could have used. Yesterday, Lampard’s “goal” wasn’t a goal and that affected the entire game and with it, potentially, the entire tournament.
It’s not “sour grapes”. It’s embarrassing to love a sport so much and watch it become a laughing stock because its “owners” want it to stay in the Dark Ages. We saw it again in the second game yesterday – Tevez’s first goal was way offside and why didn’t we get goalline camera replays of that Mexican effort that wasn’t given? The conspiracy theorist in me is screaming out that someone had had a word upstairs.

Those who say that “it wouldn’t have made a difference” are laughably naive. Consider the game in Bloem yesterday, one side going in at 2-2 having been 0-2 down: you tell me who’s going to have the psychological edge in the second half. You tell me who’s not going to have to commit too many players forward, leaving themselves vulnerable at the back.

That said, England haven’t lived up to expectations. There’s been a lot of talk of English “arrogance”, but this is a side that won all but one of its qualifying games for this tournament – they had every right to expect to do well, but too many big name players just haven’t performed. Why? Well, I don’t think it’s this “too much football” thing, because every other team is full of players that have played the same amount of football – much of it in the Premiership. Maybe there’s the issue – not enough English players in our own leagues.
So what we’ll do is to get the tabloids to blame the “durty forrennurs” and then do nothing about it until this happens again in 2014.
Oh Joy.
Oh – and I do hope that someone introduces John Terry to Matthew Upson on the plane home, because on the Free State Stadium pitch, it did look like they’d never met before.

And then I looked at Twitter to see why things didn’t go our way. And I wondered why I didn’t look there earlier.
Look at Simon Dingle’s reasons for the Lampard wonder strike not being given:

In the run up to the World Cup Germany gave us advice and support while the English media ran us down. Justice.

Ah yes Simon – of course. Those earthquake, race war and snake stories. Although I might be missing the meaning of your word “support” there. Do you perhaps mean Bayern Munich President Uli Hoeness’ comments:

“I was never a friend of a World Cup in South Africa and Africa as long is the security issue is not 100 percent solved,” Hoeness said.
“Mr Blatter had to have his way, I always considered it wrong. Now you have to make the best out of it (but) I am convinced that deep down Mr Blatter has realised that giving the World Cup to South Africa was one of the biggest wrong decisions he ever made.”

Full on support right there. And here’s some more from Franz Beckenbauer:

Beckenbauer, who captained Germany to World Cup success in 1974 and coached the winning side in 1990, says few German fans can afford the expensive tickets and are put off by South Africa’s reputation for crime.
“Not only are there doubts by those thinking of travelling there, because of security, but the tickets are too expensive,” Beckenbauer, who is on FIFA’s executive committee, told German broadcaster Sky.

This after his earlier comments:

The organisation for the World Cup in South Africa is beset by big problems,” the German legend claimed.
“But these are not South African problems – these are African problems.”

Justice indeed, then.

And then, even more laughably, self-proclaimed social media guru, Khaya Dlanga:

England won’t stop talking about how they were robbed. well, England robbed entire countries during colonialism. Lol

Lol! Yes, if you put ‘Lol’ after something,  it makes everything ok. e.g.:

Hitler wasn’t such a bad chap after all. Lol
Paedophilia in the catholic church is actually ok, because they’re men of god. Lol

Presumably, this also explains why Norway failed to qualify, having had that Viking thing going on, but I’m not sure how the Netherlands have got this far.
Quite how colonialism is going to rear its ugly head at tomorrow night’s Spain (Mexico, America, East Indies) v Portugal (South America, Angola, Mozambique) game remains to be seen, but I’m sure Khaya (who describes himself as “Speaker. Columnist. Copywriter. Humourist. Seriousist. Typoist. I’m too schooled to be cool. I never eat black Jelly Babies.” and who I describe as “a complete tosser”) will have some pithy amusing comment to drag things down to a racial level and sort it all out.

Lol

UPDATE: Thanks to the several of you who have sent me the “What’s the difference between England and a teabag? The teabag stays in the cup longer.” “joke”.
England’s World Cup campaign kicked off in Rustenburg on 12th June and ended yesterday in Bloem on 27th June. That’s 15 days. How long do you stew your tea for? More than 15 days? Is this some sort of African thing? How do you keep it warm?
Or have you just not thought it through?

UPDATE 2: via Sky News:

Major officiating blunders in two World Cup knockout games have sparked outrage among fans.
But FIFA officials ducked the controversy when faced with hostile questioning from journalists at their daily briefing.
In fact, the governing body failed to send any officials with responsibility for refereeing to the press conference.

Spokesman Nicolas Maingot said it was “obviously not the place” to debate refereeing errors or the merits of goal line and video technology. Lol

Sigh.

Any excuse

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Don’t expect too much this evening.

I’m utterly knackered. Emotionally, mentally and physically this week has been draining. Somnially, it’s been a complete disaster. And I’ve inhaled enough Icelandic volcanic ash to close a nation’s airspace.

Actually, that last bit wasn’t true. But the rest was gospel. And while today I have been completely out of it, having spent the day at home looking after two demanding, but hugely lovable little kids, when I have ventured towards any sort of information source, all I have heard about is flight chaos in the UK and over the counter World Cup ticket chaos in South Africa.

It’s difficult to blame anyone for the Icelandic volcanic ash issue. Even the neanderthals that were interviewed by Sky at Manchester Airport were understanding, using a softer “Ug!” rather than the more aggressive it’s-Willie-Walsh’s-fault “Ug!!” (note the extra exclamation mark) that they were voicing last week. 

The World Cup ticket debarcle is also difficult to pin on anyone. Or, rather on any one. It seems to me that at every stage of the process, each person or organisation involved failed in their duties in some way.
FIFA, whose computer system was overwhelmed – again. First National Bank with their irritating “How can we help you?” tagline, to which several thousand people can now respond: “By getting enough application forms to your bloody branches, you tossers!”; and lastly, though I hate to say it, the individuals buying the tickets themselves.

EyeWitness News was reporting that punters were angry that the cheapest (Category 4) tickets had sold out so quickly. Well, here’s some news for you – I have 24 of them and I have had for well over a year now. It wasn’t so tough – all I did was actually get my arse into gear a whole 15 months before you. No overnight queues, no fighting with the person behind me who thinks I should be behind him, no last-minute computer glitches, no issues with Cape Town games being completely sold out (shock). Not hard.

So, while I think the Local Organising Committee, FIFA & FNB have let people down – badly – it could all have been avoided if those people weren’t jumping on the bandwagon so very late on.

But I bet you haven’t learnt a thing…

6000.co.za relaunch

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After this bit of apparent FIFA silliness, I have decided to relaunch 6000 miles…

We are now The Unofficial National Blog of the You-Know-What

 

Just don’t tell Sepp, ok?

UPDATE: Here’s the offending ad, which Kulula state on their facebook page, has got:

Nothing to do with the WC. Just to be clear.

Well, if by “WC”, they mean “World Cup” (and do they?)
Ja… right. 

My take now, having seen the ad (but not the letter)? I’m with FIFA. They have every right to protect their partners’ rights on this.

Unpopular view, maybe – but as I said in this comment, Emirates must have paid a small large fortune to be the airline associated with the tournament and this is blatent ambush marketing by Kulula. 

To be honest, the only whining we should be hearing from them should be from their plane’s engines.

Don’t miss out

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It’s getting close to closing date for the third sales phase of World Cup 2010 tickets and you’d be silly to chance it and hope that you can buy them over the counter a bit later. Even though FIFA have promised to make it easy for South Africans to do just that, there’s a good chance that many of the more popular games will have sold out by the time that opportunity comes around.

The easiest way (assuming you have access to the internet) (and how are you reading this if you don’t) is via FIFA.com

You can apply for a maximum of 7 games and a maximum of four tickets per game. That’s 28 tickets. Plenty to go around, although it’s worth knowing that you will need the passport or ID number for each person you want to take along. (You will be given the opportunity to swap these people around a little later). 

Tickets for SA residents start at R140 for the first round games, although you could spend up to R6,300 per ticket if you want a posh seat for the final (that’s R25,200 if you want four). But your chances of getting them are pretty low. Which is gonna be a bummer when you’re sat at home watching England beat whoever on July 11th, but which will mean that at least you can eat in the intervening period.

If you need any further pushing as to why you shouldn’t miss out – Carlos Amato is here to help.