It’s that time again and there is no point in not sticking my neck out. It’s a mixture of “science”, wishful thinking and my prejudices. If I get one of the finalists and at least 8 of the last 16 correct I shall claim my system works!!!
My probabilities of winning for the 32 participants are:
WC 2014 Probabilities
And for the peace of the world and to avoid a full-blown revolution, Brazil will win.
FIFA Presidential electioneering for 2015 is underway as Sepp Blatter (who is Swiss) blames Michel Platini (who is French), France and Germany for selling the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. But this attack is just positioning by Blatter in case the 2014 World Cup in Brazil doesn’t go too well and Blatter will have to take that blame.
FIFA bows primarily to financial inducements (not political pressure as it sometimes appears). In many cases the financial inducements are just simple, straight-forward bribery implemented in a very sophisticated manner. Even after the FIFA technical committee had clearly indicated that Qatar was unsuitable as a location for a World Cup tournament, the Executive Committee decided otherwise. That Qatar bought the 2022 World Cup is clear and it seems likely that the number of deaths per goal will be the highest ever by a long way in 2022.
Qatar 2022 will achieve more deaths than goals
Based on the track record of World Cup Tournaments, the Qatar 2022 championship will see between 100 and 180 goals – most likely around 150. But this number will be easily exceeded by the number of construction workers who have been killed by then. Already over 70 Nepalese workers have died since 2012 and the total number is probably around 200. By 2022 this number will exceed 1000.
Perhaps FIFA could introduce a safety performance index for the Qatar World Cup? Maybe to have less than 6 deaths per goal?
FIFA’s next presidential election is in 2015 and Sepp Blatter will be trying to retain his seat and Michel Platini will probably be opposing him. And so the electioneering has begun. This year’s World Cup is less than a month away and kicks-off on June 12th. The stadiums and infrastructure are still not quite ready. A fiasco in Brazil will be blamed on Sepp Blatter and will undermine his chances in 2015 of being President again. For some time now he has been trying to ensure that anything negative to do with Qatar is tied to Platini. Come 2015 Platini will have to deal with the Qatari dirt if he opposes Blatter.
A plague on both their houses!
November 2013: Sepp Blatter Now Blames France and Germany for 2022 World Cup Fiasco
Always looking to blame somebody else, Sepp Blatter hasn’t let us down by now blaming France and Germany for the 2022 World Cup mess in Qatar. According to theFIFA fool, these two nations are to blame for the ongoing turmoil regarding Qatar hosting the 2022 event. In addition, he believes they’re also accountable for some of the ill treatment of the migrant workers over there, along with the construction firms.
Blatter said on November 22 that France and Germany exerted a lot of political pressure to grant Qatar with the World Cup because of their financial interests and they’re the two biggest economies in Europe. In Blatter’s own words, there was a lot of “political pressure from European countries…because there were so many economic interests. Two of these countries pressured the voting men in FIFA: France and Germany…I think the heads of state of these two countries should also express what they think of this situation.”
March 2014: Only I Can Beat Sepp Blatter In FIFA Elections – Platini
“Only one person can beat Blatter,” Platini said at UEFA congress in Astana (quotes from Reuters).
Platini told the UEFA Congress he would have more meetings with European football leaders in coming months before announcing whether he would stand for FIFA.
“I will give my answer after the World Cup. There will be a series of meetings with European federation officials. Maybe 99% of them will say ‘we prefer that you stay at UEFA’, that could also be an element of reflection” in the decision, Platini said.
Meanwhile, the Frenchman earlier blasted the world federation’s lack of action over secretive companies owning players as he stepped up a war of nerves with Blatter. Platini said the so-called ‘third party ownership’ of players is a “danger” to football.
May 2014: Sepp Blatter: awarding 2022 World Cup to Qatar was a mistake
“Yes, it was a mistake of course, but one makes lots of mistakes in life,” said Blatter, Fifa’s president, in an interview with the Swiss broadcaster RTS. “The technical report into Qatar said clearly it was too hot but the executive committee – with a large majority – decided all the same to play it in Qatar.”
… Blatter is believed to have voted for the USA to host the 2022 World Cup while his prospective rival for the presidency, Uefa’s Michel Platini, voted for Qatar and has been closely linked in the public mind with the controversial plans for the 2022 tournament.
The Fifa inspection team ranked Qatar as the only “high risk” option overall, yet it was still chosen by 14 of the 22 voting members of the executive committee in December 2010. …..
Platini and others have denied being influenced by their heads of state into voting for Qatar for business reasons. …..
“I will never say that they bought it, because it was political pushing. Really, both in France and Germany,” said Blatter, who has previously claimed there was “definitely direct political influence” on European executive committee members to vote for Qatar.
France’s foreign ministry said the assertion was “without foundation”, despite the fact that Platini has admitted to attending a high level meeting with former president Nicolas Sarkozy and the now Qatari Emir.
The 2022 World Cup in Qatar will already achieve the dubious distinction of causing more deaths than they will score goals perhaps 6 deaths per goal.
It has long been assumed that FIFA’s decision to award the World Cup to Qatar was bought – not least because of FIFA’s long, institutionalised tradition of representatives accepting bribes and the poorly kept “secret” that any country wanting to host the World Cup must reserve bribe money in its budget – by whatever name is most appropriate.
Now the Telegraph reveals that millions changed hands just after Qatar was awarded the Championship:
A senior Fifa official and his family were paid almost $2 million (£1.2m) from a Qatari firm linked to the country’s successful bid for the 2022 World Cup, The Telegraph can disclose.
Jack Warner, the former vice-president of Fifa, appears to have been personally paid $1.2 million (£720,000) from a company controlled by a former Qatari football official shortly after the decision to award the country the tournament.
Payments totalling almost $750,000 (£450,000) were made to Mr Warner’s sons, documents show. A further $400,000 (£240,000) was paid to one of his employees.
It is understood that the FBI is now investigating Trinidad-based Mr Warner and his alleged links to the Qatari bid, and that the former Fifa official’s eldest son, who lives in Miami, has been helping the inquiry as a co-operating witness.
The awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar was one of the most controversial decisions in sporting history. The intense summer heat in the desert nation has raised the prospect of the tournament being moved to the winter for the first time.
from pambazuka.org
The rivalry between Paris and Marseille is legendary though Marseille can boast human settlements starting from 30,000 years ago while settlements in Paris can only go back about 7,000 years. Today Paris has a population about 3 times as large as Marseille’s (at about 2.3 million in the city and 12 million in the metropolitan area). The current pre-eminence of Paris does give Marseille a bit of an inferiority complex and there is usually an air of defensiveness evident from the Marseillais. They don’t like being perceived as the crime capital of France and the defence is then to take pride in the toughness of their criminals! Of course the rivalry manifests itself these days through football and an Olympique de Marseille versus Paris Saint-Germain match is something very special.
But even the New York Times magazine asks the question if Marseille is the secret capital of France.
Marseille remains a patchwork sprawl of rich and poor neighborhoods, a melancholy, compelling mess of corruption and sun — the anti-Paris and secret capital of a France that doesn’t pretend the country is race-blind.
GeoCurrents addresses some of the satirical maps of France at Carte de France.
I like these two particularly.
1. France as seen from Marseille:
France – seen from Marseilles image carte-de-france
The reported perception of France from the perspective of Marseille is particularly simplistic: amusingly, the map features two latitudinal lines and one oval to create a total of four regions: “North Pole” for the far North of France, “North” for everything poleward of the region the French call “Sud” (which itself usually corresponds to the regions of Provence-Alpes Côte d’Azur, Languedoc-Roussillon, Midi Pyrennées and Aquitaine, but is here even more constrained) and, finally, the shining label “cons,” (“assholes”), assigned to the oval encompassing Paris. Of notice, too, is the ironic “Capitale” label on top of Marseille. The map perfectly showcases the deep-seated rivalry between Paris and Marseille…..
2.France as seen from Paris
France seen from Paris image carte-de-france
The map of France as seen by the Parisians seems more complex at first glance, though this does not mean that the Parisians are more discriminating than the Marseillais. The labels for the different regions here could be taken as offhanded proofs from inside the minds of Parisians, justifying France’s centralized political model. Alsace is perceived as the home of the “dépressifs” (depressed), the Bretagne region (Brittany), summed up for most Parisians by crepes and hard cider, are “alcooliques,”(alcoholics), and the Northerners are “pauvres” (poor). The wildly successful 2008 French movie “Bienvenue Chez Les Chtis” (‘Welcome to the Sticks’) captured these dichotomies and prejudices perfectly. It is centered around a postal manager from the region of Lyon who is sent to the Northern region (Nord-Pas-de-Calais) as a punishment for having faked a disability in the hope of being sent to an office … on the Mediterranean. The movie was seen by a third of the French population in 23 weeks, thus showing the extent to which the regional question remains a running joke in France. ….. The labels “branleurs” (‘wankers’) and “menteurs” (‘liars’) for the southern regions show the extent to which Paris sees itself as pulling the country on its own—whether that is a role it has given to itself or the product of actual laziness from the other regions. The “terrorist” label both for the Basque Country and Corsica humorously point out the existence of occasionally violent separatist groups in both regions, though both places are also extremely popular vacation destinations for the Parisians, who seldom let geopolitics in the way of their summer migration. Finally, the map reveals the idea that Parisians tend to see many regions of France as their playground. The “plages” (beaches) label along the Western and the Mediterranean coasts and the “ski” label along the Pyrenees and the Alps may seem amusing and reductive, but they are in fact indicative of the huge ebb and flow that occurs in the winter and summer (with all those weeks off work!), when a massive exodus heads out of Paris and into these regions.
Racing Santander players refused to play since they haven’t been payed for a number of months
My sympathies – for a change – are with the footballers and the Santander fans and not with the Club administrators.
Daily Mail: Racing Santander have been banned from next year’s Copa del Rey after they refused to play their quarter-final second-leg tie against Real Sociedad on Thursday night in protest at not being paid since September.
Earlier in the week the players had said they would only play if the club’s president resigned.
In the statement on Monday, Racing captain Mario Fernandez said the players had not been paid for a number of months despite promises they would be.
With still no response to that ultimatum throughout the week, Association of Spanish Footballers (AFE) chief Luis Rubiales met with the Racing players and coaching staff in Santander on Thursday, and afterwards he confirmed there had been no change in the team’s stance.
Rubiales told a press conference: ‘If at 2100 (CET) the Racing board is the same as now, they will not play.
‘The squad decided something last Monday which they made public, and they continue thinking exactly the same, that if the current board has not resigned by the time of the game they are not going to play. They have the complete backing of the AFE, as always.’
Rubiales reminded the Racing players at the meeting that ‘there are rules and their decision not to play could have consequences, but they are strong and united and we have to be together with them’.
Just a few days ago we had the report about atrocities by the Assad regime in Syria commisioned by the Government of Qatar which supports some of the rebel groups in Syria. The report was released on the eve of the Geneva II peace talks.
But at home the Qatar government is cracking the whip to get construction completed for the 2022 FIFA World Cup and in the process has been complicit in the death of at least 193 Nepalese construction workers just during 2013. FIFA makes the appropriate noises but effectively turns a blind eye. They have too much money at stake. In October last year I posted
Based on the track record of World Cup Tournaments, the Qatar 2022 championship will see between 100 and 180 goals – most likely around 150.
But this number will be easily exceeded by the number of construction workers who have been killed by then. Already over 70 Nepalese workers have died since 2012 and the total number is probably around 200. By 2022 this number will exceed 1000.
Perhaps FIFA could introduce a safety performance index for the Qatar World Cup? Maybe to have less than 6 deaths per goal?
The Government of Qatar does not fill me with any sense of operating in good faith and certainly not with any confidence – either for peace in the Middle East or for the 2022 World Cup. They don’t really care how many second-class, immigrant workers lose their lives in any case. But FIFA has no excuse. They are going to easily achieve about 6 deaths/goal for the 2022 World Cup. FIFA is already in the dock for some of the condition of construction workers in Brazil for the 2014 championship, but they should break all records in Qatar. There are 8 years to go and the risk is that by then deaths will exceed 10 per goal for the Qatar championship. Both FIFA and Qatar have blood on their hands.
The extent of the risks faced by migrant construction workers building the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar has been laid bare by official documents revealing that 185 Nepalese men died last year alone.
The 2013 death toll, which is expected to rise as new cases come to light, is likely to spark fresh concern over the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar and increase the pressure on Fifa to force meaningful change. According to the documents the total number of verified deaths among workers from Nepal – just one of several countries that supply hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to the gas-rich state – is now at least 382 in two years alone. At least 36 of those deaths were registered in the weeks following the global outcry after the Guardian’s original revelations in September. …
… The revelations forced Fifa’s president, Sepp Blatter, to promise that football would not turn a blind eye to the issue following a stormy executive committee meeting. ……
The Pravasi Nepali Co-ordination Committee (PNCC), which has cross-checked the figures from official sources in Doha against death certificates and passports, is still receiving new cases on a regular basis. The Guardian has seen evidence of at least a further eight cases, which would take the 2013 total to 193.
The PNCC called on Fifa’s sponsors to reconsider their relationship with world football’s governing body, which awarded the World Cup to Qatar in December 2010. “Fifa and the government of Qatar promised the world that they would take action to ensure the safety of workers building the stadiums and infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup. This horrendous roll call of the dead gives the lie to those reassurances,” said the PNCC. …..
The construction program for the 2014 Brazilian World Cup venues is well behind schedule. A number of deaths have occurred at the various construction sites. Two workers were killed when a crane collapsed onto the roof of the Corinthians Arena in Sao Paulo in November. Another was killed at the Palmeiras arena in Sao Paulo which is/was to be a training ground for some of the teams. The latest accidents were at the Arena Amazonia in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas. The Arena is scheduled to host four group stage matches during the competition. Two deaths on Saturday bring the death toll at this Arena to three. A 23 year old construction worker was found dead and is said to have suffered a heart attack. (At 23!) Another worker fell 35 meters after a cable snapped. Work is so far behind at most sites that accelerated, 3-shift programs are being conducted to catch up. Inevitably safety procedures are being given less priority. Some have refused to work and a general strike over safety standards has been called for and further threatens the schedule.
soccer.si.com: Less than a month away from the Dec. 31 FIFA-imposed deadline for Brazil to deliver all 12 of its tournament venues, half are still unfinished, with three of those having no realistic shot of wrapping up before February.
Hotels and transport arrangements are also behind schedule.
Telegraph: There have been disputes and delays to the new light rail vehicle system in another host city, Cuiaba, while in the north-eastern settlement of Natal, mobility projects had to be abandoned and redesigned because of a shortage of time.
Accommodation is also a concern with a shortage of hotels in Rio de Janeiro and Recife, according to the Brazilian Association of Hotel Industries (ABIH). This week, workers at Rio’s Gloria Hotel, which is due to open before the World Cup, told Jornal do Brasil that the renovations were falling well behind.
But the German Football Association is not taking any chances. Winning the Cup is a serious business and they do not place much confidence in the assurances that facilities will be ready. They could not find the hotels to pass muster. So they are taking matters into their own hands and are building their own resort for their players. Der Spiegel writes: “Unable to find a suitable location to set up shop in Brazil during the upcoming 2014 World Cup, the German football team has decided to simply build its own. The remote beachside camp will “help minimize strain” on players, the team manager says”.
A digital rendering of the luxurious beachside retreat to be provided by the German Football Association.
The team’s beachside “resort” will be located in the sleepy village of Santo André in the state of Bahia, population just around 1,000, the paper wrote. It’s the first time in history that the German team has built its own World Cup facility from scratch, it added.
Coach Joachim “Jogi” Löw, his players and the team’s staff will spend the tournament living in 13 houses, with a soccer playing field and press center about a kilometer away. An airfield just 15 kilometers off will facilitate travel to the match sites.
Bild reports that the construction site entrance already bears the colors of the German flag — black, red and gold.
The location of “Camp Bahia” is “very remote,” Bild added. Some 30 kilometers away from the Porto Seguro resort area, most travelers get there via an old ferry across the Joao de Tiba River.
Based on the track record of World Cup Tournaments, the Qatar 2022 championship will see between 100 and 180 goals – most likely around 150.
But this number will be easily exceeded by the number of construction workers who have been killed by then. Already over 70 Nepalese workers have died since 2012 and the total number is probably around 200. By 2022 this number will exceed 1000.
Perhaps FIFA could introduce a safety performance index for the Qatar World Cup? Maybe to have less than 6 deaths per goal?
Seventy Nepalese builders working in Qatar in the runup to the 2022 football World Cup have died on construction sites since the start of 2012.
Fifteen have died this year, according to a death toll announced by Nepal government representatives in Doha. It is the clearest official data yet on the dangers facing 1.2 million migrant workers in the Gulf kingdom during the $100bn (£62bn)construction drive before the World Cup and came as David Cameron called on Qatar’s leadership to take action. He said zero deaths on the London 2012 Olypmics project showed Doha “it can be done”.
Nepalese trade unions said many of the fatalities were caused by workers without proper safety equipment toppling from the upper floors of buildings. …..
There are 340,000 Nepali workers in Qatar and if the mortality rate was extrapolated across all migrant workers it would suggest that more than 200 foreign workers could have died on Qatari building sites since the start of 2012.
“This reminds us of the industrial revolution 150 years ago,” said Sharan Burrow, secretary general of the International Trade Union Confederation. “Young healthy men are being worked to death in Qatar. Scores are dying from heat exhaustion and dehydration after 12-hour shifts in blazing heat, often during the night in the squalid and cramped labour camps with no ventilation and appalling hygiene.”
Last week the Guardian reported that documents showed 44 Nepalese workers died in Qatar between 4 June and 8 August this year, and that more than half died of heart attacks, heart failure or workplace accidents. It said evidence of exploitation and abuses pointed to “modern-day slavery, as defined by the International Labour Organisation”.
Of course the Qatari government claims that all these numbers are exaggerated, but the reality is that the lives and working conditions of their “guest workers” is of little interest for the Qataris. Foreign workers are expendable and the supply of such workers is endless. In this they are happily supported by the manpower agencies – in Qatar and abroad – whose revenue depends upon the turnover of bodies. Perversely the death of a worker only leads to additional revenue for the agencies who find his replacement. From what I have heard from one such manpower agenciy in India, they get paid for fulfilling their quota of workers to the main contractor of the construction project. They merely deliver bodies to Qatar and the construction site. They only perform a cursory check on the suitability or the abilities of the workers. Two arms and two legs generally seems to enough.
These agencies then pay a cut of their fee to a Qatari owned agency in Qatar and that cut includes the amounts which are passed up the Qatari chain. The construction company in its turn pays an agreed amount for having obtained the contract to the same Qatari chain of beneficiaries – often through the same Qatari agency. The modes of doing business in Qatar are no great secret.
And FIFA buries its head in the sands.
FIFA are “going to investigate”.
It would seem a little too little and much too late.
Brazil is resorting to extraordinary means to get ready for the World Cup next year.
Construction workers employed on a project in Brazil ahead of next year’s World Cup face “slave-like” conditions, officials say.An investigation into the expansion of Sao Paulo international airport found that 111 workers were living in poor accommodation near the building site.
They were approached in poorer states and some had to pay more than $220 (£140) to secure a job, the Labour attorney general’s office says. The promised wages were $625 a month.
The workers, among them six ethnic Pankaruru indians, were reportedly lured in the country’s north-east with promises of work in Sao Paulo. However, many were not immediately employed and had to stay in one of 11 makeshift camps near the airport which is being expanded in preparation for next year’s World Cup. The Labour attorney general’s office says it found the workers living in “conditions analogue to slaves” and has 30 days to present legal action against the contractors.
According to Brazilian legislation, companies must contract migrant workers in their hometown before transferring them to other cities.
Similar investigations were under way in other World Cup-related building sites, attorney Cristiane Nogueira, from the Labour attorney general’s office in Sao Paulo, told Brazilian newspaper Folha de S Paulo.
But it would seem to be even worse in Qatar for their World Cup in 2022 – undeserved and where the voting was clearly bought. FIFA have been falling over themselves to ensure their share of Qatar money and where they – for the first time ever and in conflict with most football seasons – are going to hold the World Cup in winter. Here at least 44 Nepalese construction workers have died in just 3 months and the World Cup is still 9 years away. At the rate they are going thousands could die before the World Cup is held.
Dozens of Nepalese migrant labourers have died in Qatar in recent weeks and thousands more are enduring appalling labour abuses, a Guardian investigation has found, raising serious questions about Qatar’s preparations to host the 2022 World Cup.
This summer, Nepalese workers died at a rate of almost one a day in Qatar, many of them young men who had sudden heart attacks. The investigation found evidence to suggest that thousands of Nepalese, who make up the single largest group of labourers in Qatar, face exploitation and abuses that amount to modern-day slavery, as defined by the International Labour Organisation, during a building binge paving the way for 2022.
According to documents obtained from the Nepalese embassy in Doha, at least 44 workers died between 4 June and 8 August. More than half died of heart attacks, heart failure or workplace accidents.
The investigation also reveals:
• Evidence of forced labour on a huge World Cup infrastructure project.
• Some Nepalese men have alleged that they have not been paid for months and have had their salaries retained to stop them running away.
• Some workers on other sites say employers routinely confiscate passports and refuse to issue ID cards, in effect reducing them to the status of illegal aliens.
• Some labourers say they have been denied access to free drinking water in the desert heat.
• About 30 Nepalese sought refuge at their embassy in Doha to escape the brutal conditions of their employment.
The allegations suggest a chain of exploitation leading from poor Nepalese villages to Qatari leaders. The overall picture is of one of the richest nations exploiting one of the poorest to get ready for the world’s most popular sporting tournament.
“We’d like to leave, but the company won’t let us,” said one Nepalese migrant employed at Lusail City development, a $45bn (£28bn) city being built from scratch which will include the 90,000-seater stadium that will host the World Cup final. “I’m angry about how this company is treating us, but we’re helpless. I regret coming here, but what to do? We were compelled to come just to make a living, but we’ve had no luck.”
Of course FIFA is shocked and distressed and will investigate! Not as distressed as the workers are in Qatar or as distressed as the families of the dead.
Britain’s most senior Fifa member said he was “appalled and distressed” by allegations made in an expose of construction practises in the Gulf State as it readies its infrastructure to stage the 2022 tournament.
Boyce told the Telegraph Sport: “Fifa must fully investigate all the facts contained in the article and hopefully report back to the executive committee.”
The Northern Irishman also insisted the matter would be discussed at next week’s Fifa executive committee meeting.
That meeting had initially been expected to confirm that the tournament would move from the summer but is now in danger of being hijacked by a “slavery” scandal. …
Of course in Brazil, football fanaticism is quite similar to the religious fanaticism seen elsewhere. But it does not bode well for the World Cup in 2014. After hosting the Confederation Cup – and fairly successfully – Brazil saw the street protests which have had the spending on the World Cup extravaganza in their sights. Along with the corruption that pervades politics and – of course – football. And violence is never far away when football is involved.
Football spectators in northern Brazil decapitated a referee after he fatally stabbed a player for refusing to leave the pitch, officials say.
An angry mob stormed the field during the amateur game in the state of Maranhao and stoned Otavio da Silva to death before severing his head.
Police said the murder was in retaliation for Mr Silva stabbing player Josenir dos Santos.
One man has been arrested over the killing and investigations continue.
The incident took place on 30 June in the remote town of Pio XII, but news of the event has been slow to emerge.
The state’s Public Safety Department said it started when the referee and Mr Santos got into fist fight after the player was sent off but refused to leave the pitch.
Mr Silva then pulled out a knife and wounded Mr Santos, who died on his way to the hospital.
The player’s friends and relatives rushed onto the field, stoned the referee to death and dismembered his body, the department said in a statement.
The k2p blog 