The events that have taken place in the football world over the last week are extraordinary perhaps only because they surprised nobody.
Neither is there any element of surprise in the chain of events that followed – the re-election of Sepp Blatter, his speech, and now the announcement of his resignation. Not just in football there are different ways of dealing with such inevitability, either be in a state of denial when it is crashing down, or be reasonable and realistic to accept defeat. Or better still, be the one that leads the way of change. Blatter and those around him fall into the first category.
Football fans in Australia are only too familiar with such shenanigans from the history of the sport in this country. Football has survived, and even thrived, despite the record of inept management (Rugby League, at times, has given it a good run in this department and is similarly resilient), from which valuable lessons are still being learned. The politics of old ASF/Soccer Australia and the NSL under its auspices, whilst that league delivered some quality players and had its finer moments, was increasingly out of touch and incapable of serving the game in a way conducive to making Australia a serious player in football at any level.
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The movement for reform of the sport in the country gathered momentum in a period coinciding with the birth of online football fandom in the early 21st Century. It was clear by 2001 that the NSL was on its deathbed and the system that had supported it was beyond repair. Reforming the game was indeed a Herculean task, a process taking many years to complete – and perhaps with the A-League now permanently embedded in the landscape, not least in the prize Western Sydney market, it is well and truly complete.
The task of reforming the sport’s highest governing body may prove in relative terms less of a hassle than the task of reforming football in Australia had been. But relativity is also exponential here. The ineptitude of the old administration of football was on a smaller scale to FIFA but even on that, was really quite bad and was no better in hiding it. Yet the experience in Australia holds a valuable lesson for prospective reformers of FIFA. Whether it involves reforming just the highest governing body of football, or something much deeper, remains to be seen.
