Four FIFA sponsors call for FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, to go. It's a good day for football
Some days are good days. This is one of them.
Since January – and directly as a result of being traduced by FIFA’s Ethics Committee in the Eckert Summary Report – I have been a co-founder, along with Damian Collins MP of England and Jaimie Fuller, Chairman of SKINS – of the campaign group, #NewFIFANow. Our objective has been to see an independent time-limited FIFA Reform Commission introduced, led by an eminent person, to completely overhaul FIFA. (You can read more about what we stand for here).
We have lobbied the 209 FAs, with only three bothering to respond – it will be no surprise to most that Australia was not one of the three. We have lobbied the FIFA Executive Committee, with only two of them responding (again, not the Australian). We’ve talked to organised fans’ groups and players’ representatives as well as individual former players. We’ve lobbied the FIFA Presidential candidates. Importantly, we’ve been focussed on the sponsors. We have also built strong collaborative relationships with Transparency International and the International Trade Union Confederation.
Helped by the #HypocrisyWorldCup campaign-within-a-campaign, the arrests in May, and inquiries by the US Senate and the UK House of Commons, slowly-but-surely some of FIFA’s major sponsors have joined the call for independent reform. In order, they are Coca-Cola, VISA and McDonald’s.
Last Sunday, #NewFIFANow, together with Transparency International and the ITUC, called for Sepp Blatter to be suspended. Our position was that everyone who failed to act, and who failed to say something, was tainted – not just by the serial allegations of corruption surrounding FIFA but by its mismanagement of the situation since May. I gave a lengthy interview to World Soccer Talk on Tuesday which went into these issues in detail.
The news overnight from the northern hemisphere that four of FIFA’s major sponsors – Coca-Cola, VISA, McDonald’s and Budweiser (Anheuser Busch) – have now publicly called for Sepp Blatter to go is a seminal step in the reform of FIFA.
The next step is for an independent FIFA Reform Commission led by an eminent person.
I have said previously that this is about being on the right side of history.
If you haven’t already signed the petition for independent FIFA reform, please do so today and be on the right side of history also.