By Chris Wright

Never gets old…the photo, that is

Not that it really counts as ‘news’, but the current furore over the fact that FIFA is rotten to the core and riddled with corruption shows no sign of abating any time soon as the panicking ExCo members now begin to turn in and feed on themselves amidst a veritable crossfire of spurious allegations, attention-deferring besmirchery and reams of claims and counter-claims pertaining to various acts of bribery, glad-handing and greed.

Which, all in all, is nothing out of the ordinary – ask Sepp:

“Crisis? What is a crisis? Football is not in a crisis. If you see the final match of the Champions League you must applaud. We are not in a crisis we are only in some difficulties and these will be solved inside our family.”

Mohamed Bin Hammam and Jack Warner, two of FIFA’s most prominent members, have both been temporarily suspended on bribery charges – while a photograph of some of the cash alleged to have been paid to Caribbean officials is said to have emerged on Monday.

In the last month there have been several allegations made in the British Parliament that the Qatar bid team may have, just may have, bribed their way to securing the 2022 World Cup hosting duties – as well as former-FA chairman Lord Triesman’s assertions that four other FIFA members asked for cash or favours from England’s 2018 World Cup bid in return for their votes.

Blatter said, however, that there had been no evidence brought forward to back up the spiralling claims and that there is no threat to the tournament taking place in Qatar, while Valcke insisted he was not accusing the 2022 bid of unethical behaviour.

Blatter continued:

“I believe that the decision which we took for the World Cup 2022 was done exactly in the same pattern and environment as we have made on the World Cup 2018 and there was no problem for the FIFA executive committee to act in this direction, there is not issue for the World Cup 2022.”

Elsewhere today, allegations have emerged that the lapdog of Paraguayan FIFA ExCo member Nicolas Leoz (who has already been cleared of asking for a knighthood) asked the Football Association to name the FA Cup after his ‘master’ in return for World Cup votes.

The farce continues, nothing will change.

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