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Gaddafi gets tickets for the Olympics

June 15, 2011

Update – 15th June!!

After the furore yesterday Mark Adams, the IOC’s director of communications, said that Libya would not be given any printed tickets “until the current situation becomes clearer”. “To be absolutely clear, no tickets have been printed or paid for,” he said.

14th June — Is escaping from Libya as part of an Olympics delegation part of some new exit strategy? I put this down to stupidity rather than corruption though both are endemic within the IOC (and FIFA). But the lack of collective intelligence within the IOC can sometimes be inexplicable.

The Telegraph reports:

The Libyan regime has successfully requested close to 1,000 tickets to events at the London Olympics and the country’s attendance at the Games is being co-ordinated by the Gaddafi family.

The Libyan Olympic Committee is headed by Muhammad Gaddafi and the Government now fears a major diplomatic embarrassment over the attendance of regime figures.

The decision to grant Libya the valuable tickets will infuriate the million Britons who have missed out on attending over-subscribed events.

Government sources warned of a diplomatic crisis last night after it emerged that Col Gaddafi himself may try to disrupt the event as a publicity coup if he remains in power in 2012.

The organisers of the London Games are obliged to sell Libya tickets, after the International Olympic Committee failed to expel the regime despite international condemnation of its bloody crack-down on opponents.

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Dirty Football: Another corruption trail from Singapore to Finland

June 11, 2011

Dirty football

The corruption that is endemic at the highest levels with the FIFA administrators  is also evident at lower levels and with players involved in match fixing and the betting industry. The BBC reports:

Finnish football has been rocked by a match-fixing scandal which has implications across the world. Nine former members of one team and a Singapore national accused of organising the scams have been put on trial.

Meanwhile, a criminal investigation has begun into another club suspected of money-laundering. Betting syndicates have been said to make as much as $1.5m (£0.9m) from fixed games. The Finnish League, which began its new season in May, usually commands a low profile in the global game.

But events over the past few months have brought it to the attention of football’s world governing body, and its fight against corruption. Tampere, Finland’s former champions, have been suspended. The club received $435,000 from a Singapore company, but officials could not explain why they had been given such a large sum. Money-laundering is suspected.

Finnish police have said the case is linked to the trial of seven Zambians and two Georgians who used to play for a different club in the north of the country. They are accused of accepting bribes worth more than $750,000 to affect the outcome of matches.

In the same trial Wilson Raj Perumal, a Singaporean, is charged with arranging the payments. Fifa also want to speak to Mr Perumal about international friendly matches involving Asian and African teams that are suspected of being fixed.

Last month, two Zambian brothers who played for another Finnish side were convicted of taking bribes from Mr Perumal. The officer leading the investigation in Finland said there was serious speculation this was only the tip of the iceberg.

Meanwhile further details about the FIFA shenanigans continues. From The Guardian:

Another Caribbean football association has come forward to allege receiving $40,000 (£24,440) in cash at the meeting arranged by Fifa‘s presidential challenger Mohamed bin Hammam and one of its vice-presidents Jack Warner at the heart of the bribery scandal that has rocked the world football governing body.

Blatter: FIFA Corruption supervisor

The president of the Surinam FA has now claimed it received the cash in $100 bills in a brown paper envelope on arrival in Trinidad for the meeting with Bin Hammam on 10 May. …. 

The new evidence from Surinam appears to back up the version of events outlined by other CFU members in the evidence file compiled by the US lawyer John Collins at the behest of the Fifa executive committee member and Concacaf general secretary Chuck Blazer.

The civil war within Concacaf further intensified as Fifa imposed a worldwide ban on Lisle Austin, who claimed to be acting president of the federation in the wake of the suspension of Warner and attempted to fire Blazer.

The whistleblowers were led by the Bahamas FA president Anton Sealey and vice-president Fred Lunn, whose claims were backed by statements from the Bermuda, Cayman Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands FAs. According to Lunn’s affidavit, he was given $40,000 in cash and after photographing the notes he returned the money and set in train the bribery investigation.

A split has formed in the CFU between those who have backed the claims in the evidence file, which also includes text messages and email traffic, and those who insist no inducements were offered.

 

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Blatter and his stinking mess of FIFA corruption

May 30, 2011
Sepp Blatter

Image via Wikipedia

Sepp Blatter is standing unopposed and the writhing mess of corruption that FIFA has become continues. That World Cups are bought and sold is patently obvious. Apart from masses of money Qatar brings nothing to a World Cup competition and takes away much. The corruption – under Blatter’s watchful and forgiving eye – has of course resulted in stupid decision after stupid decision.

As long as Blatter continues the corruption and stupidity will remain institutionalised and there is no chance of FIFA even beginning to put its house in order.

The BBC

Fifa general secretary Jerome Valcke has denied Jack Warner’s claim in an e-mail that Mohamed Bin Hammam “bought” the 2022 World Cup finals for Qatar. 

Suspended Fifa vice-president Warner made public the e-mail which also questioned why Asian football boss Bin Hammam was running for Fifa president. Valcke wrote: “[Hammam] thought you can buy Fifa as they bought the World Cup”.

But in Valcke’s denial he insisted he was not referring to any “purchase of votes or similar unethical behaviour.” ….. And last week, Qatar 2022 World Cup officials denied allegations, published in the Sunday Times, that they paid bribes in return for votes.

Meanwhile, independent Australian senator Nick Xenophon has demanded that Fifa refunds the Aus$45.6m (£29.6m) his country spent on their unsuccessful bid to host the 2022 World Cup. Xenophon said: “It appears corrupt and highly questionable behaviour goes to the core of Fifa. Australia spent almost $46m on a bid we were never in the running for. Now we hear that bribes may have been made to fix the result for who will head up Fifa.”

As vice president, China’s Zhang Jilong will take charge of the AFC in the absence of Bin Hammam. However, the decision to suspend Bin Hammam has been met with widespread criticism throughout the Middle East.

AFC vice president Yousuf al-Serkal, from neighbouring United Arab Emirates, said: “I think Bin Hammam has been mistreated. “Bin Hammam is the right person who should have been elected to the presidency of Fifa from the point of view of change.”

The Telegraph

The prospect that Sepp Blatter will tomorrow be returned unopposed as president of Fifa, the game’s governing body, is enough to make any true football fan, of whatever nationality, cringe with embarrassment.

Unopposed? Does that mean people think he is doing a good job? Couldn’t some tramp be brought in from the streets of Zurich to contest the election? Are ballot papers being printed to give this fiasco a veneer of legitimacy? And who is paying for the prerequisite slap-up lunch for the stooges flying thousands of miles to rubber-stamp Blatter’s election?

The sheer absurdity of the process makes Premier League footballers look like paragons of virtue. Unless 75-year-old Blatter does the decent thing and agrees to the deferment of tomorrow’s election – and nothing in his record of ruthless, self-important nest-feathering suggests that he is capable of doing the decent thing – a coronation of look-away-now awfulness, with toadies in blazers applauding the Supreme Leader, is in prospect. 

His 13-year-old presidency of Fifa has been marked by faux pas after faux pas. When he has not been mulishly resisting long-overdue reforms, such as goal-line technology, he has been insulting women, by advising female footballers to wear tight shorts and low-cut tops, and homosexuals, by urging gay fans to practise sexual restraint at the 2022 
World Cup in Qatar.

But it is the sheer incompetence of Fifa under Blatter that has been truly shocking. Never mind the bribery allegations and counter-allegations swirling around the Qatar bid. No sporting body with any pretensions to seriousness would have agreed to award a World Cup, traditionally held in June/July, to a country where temperatures at that time of year top 40C. ….  Half-cocked plans for air-conditioned stadiums, or for the tournament to be held mid-winter, have only underscored the ludicrousness of the bidding process – with the minnows of world football all too easily seduced by large cheques.

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Not a very sporting day today

February 5, 2011

Former Pakistan captain Salman Butt was banned for 10 years, and fast bowling pair Mohammad Asif for seven years and Mohammad Aamer for five years on Saturday after being found guilty of corruption. The head of the International Cricket Council tribunal Michael Beloff announced the verdict after a lengthy nine-hour hearing in the Qatari capital.

 

Text messages of sumo wrestlers provided by police indicate that one purpose of the suspected match-fixing in the ancient sport was to keep struggling wrestlers in the juryo division. The juryo division is the second of the top two divisions for established sekitori wrestlers, who receive generous monthly pay and are allowed to wear ornate kesho-mawashi sashes at ceremonies and specially formed top notches that set them apart from junior wrestlers.

The text messages showed a rampant and intricate trading of favors, such as diving, among juryo wrestlers desperate to remain in this elite group. Favors could be returned, and traded, from tournament to tournament.

 

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A shrine for Paul the psychic octopus

January 17, 2011

Paul the psychic octopus who shot to fame in the 2010 World Cup passed away last October. Now his former home is to erect a shrine in his honour.

Photo: DPA

Paul in action during the 2010 World Cup: image thelocal.de

Paul, a ‘psychic’ octopus who shot to fame last year for his ability to predict World Cup matches, will get a shrine three months after his untimely demise, his German aquarium said Monday.

The tentacled tipster will on Thursday be honoured with a “Paul Corner” at his former home, containing his ashes and a “huge memorial,” the Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen announced.

“There will be a statue around 1.80 metres high (six feet) of Paul, on top of a football, in the middle of which will be a see-through window with the golden urn containing Paul’s ashes,” spokeswoman Tanja Munzig told news agency AFP.

Paul thrilled punters and cost bookmakers a small fortune during the World Cup in South Africa in June and July by defying the odds to tip correctly seven German matches and Spain’s 1-0 triumph against the Netherlands in the final.

 

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Arman Jaffer – a successor to Tendulkar?

December 23, 2010

From the Mumbai Mirror:

Arman Jaffer: image Mumbai Mirror

Arman Jaffer etched his name in the record books by scoring an incredible 498 runs against IES Raje Shivaji in the Giles Shield. The youngster, who plays for Rizvi Springfield, helped his team reach 800 for eight in the process but yesterday was all about him as he became the holder of the highest individual score in Mumbai schools cricket. The ease with which the 13-year-old batted revealed an instinct that cannot be coached. Perhaps the fact that he is former India opener Wasim Jaffer’s nephew has started to show. The Rizvi batsman broke his teammate Sarfaraz Khan’s record of 439 runs which was recorded in last year’s Harris Shield.

 

Sachin Tendulkar started his phenomenal Test career at the age of 16, so Arman has another 3 years to emulate his hero and get into the Indian Test team.

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FIFA’s dirty little secrets

November 29, 2010

We have recently had the scandal of the corruption and bribery at the 2010 Commonwealth Games held in Delhi. Now that the games are over the police and other investigative agencies in India are digging deep, heads have rolled and prosecutions are imminent.

But the greed and corruption that was on display at the Commonwealth games is  “peanuts” and pales into insignificance in relation to the amounts dealt with by corrupt FIFA officials when handling the selection of countries to host the World cup, the TV and advertising rights and the black market sale of tickets. In fact it seems as if the black market is itself controlled by FIFA officials. A BBC Panorama program to be broadcast later this week and before Thursday’s vote by FIFA’s executive committee to decide who will host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups reveals that at least three FIFA officials took bribes between 1989 and 1999. All three are due to vote on Thursday and since they have had no criticism since then and are still in office, it is highly probably that they have all continued their practices for Thursday’s vote.

With the World Cup as big as it is , the amounts involved are in the billions. FIFA is beginning to stink.

Fifa executives Ricardo Teixeira (l), Issa Hayatou and Nicolas Leoz (r)

Fifa executives Ricardo Teixeira (l), Issa Hayatou and Nicolas Leoz (r): image BBC/ Getty

The BBC reports:

Three senior Fifa officials who will vote on the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids took bribes in the 1990s, according to the BBC’s Panorama. Nicolas Leoz, Issa Hayatou and Ricardo Teixeira took the money from a sport marketing firm awarded lucrative World Cup rights, the programme alleges.

The alleged bribes are included in a confidential document listing 175 payments totalling about $100m (£64m). The three men did not respond to Panorama’s allegations. Fifa, world football’s governing body, also declined interview requests to address the allegations.

Panorama, to be broadcast later, also reports on evidence of a fourth senior Fifa executive’s continued involvement in the resale of World Cup tickets to touts. The BBC has received criticism over the timing of the programme, which comes ahead of Thursday’s vote by Fifa’s executive committee on who will host the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals. England is competing with Russia, Spain/Portugal and Netherlands/Belgium to host the 2018 tournament.

The BBC has defended the timing of Panorama, saying the programme is in the public interest. The alleged bribes to the three members of Fifa’s executive committee were paid by sports marketing company International Sport and Leisure (ISL) and date from 1989 to 1999, Panorama reports. The company collapsed in 2001.

Fifa granted ISL exclusive rights to market World Cup tournaments to some of the world’s biggest brands and ISL received millions more from negotiating television broadcast rights. A former account manager at ISL, Roland Buechel, said staff had long suspected bribes were being paid for the lucrative Fifa contracts.

“It is huge money, billions, that can be earned and all the sports marketing companies they fight, they want it,” Mr Buechel said. Some details of the alleged bribes emerged in 2008, when six ISL managers were accused of misusing company money. One Fifa official – Nicolas Leoz, of Paraguay, the head of South America’s football confederation – was named in court papers in connection with payments totalling $130,000 (£83,000). But Panorama has obtained a confidential ISL document which lists 175 secret payments. It shows Mr Leoz was paid a further $600,000 (£384,000 using current conversions) in three instalments of $200,000.

Read source report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11841783

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China enters the cricket arena, beat Malaysia by 55 runs

November 14, 2010
Pictograms of Olympic sports - Cricket. This i...

Cricket debut at Asian Games :Image via Wikipedia

I am looking forward to the first time China plays a Test Match at Lords!

Now China has entered the cricket arena.

After Chinese spectators sat through a short video explaining the basics of the game, cricket made its Asian Games debut on Saturday. The crowd swiftly caught on and cheered every run on a slightly parched pitch as China’s women beat Malaysia on a sunny afternoon. “They were the best. In terms of their fielding they were very well drilled,” said Roger Golding, an English spectator in the crowd. “They didn’t miss a trick.”

China has underscored the state’s vast commitment to sports as a symbol of national pride by hiring top coaches and pumping money into less popular sports — and getting very good at them. “It was very strange at first but we’re slowly getting the hang of it,” said 19-year-old Chinese fan Li Zibo of cricket, hugely popular in Commonwealth nations but little-known in China. “It’s very fresh and we’ve never seen it before,” added Deng Xiaozhu, another young spectator who said he had been given a free ticket for the match.

A rapid-fire North American-style commentator was employed to liven up proceedings for the Chinese fans but stands were half-empty even though organisers had said that tickets for all weekend cricket had sold out.

Times of India:

Cricket was last seen at a major multi-sport event at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, but was dropped for the next three editions in England, Australia and India. Its Asian Games debut has already been marred by India’s refusal to field men’s or women’s teams due to international and domestic commitments.
India, whose huge cricket-mad television audiences make them an attractive proposition for any organiser, are currently hosting New Zealand for a Test and one-day series.
Asia’s other big three – Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh – sent second-string teams for the Twenty20 tournament in Guangzhou, robbing the event of its star appeal.
The International Cricket Council, the sport’s ruling body, has identified China as one of the major new markets along with the United States for the development of the sport.

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Asian Games in China: Spectators must conform to etiquette but cheering still allowed!

November 11, 2010

The 16th Asiad begins tomorrow (Friday) in Guangshou.

The organisers have published the rules that must be followed by all spectators prominently outside all stadiums:

AFP reports:

The list (of banned items), prominently displayed outside venues, includes whistles, lighters and matches, drink, food in large amounts that can be easily thrown, balls, rackets, frisbees and balloons.

A local government official confirmed that the plastic trumpet, (the Vuvuzela) often in garish colours, will be banned from all venues.

Zhang Youquan, deputy director of the Civilisation Office of the Guangzhou government, named the vuvuzela amid the list of banned items. According to a report by the Guangzhou Daily, spectators violating etiquette during the Games featuring 45 countries and regions competing in 42 sports will be advised by volunteers, and may be referred to security if they refuse to obey the rules.

The (vuvuzelas) have since (the World Cup) been banned by UEFA, European football’s governing body, and by several English Premier League club grounds, as well as at the Commonwealth Games last month in New Delhi.

Cheering is still allowed but should not get too boisterous!

But Chinese athletes will also have to be on their best behaviour. In a separate report AFP reports:

Thousands of athletes began settling in for the Asian Games Thursday, but for one man it has been a nightmare start after a humbling apology to China for calling fans “a bunch of dogs”.

The Olympic Council of Asia officially confirmed the 16th Asiad as the biggest ever with 9,704 athletes and nearly 5,000 team officials in the booming southern Chinese city. Among them are dozens of Olympic and world champions with Chinese superstars Liu Xiang (110m hurdles) and Lin Dan (badminton) and Japanese swimmer Kosuke Kitajima among the biggest names.

With athletes from 45 countries and regions competing for 476 gold medals, tensions are starting to build ahead of the opening ceremony on Friday and the official start of competition Saturday, when 28 titles will be decided.

While most athletes were enjoying the atmosphere, Chinese football goalkeeper Wang Dalei was not one of them after sparking outrage for calling home fans “morons” and “a bunch of dogs”. The highly-rated 21-year-old, linked with European champions Inter Milan and big-spending Manchester City, let loose on a micro-blogging site after being singled out for his failure to stop Japan’s second goal on Monday.

After being suspended by the Chinese delegation – and dropped for Wednesday’s 2-1 win over Kyrgyzstan – he issued an apology. Cai Jiadong, secretary general of the Chinese Asian Games delegation, said Wang’s action were “unsportsmanlike and irrational and hurt the feelings of Chinese soccer fans.”

The football competition got underway last Sunday, the only event to start ahead of the official opening of a mulit-sports event traditionally dominated by China, Japan and South Korea.

The Games run until November 27


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Commonwealth Games- Australians dominate the medals but athletes leave Delhi on a sour note

October 15, 2010

The Australian team totally dominated the Games with their haul of 177 medals including 74 Golds. But some of their athletes seem to have been involved in vandalising the Games village. Just high jinks perhaps.

Rank Country Gold Silver Bronze Total
1. Australia 74 55 48 177
2. India 38 27 36 101
3. England 37 59 46 142
4. Canada 26 17 32 75
5. South Africa 12 11 10 33

Zee News reports that

Some Australian athletes destroyed electrical fittings and furniture in their tower in the Games Village on Tuesday and Wednesday.
According to a newspaper report, the athletes shouted slogans against Indian ace batsman Sachin Tendulkar, who was named ‘Man of the match’ and ensured India’s victory in the Bangalore match, and tossed a washing machine down from the eighth floor of their tower.
According to newspaper sources in Delhi police, this hooliganism by Australian athletes started on Tuesday when Tendulkar scored a double century to force Australia out of the match. Irked by this match-winning performance, they first damaged electrical fittings and fixtures in their block. The report also says that Delhi Police, which received a complaint about this vandalism, has downplayed the incidents to prevent them from growing into a diplomatic embarrassment for Australia.
Meanwhile, confirming these vandalism reports, Australia’s Commonwealth Games boss Perry Crosswhite on Friday denied involvement of any Australian athlete in the incident at the Games Village.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

An Australian athlete was sent home from the Commonwealth Games for bad behaviour this week and a washing machine was dropped from a balcony in Australia’s section of the athlete’s village after the closing celebrations.

No one was injured by the washing machine but Perry Crosswhite, Australia Commonwealth Games association chief executive, said he was disappointed by the incident on Thursday night.

“We don’t know who did that,” Crosswhite told journalists today. “Delhi police came around and they’ve done a report and an investigation and we’ll hear about that.”

But by all accounts it was a spectacular closing ceremony and a qualified success. It was a long way away from being the fiasco that had been feared.


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