By RYAN TOLMICH
Once again speaking in riddles, Sepp Blatter’s resignation is being clouded in uncertainty.
Blatter has sparked even more speculation about his future after quizzically denying his resignation to a Swiss newspaper. Blatter is expected to step down in the coming year after announcing that he’ll “lay down his mandate” and not stand again for FIFA’s presidency.
“I have not resigned,” Blatter said. “I put my mandate in the hands of an extraordinary congress.
“Only those who know the past can understand the present and shape the future. Or in other words: the ball is round – but only those who come from outer space know the actual dimensions of our sport … For me personally, the museum is a labor of love. But do not get me wrong: I’m not ready for the museum nor for a waxwork yet.”
Despite the comments, FIFA insist Blatter will not be resuming his role as president and that the resignation statement is a technicality in line with his original speech. The FIFA executive committee will meet on July 20 to decide a date for the extraordinary Congress which is set to help elect Blatter’s replacement.
Here are some more news and notes to kick off your Friday morning:
MAINZ LOOKING TO SELL JARA AFTER COPA AMERICA CONTROVERSY
Gonzalo Jara’s actions while on international duty could come back to bite him on the club level.
German club Mainz is looking to sell the Chile defender following his controversial actions at the Copa America. Jara was embroiled in controversy for an incident with Endinson Cavani that saw the Chile defender provoke and flop following a touch from the forward, whose retaliation got him sent off.
Although he escaped punishment in-game, Jara’s actions are under investigation from CONMEBOL and have landed him in hot water with his club.
“We do not tolerate that,” said Mainz sporting director Christian Heidel. “What makes me more angry than the prod, however, is what happens after. There is nothing I hate more than theatrics.
“He knows that if an offer comes in, he can go.”
Jara joined Mainz just last year after previously featuring for Nottingham Forrest, West Brom and Brighton in England.
REAL MADRID TO BLOCK RAMOS TRANSFER TO MANCHESTER UNITED
Real Madrid is fighting back in an effort to keep their star centerback.
Sergio Ramos has been linked with a move away from the Spanish powerhouse, with Manchester United seen as the favorites to secure Ramos’ services. The Premier League club has reportedly been denied on a £35 million ($55 million) offer, but is in the midst of preparing a larger offer.
However, Real Madrid is reportedly uninterested in a sale of the centerback, despite reports that Ramos is unhappy with his treatment by the club. In response, Madrid president Florentino Perez has intervened in an effort to get Ramos to sign a new deal to remain with the club.
QUICK KICKS
Luis Suarez has hit out at critics of Uruguay, citing the team’s prior Copa America successes. (REPORT)
Liverpool continues to close in on Southampton’s Nathaniel Clyne. (REPORT)
Petr Cech is reportedly set for an Arsenal medical after reports have linked the goalkeeper with a move to the club for weeks. (REPORT)
Brazilian officials have asked for CONMEBOL to investigate potential match-fixing in a 2013 Copa Libertadores game between Brazil’s Corinthians and Argentina’s Boca Juniors. (REPORT)
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What do you think of Blatter’s comments? What punishment do you expect for Jara? Expect Ramos to stay at Real Madrid?
Share your thoughts below.
Dementia. I blame dementia.
Blaster is always the smartest guy in the room.
Always.
So what you’re saying is… This is all a secret plan by Sepp Blatter to get Morgan Freeman arrested and sentenced to life in prison?
This whole FIFA/World Cup business is just the abracadabra to keep us distracted from his real trick?
Ahem , more like, all the words of all the people drafting and passing a bill that clearly express an intention for that bill has more meaning than a few poorly written words cherry picked by cynical lawyers desperate to find a loophole to ruin legislation they are politically aligned against.
So in other words, the courts can ignore the written law and decide purely on their own what the writers meant which happens to correspond to popular opinion. We just became a country with the same respect for law as FIFA.
The law is an ass is a truism because the courts aren’t supposed to decide what the law should say, they should make decisions based on what it actually says.
And exactly why legislation and laws, rather than being short, concise, specific are written as indecipherable tomes of fuzzy legal-speak. Mandates the “Super-educated” to interpret for the unclean masses, leaving the door open to be interpreted/manipulated in any which way.
Blatter has seriously lost it
As the SCOTUS has shown, words don’t matter.
Words don’t matter anymore because we allow them not to matter. We allow corruption to permeate our government. Hillary Clinton is as corrupt as Blatter, taking bribes from foreign governments and then showing up and giving a lecture to be able to cover her own butt by being able to say that the bribe was actually a “speaking fee”…this lady is running for president in American and she has taken bribes from third world dictators. She then destroyed the evidence on her secret server that she kept in her house!
The corruption is in our own back yard.
The Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation is definitely dirty. They accepted money from both FIFA and Qatar, all the while Bill was attempting to “help: the USA bid for the World Cup, which ultimately Qatar was awarded…
Dirty or not, Bill Clinton was apparently seriously cheesed off when Qatar got the vote. Apparently a bunch of people flat-out lied to his face. He was distinctly Not Happy; the story goes, he trashed a hotel room after it happened and went on a truly epic rant. It absolutely blind-sided him.
Found that intriguing. There’s an…etiquette in First World politics that largely revolves around the concept of “repeat business”…if you ever want to be able to do business with somebody again, your marker had better be good and you’d better do what you agree to do. Apparently a lot of people short-sightedly took the booty and ran – chief among them, Jack Warner. Which is undoubtedly no small part of the reason why the Feds are now after him. The Clintons still have a bunch of clout in Washington, and hosing Bill like that was…unwise. Keep in mind Loretta Lynch was appointed a US Attorney by Bill Clinton himself.
You wanna know where the juice to hang FIFA was coming from, I’d actually stare hard at Bill Clinton. They did not make a friend when they announced Qatar. At all.
Wow. Did not know. Intriguing take that rings true.
I hadn’t heard any of that before, so googled around. Sure enough, immediately found a Washington Post article that talks about Clinton smashing a Swiss hotel mirror.
No reason to single out Ms. Clinton. Can you give me the name of any politician who is not corrupt.?
Anyone suprised there is crickets in reponse to this question?
Mitt Romney. You may not like his career, but he’s possibly the least corrupt politico out there. Perhaps he should run FIFA.
Jimmy Carter. Which in part was why he was an ineffective president. His own party left him out to dry.
Senator George Mitchell, the guy who cleaned drugs out of baseball and made peace in Norther Ireland, would’ve been a good choice 10 years ago. Kofi Anan is the logical choice
Here’s my conspiracy theory on Blatter. (If others have said this previously, I missed it)
He’s going to let FIFA organize a new open election. He will not actively run, but one of his minions is going to nominate him, get him on the ballot and the rest of his minions will vote him back in. Blatter will say, “the people have spoken (twice), how can I deny them. There can be no doubt I was meant to be president, I am god…blah blah blah”
This isn’t a conspiracy theory at all. It was even suggested by one of Blatter’s old confidants in FIFA to the Star or Guardian.
Blatter is completely self-centered, egotistical and tone deaf. We need to remember that there are reports that even with all of the scandal theories in and around FIFA over the past few years, he has been actively pursuing a nomination for himself for the Nobel Peace Prize
…and then?
Serious question, is he still the “leader”?
Thats what we’re all afraid of. This guy from Liberia, the one who is running- is he legit?We need a solid early candidate from Africa or possibly Asia, someone from Blatter’s power base. And then we and other anti-Blatter folks need to quietly cultivate support for this guy in several other African countries. However, this is tricky. If people get wind that this is the Western-supported anti-Blatter candidate, this guy’s support will evaporate. Maybe the CIA could siphon off some black ops resources from fighting terrorism to fighting Blatter with this political machinations. They’ve done it before, orchestrate political party shenanigans in other countries.
The problem with having an African or Asian candidate is nationalism from other voters in the region. In theory an African nominee would get the majority of votes from Africa, but that’s not necessarily the reality. The reason Blatter gets so much support from Africa and Asia is the optics that he is a European man that doesn’t support Europe as much as he supports Africa and Asia. If you remember WC2010 when people were complaining about the vuvuzela, it was Blatter that stood up and basically implied any European complaining about the vuvuzela was probably racist or xenophobic. It’s the little stuff like this that wins him so many points from these countries.
Really the only way that Blatter loses support is if you can get a nominee with a similar track record minus the corruption. In other words a European or possibly an American that will openly work against European or American interests in favour of African, Latin American, Caribbean, and Asian ones. So far there isn’t one person that fits that bill.
Honestly….. I rather hope it plays out this way so those with sense are left little choice. The house is so thoroughly infested with vermin, the main structures weakened/eaten hollow by termites, it is unsalvageable. A coat of paint and a bug bomb ain’t gonna do it. Let them eat the house of FIFA until it collapses under it’s own weight. Time for those attempting to live under guidelines from something more advanced than the medieval totalitarianism to rebuild a solid, transparent modern structure from the ground up.
“…Or in other words: the ball is round – but only those who come from outer space know the actual dimensions of our sport …”
the quote continued….
“In a three dimensional world the ball is round, but in the fourth dimension the ball has no shape. Henceforth, a ball with no shape knows no bounds. Concordantly, a boundless soccer match will be played to infinitum. Overseeing the infinitum, I shall re-title myself Galactic God of Football, but you can still call me Mr. B.”
This guy is absolutely convinced that he is the Yoda of professional sports. He’s also a bag of hot air someone needs to pop
If he were sitting on a porch somewhere, he’d be funny and cute. Wielding the kind of power he does, he is a dangerous brew of sociopathic-megalomania enhanced with a good dose of senility. Squash this roach already.
It does sound like the guy is just WAAAY off his meds, and has Alzheimer’s on top of that.
Weird stuff. What’s scary is he probably can indeed re-nominate himself…and get elected.
I almost hope it happens, just to watch the, uhm, fish hit the shan. It’d be priceless, anyhow, exactly the kind of loopiness that would stick a fork in FIFA once and for all, rather than this mularkey about “reforming” it.
How does one “reform” an institution where the vast majority of its voting constituents have a vested personal interest in milking the First World for every penny their institutional corruption will yield?
Agreed! Said much the same in a post below.
Wish there were more Christian Heidels in the world.
+1
Refreshing response for sure.
Ditto