I was watching BBC news earlier today with a chap from the federation of football supporters or some such being interviewed.
He was lending his weight to the controversy currently surrounding FIFA and was very much of the view that professional football doesn’t work without fans and professional organisations. Which I agree with. He ended his speech however by comparing what is happening at FIFA with what’s going on in North Africa – and there I had to leave him. It did get me thinking though…
One of my favourite sports books is ‘Football against the enemy’ which sets out as its founding principle that other than religion, football is the biggest mass participatory thing that humans do, and as such it is important. Very important. And I also think this is true.
To change course momentarily.
Something seems to have been very rotten in FIFA for a while. Something unpleasant certainly seems to be happening at the moment and it seems to be to the detriment of the beautiful game. Which is sad.
Yesterday a number of FIFA sponsors stood up and made a couple of vaguely strong worded statements about how FIFA really should get its house in order. The BBC’s point was that stronger conversations were presumably being had behind closed doors. Good.
It is not good enough that something so important to so many of us is run by (what seems to be) at best a highly secretive organisation.
One more digression.
Another book worth a read is called ‘the starfish and the spider’ it is about leaderless organisations and how if you cut the main part off a centralised unit (Spider), it stops working, whereas if you cut the main bit off a leaderless body (Starfish) it continues – and even grows into multiple bodies.
So here’s the point and the comparison between North Africa and Fifa that does stand discussion.
What sort of organisation is FIFA? Will cutting its head off (by which I stress I am only referring to removing Blatter from power), result in a different sort of organisation?
Libya, it is assumed, is a spider. Al Qaeda… is hopefully a spider but probably more of a Starfish.
FIFA because of its complex internal structures only answerable to its own members may well be a starfish… let’s hope not. Football is just too important to run on self interest.
