{"id":2089,"date":"2007-10-12T11:49:42","date_gmt":"2007-10-12T11:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/2007\/10\/the_wit_and_wis\/"},"modified":"2007-10-12T11:49:42","modified_gmt":"2007-10-12T11:49:42","slug":"the_wit_and_wis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/the_wit_and_wis\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wit and Wisdom of Sepp Blatter"},"content":{"rendered":"

11 July 2000 – Blatter backs World Cup rotation plan<\/a>
\n12 October 2007 – Sepp Blatter … wants to ditch Fifa’s controversial [rotation] selection policy<\/a>
\nYes – Sepp Blatter, the man who runs FIFA as his own personal fiefdom (sorry), has had something of a volte face<\/em> and now wants to scrap the rotation system that means that each regional confederation (effectively continents) gets to run a World Cup tournament in turn.
\nSouth Africa is the next host in 2010 (and they’ve got a contingency plan<\/a>), and now only Brazil in South America has shown any interest in the 2014 tournament. This means that there’s no chance for FIFA to maximise revenues when there’s no competition.
\nBlatter probably also realised that including Europe more frequently in the system will mean that television revenues will be significantly enhanced. Games at unsociable hours in Europe simply don’t earn the cash that games that take place in time for evenings do.
\nThe media’s jumped on the fact that suddenly England would be able to bid for the 2018 World Cup. But Blatter does seem to have a history of telling people what they want to hear. Every time he comes to Britain to give an interview, it’s nothing but positive news.
\nAnd let’s not forget that he’s constantly full of “great” ideas:
\nPlay European football through the summer<\/a> (quite how the World Cup would fit into that scheme is unclear).
\nBan games at high altitude<\/a> (you’re kind of screwed if your country happens to be<\/I> at high altitude)
\nLimit overseas players<\/a> (he’s not on his own on this one, but there are EU laws against this kind of discrimination making it a non-starter)
\nBan the singing of national anthems<\/a>
\nAnd most famously of all “Fifa president Sepp Blatter has urged women footballers to wear skimpier kits to increase the popularity of the women’s game”<\/a>.
\n“Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball,” said the Fifa chief.
\n“They could, for example, have tighter shorts.”
\nBlatter added: “Female players are pretty, if you excuse me for saying so, and they already have some different rules to men – such as playing with a lighter ball.
\n“That decision was taken to create a more female aesthetic, so why not do it in fashion?” <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

11 July 2000 – Blatter backs World Cup rotation plan 12 October 2007 – Sepp Blatter … wants to ditch Fifa’s controversial [rotation] selection policy Yes – Sepp Blatter, the man who runs FIFA as his own personal fiefdom (sorry), has had something of a volte face and now wants to scrap the rotation system […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}