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GOVERNANCE
10
by Steve Menary
The going rate to buy a FIFA vote is 40,000 US
dollars. That is the sum Mohamed Bin Hammam
allegedly offered Caribbean Football Union
members to support his failed attempt to
replace FIFA President Sepp Blatter. The Qatari
earned a life ban but the response to his putsch
and the shambolic 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid
process could make corruption worse.
When FIFA’s 24-person Executive Committee decided
on the venues of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals,
those ExCo members’ vulnerability to corruption was
evident as Nigeria’s Amos Adamu and Tahiti’s Reynald
Temarii were banned during the recent bid process.
Now Blatter wants all FIFA's 208 members to vote on
bids, but thereby he is handing the vote to places where
FIFA’s audit trail has often evaporated.
FIFA’s rules insist members play in at least two FIFA
accredited tournaments over a four-year period or lose
their vote. Despite receiving million of dollars in aid
through the GOAL project and the Financial Assistance
Programme (FAP), some FIFA members retain that
potentially lucrative vote by only sporadically entering
senior tournaments or junior events.
American Samoa: No home games
American Samoa is a case in point. Until the recent 2014
World Cup qualifiers, it had not won a game and the
FIFA aid may pay for
votes rather than
matches
Despite financial aid from FIFA, international matches are few and far between for the national football team
from American Samoa. The team celebrated a rare win over Tonga in November 2011. Photo: Brian Vitolio/AP
www.playthegame.org
US-controlled territory has – despite receiving millions
of dollars in aid since joining FIFA in 1998 – never played
at home.
In 2005 former Tottenham Hotspur player Ian Crook
took charge of American Samoa and found a FIFA
member without infrastructure or even an office. After
three weeks, he quit. The Football Federation American
Samoa (FFAS) later imploded. FIFA took direct control
of the FFAS in 2005. Even now, no-one will discuss
what happened. Until playing at the 2011 Pacific Games,
American Samoa had not played a game for four years.
Montserrat: 13 matches in a decade
Through the GOAL project and the FAP, FIFA has
improved facilities in many poor associations, but this
does not always produce senior fixtures for aspiring
internationals.
In the first decade of this century, Montserrat for
instance accumulated millions of dollars in FIFA aid
yet managed just 13 senior internationals. That is the
same amount of games the Falklands played in the biannual
Island Games, all in the northern hemisphere and
without a cent from FIFA.
Funding senior male internationals took up around
14 percent of FAP funds distributed between 1999 and
2006, making senior games fifth in terms of priority. FIFA
says all its members received FAP grants over the last
decade, so how can places getting millions of dollars in