It is a little ironic that in the week that Sepp Blatter has surpassed himself sees the death of someone who led by his sport performance and manner through some of the changes in the sporting landscape we currently take for granted – Basil D'Oliveira. http://bbc.in/tAY7e1 .
“Dolly” as he was known was a man who was dropped by the England selectors for being non-white only fairly recently in 1968 under enormous pressure from the apartheid driven National Party of South Africa. http://bit.ly/Kfgqd . I remember this well in my childhood and couldn’t understand why the man who scored a massive century was not selected to tour. Dolly always behaved in a calm and selfless way and was a role model to many young people of the time. It was not until 1990 after Nelson Mandela’s release that test cricket returned to South Africa although the National Party did drive to have cricket in the country it was not recognised http://bit.ly/oMGq3x .
Back to Blatter – how can the world tolerate such man leading a world body? Let’s look at his history of equality in what are seen as key areas of equality – Race, Gender and homophobia.
On race his recent interview he completely forgot the struggles of people like D’Oliveira and others to further the equal opportunity of black players. http://bit.ly/u4rBGC . Although he is used to having abuse thrown at him and ignoring it, as we saw throughout England’s abortive 2018 World Cup bid http://tgr.ph/hWumO8 .
John Terry, not unknown to sail close to the wind http://bit.ly/rOwWB4 is currently facing Police Charge after allegedly calling Anton Ferdinand a Black C*** http://bit.ly/rZ0lzd although one of Sepp Blatters “friends” did come to his defence http://bit.ly/sMaW2z . Fair play to Ferdinand at his alleged come back of “a C*** is a person who sleeps with his best friends girl friend”.
FIFA should show leadership and not the total lack of understanding of the feelings and issues of black players and coaches. FiFA should be championing the “Rooney rule” http://bit.ly/5LHNnp
and in particular in England where over 25% of players are Black yet only two coaches/managers across the 92 league clubs are black. Yet we hear that as soon as the World Cup in South Africa was finished that was the end of FIFA's drive to address race http://bit.ly/sBPqDr .
Back to Blatter and women’s football – how can we take a man who was elected president of the World Society of Friends of Suspenders, an organization which tried to stop women replacing suspender belts with panyhose http://bit.ly/ucvaus which might lead to goodness knows what on the football field. Rather than putting pressure on television companies to increase the coverage of Women’s football, as the ECB have with Sky in their rights contract, he suggested women should wear shorter shorts http://bit.ly/h3WZRN .
He hasn’t just left his discrimination to women he bizarrely presided over the world cup in 2006 where any Dutch fans wearing shorts were told to remove them!http://bbc.in/liw7HT .
..and finally gay people – his simplistic answer to a question about Qatar’s laws over gay relationships being illegal was – "I'd say they [gay fans] should refrain from any sexual activities." rather than tackling the Qatar government who as we have seen with the Athletics world championships are desperate to have major events. http://bbc.in/hUZ2ps .
How can this man survive well – he does because he and FIFA are an irrelevance to the world and eventually they will change and this will only come when new blood come in and stand up for non-corruption. When I was CEO of England Basketball I saw how International Governing Bodies operated – voting was like the Eurovision song competition – very predictable where votes would go and people behaved in a stereotypical nationalist way. The way people were driven at all costs to seek and exert power was astonishing. England Basketball’s late President Keith Mitchell who was a great ambassador for the sport http://bit.ly/uYAHmN once said to me “when people a the FIBA conference shake by the hand look out for the other one with a knife going in your back”.
This thirst for power and lack of addressing the needs and aspirations of what are still minority groups in both participation, decision making and position, is to me immoral. However change as “Dolly” found was slow but in the end the world became a better place.
