The supreme leader sails on: leadership, ethics and governance in FIFA

Abstract

The leaders of the governing body of world football, FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), formed in 1904, have often claimed that its contribution has been not just to the global growth of a sport, but also to potential and actual changes in intercultural understanding and international relations; the organization has claimed to contribute to hope and integration through football development. But in recent years, its governance processes have become increasingly exposed as inadequate, and its practices characterized by unaccountability. This article traces shifts in FIFA's leadership style, structures and values over its 100-year plus history and explores ethical controversies in the practices of FIFA committee personnel during the tenure of it presidents from 1974 to 2013, as they affected its capacity to meet its stated goals. The article draws upon exclusive interviews and oral evidence illuminating the practices and actions of FIFA personnel and concludes with reflections on the organization's limited capacity to contribute to international sport diplomacy.

1. Introduction

This article reviews the place of one prominent international sporting federation (ISF), FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), the governing body of world football, in the climate and context of debates concerning governance and accountability in international affairs. In 2013, FIFA continued, despite waves of allegations and revelations concerning unaccountability and often corrupt administrative practices, to promote its image and brand in almost missionary terms. Its mission and values statement claimed football as a ‘symbol of hope and integration', in a blend of traditional sporting rhetoric and vague universalism, prioritizing fair play and football development: FIFA stated that it stands for the ‘core values' of authenticity, unity, performance, and integrity, said to be ‘at the very heart of who we are'. On integrity, ‘We believe that, just as the game itself, FIFA must be a model of fair play, tolerance, sportsmanship and transparency'.1 It is from this high-minded, self-promotional base that FIFA presents itself as a potentially powerful player on the transnational stage.

Critique of FIFA's flawed governance procedures has escalated in recent years, undermining its public image and its claims to be acting for the global public good. In 2000, Sunder Katwala concluded that: ‘Few would doubt that sporting governance needs reform – the bigger question is whether reform is possible'.2 His most optimistic scenario was reform from within, by an emergent generation of sport administrators looking to create an ‘open and transparent multi-stakeholder forum on good sporting governance'.3 He noted though that outside pressures would be most likely to provide the key moment in any reform process. In August 2011, the UK branch of Transparency International, the self-labelled ‘global coalition against corruption', published Safe Hands: Building Integrity and Transparency at FIFA.4 The report argued that some multi-stakeholder group or some other group with ‘solid reputations' should be assigned the task of clearing up the past cases in FIFA of bribes and scandals, to ensure ‘a new era of openness and accountability'; and that new procedures should be established for good governance and transparency. The report concluded that FIFA, responsible for the world's most popular game, football, which is ‘a role model for youth everywhere', should recognize that ‘few bodies have such an opportunity for delivering a message of fair play, integrity and respect for the rule of law'. Roger Pielke, drawing upon Grant and Keohane's model of mechanisms of accountability in world politics, has asked the question ‘How can FIFA be held accountable?'5 He concludes:

FIFA demonstrated time and again that it has essentially no hierarchical, supervisory, peer or public reputational accountability, and minimal fiscal accountability. This means that efforts to reform FIFA from within or as a consequence of pressure from governments, the public, the media or watchdog organizations are unlikely to result directly in any significant change.6

There is then an emerging consensus among commentators and analysts that FIFA's lack of accountability should be challenged; but little sense of how serious and effective reforms might be implemented. In this article, I review the historical background that has created FIFA's leadership structures and styles; consider the gap between FIFA rhetoric and practice in the context of ethical issues and reflect on the consequences of an endemic unaccountability that characterizes the organization, in relation to its international profile and potential contribution to international diplomacy.

The article draws on previously unpublished personal interviews, transcriptions, and correspondence, conducted and compiled over more than 20 years, including exclusive access to documents kept by Sir Stanley Rous in his position as FIFA president.7 It also draws upon previous joint work, journalistic reportage, and a forthcoming monograph by the author.8 In concentrating upon leadership and ethical issues, the discussion foregrounds the voices of leaders and of those close to leading figures in the organization, and FIFA committee members involved at the highest levels of decision-making. These are elements and perspectives that do not feature in the formal documentation of FIFA business and/or its own archives, and the latter are not extensively used in this article. In his seminal text on oral historical method, Paul Thompson observed that oral evidence ‘gives history a future no longer tied to the cultural significance of the paper document'.9 The testimony of involved actors is frequently absent from the written histories of ISFs, an absence that this article seeks modestly to challenge. Of course, oral sources are not an alternative to the analysis of documents; and Trevor Lummis has noted that the ‘largest bias may well be in what is left unsaid rather than what is said'.10 But as Lummis adds, no ‘source of history is complete: history has always been written from fragmentary sources ….'11 In this article, qualitative interviews and oral historical sources are related, in turn, to the documentary sources expressing FIFA's mission and values. The analysis makes no claim to completeness but in a selective focus examines some of the ways in which leaders and decision-makers in FIFA have been able to operate in such consistently unaccountable fashion.

2. FIFA 1904–1974: leaders and ideals

FIFA spent the first 24 years of its existence seeking the legitimacy to lead the world game, in tension with countries and regions such as England and the South Americas that laid their own claim to leadership of sport in their own parts of the world, and beyond. It was not until the arguments over the issue of amateurism and eligibility to compete at the Summer Olympic Games in the late 1920s led to the British associations leaving FIFA once again, following earlier periods of membership and withdrawal, that the way was cleared for the top international football nation of the day, double Olympic winner Uruguay, to offer FIFA a venue and a rationale for an inaugural World Cup. In 1930, the first FIFA World Cup was both hosted and won by Uruguay, and what was to become FIFA's major asset was established. Although only 13 teams competed in 1930, by invitation and with just 4 from Europe, by 1982 the preliminary entries numbered 109, providing 24 teams for the finals tournament in Spain. Developing a mega-event such as the men's football World Cup gave FIFA a genuinely international profile and an acknowledged remit, irresistible in the post-colonial period in the second half of the twentieth century to emerging independent nations for which membership would be a badge of status on the international stage. As FIFA accepted and approved the formation of European, Asian, and African confederations in the 1950s, and for North/Central Americas and Oceania in the 1960s, the political significance of the world body was enhanced as newly independent nations in the decolonizing world sought recognition by the international federation. As satellite technology transformed broadcasting's global reach in the early 1960s, international sport also began to undergo a process of transformation, with increasing television and sponsorship revenues revolutionizing its economic base. Leaders of FIFA were not mere sports administrators; they were increasingly significant figures/actors in international political and economic networks.

For 70 of its 108 years to 2012, FIFA was led, at presidential level, by volunteer idealists, six men who saw their roles in FIFA as forms of public service.12 Two of these each held the position for more than a decade: Jules Rimet, of France (1921–1954); and Stanley Rous, from England (1961–1974). The following 38 years produced just two presidents: João Havelange, of Brazil (1974–1998); and Joseph Blatter, Swiss former general secretary of the organization (1998–present).

Rimet framed the FIFA mission in the context of his own belief in the character-building values of team sports, and the common values that sport could instil across different social groupings and national boundaries. He had a strong belief that there was no need for continental federations, apart from the South American confederation that was established in 1916, whilst much of Europe was at war.13 Rimet was religious, patriotic, but led with a spiritual zeal, more the patriarchal preacher than the politician.14 He spoke, at a FIFA Congress in Rio in 1950, of a ‘perfect unity that holds us together, the spiritual community to which we all adhere…', eulogizing ‘the patient plodding of all, apostles and disciples, towards a common ideal that fully deserves to be held aloft'.15 This is the language of the messianic visionary, linked to a sense of voluntarism as a form of vocation.

Englishman Stanley Rous did not succeed Rimet, but was an influential behind-the-scenes presence at FIFA as it expanded with the formation and recognition of international, continental federations. As the FA (English Football Association) secretary from 1934, he had been building a working relationship with FIFA even though the UK associations remained out of membership until 1946.16 Walter Winterbottom, the England national side's first coach-cum-manager, observed that ‘in our own country he took us out of being an insular Association Football League and got us back into world football', and also praised Rous' exceptional charm and diplomatic skills.17 Rous was raised in respectable but modest lower-middle-class circumstances, served in the Great War and qualified as a physical education teacher before holding numerous offices in public life; his vision was international, conservative, but post-imperialist in his recognition of the rights of colonized countries to independence. In a paper presented to The Football Association, first drafted in May 1943, he stated that football had accomplished important diplomatic goals through the FA's War Emergency Committee work, fostering relations with government departments and establishing links with influential figures; all this, he argued, ‘has laid an excellent foundation for post-war international development'.18 But Rous' stance on the question of apartheid in South Africa was explicitly imperialist, in his refusal to bar permanently the white Football Association of South Africa from FIFA membership, following its suspension at the 1964 Tokyo Congress. This rebounded on him, in that the Confederation of African Football (CAF) overcame its internal intra-continental disputes in common cause in opposition to the FIFA president.19 Despite his tolerance of the apartheid regime, Rous sought to harness football as a form of influence and potential reform in a changing post-war, post-colonial climate. This was not enough, though, to prevent João Havelange from winning the FIFA presidency in 1974 after successfully lobbying in unprecedented ways the representatives of national associations across Asia and Africa in particular. As Patrick Nally, former associate of sport entrepreneur Horst Dassler, recalls:

Havelange had spent a fortune going around the world on the back of the success of the Brazilian team, Pele and everything else, and literally probably canvassed and been to every single member country of FIFA, which had been unheard of – no president had ever gone round the world glad handing and campaigning which is obviously what he did. … All pandering to the Asians/Africans because obviously they carried a lot of votes.20

Rimet, Rous, and their type believed that football could create character among leaders and peoples alike, with a capacity to cultivate cordial relations between countries and nations. Figures such as Rous could achieve modest diplomatic goals, working diligently off-centre, whilst high-profile political figures such as the British prime minister Winston Churchill negotiated world-historical decisions in the global public eye. Havelange and his successor Blatter, architects of the game's transformation into modern global spectacle, had dramatically different visions and styles.

3. FIFA 1974–2013: the emergence of the supreme leader

Havelange was born in 1916 in Rio de Janeiro, where the main stadium for the 2014 men's FIFA World Cup bears his name.21 In a controversial business career – including dealing in the sale of ‘80,000 grenades to the government of Bolivia, under the command of the dictator Hugo Banza', in 1973, the same year in which he was also charged with fraud as the head of the company Orewc22 – Havelange built a power base as the chief of Brazil's sports federation, including football: ‘I brought with me the entrepreneurial skills, the business skills from my own company to the federation', he says. He added that he was the man behind Brazil's triple World Cup success: ‘There were just [sports] coaches, but I brought in specialist doctors, administrators for the federation to give it a wider basis. This is what made the difference and why we won the World Cup in 1958, 1962 and 1970'.23 Havelange talked less the language of the vocational public servant, more the discourse of the modern businessman preoccupied with markets and financial turnover. He had made eight pledges in his 1974 manifesto: the increase in the number of World Cup final teams, from 16 to 24; the creation of a junior, under-20 World Championship; the construction of a new FIFA headquarters; the provision of materials to needy national associations; help in stadium development and improvement; more courses for professionals; medical and technical help; and the introduction of an intercontinental club championship.24 It is undeniable that all of these have been met. Towards the end of his 24 years in power, Havelange listed the 11 competitions that FIFA now stages, and summarized his achievements:

… the FIFA administration service may be considered perfect. The economic and financial situation due to the development which has taken place has been envied. Under the economic aspect, I would mention the buildings which have been constructed and acquired in favour of the continuity of football development. On the financial side we are, together with our sponsors, attaining such conditions which will permit us to reach all our aims.25

We see in this rationale a shift from the public to the private, from the mission to market, from the civil society to commerce. Havelange, with the help of his close ally and confidant, the late Horst Dassler of Adidas, had been the first to recognize the full commercial potential of sport in the global market and to open the game to the influences of new media and new markets.26 Havelange was also a consummate political operator who ruled FIFA in an autocratic style. Henry Kissinger, having acted as spokesman for the USA's failed bid to host the 1986 World Cup, commented on experiencing Havelange's negotiating style: ‘The politics of FIFA, they make me nostalgic for the Middle-East'.27 In this astonishing comparison, Kissinger unravels the diplomatic veneer of the Havelange style, labelling him a dictatorial figure of outward courtesy but inner ruthlessness. British sports minister Tony Banks declared in 1998 that compared to national UK politics at Westminster, the politics of FIFA in the Havelange era were ‘positively Byzantine'.28 In drawing on the historical example of Byzantium, and its association with underhand practices and deviousness, Banks damned the Havelange/Blatter style as hypocritical and beyond trust. All who came in contact with Havelange in his presidential prime have remarked on his hauteur and physical and oral charisma. Former FIFA media director, Guido Tognoni, said that on a clear and sunny day ‘Havelange could make you believe that the sky was red when it was really blue',29 and ‘had the power to do everything that he wanted'. This power could be widely and profitably dispersed; Havelange enjoyed an audience with President Reagan in The White House and received the Grand Cordon Alaouite from King Hassan of Morocco. He was nominated, by the Swiss Football Association, for the Nobel Peace Prize, citing FIFA's interventions in South Africa and the smooth passage of the Republic of China into FIFA whilst retaining Chinese Taipei within the fold; and was awarded France's Légion d'Honneur, by French president François Mitterand, during the bid process for the 1998 (France) World Cup.30 One of Havelange's final ambitions was to organize an international football match between Israel and the fledgling Palestinian state in New York, the seat of the United Nations, to show, in his words, ‘that football can succeed where politicians cannot'. This was initiated by US vice-president Al Gore, who approached Havelange during the 1994 World Cup Finals in the USA. Havelange recalls that Gore was ‘very upset' when the suggestion was not received with great enthusiasm, the FIFA boss initially saying, ‘No, we are a sport, we are not politics in that sense'. Magnanimously, in his own telling, Havelange reconsidered and through the liaison of Prince Faisal of Saudi communicated with the Saudi King, Fahed, who ‘offered to give the Palestine Football Federation 100 million dollars to get them going. Now things have moved on and Palestine is a more clearly defined political entity'. Havelange was seeking to arrange this game for the end of 1997. Palestine was accepted as a full FIFA member at the June 1998 FIFA Congress, no doubt voting for Havelange's protégé Blatter in the election for the new president.

Havelange's opportunism paralleled the transformation of the economic basis of international sport, and he both benefited from and stimulated further this process. Dramatic increases of investment and capital came into the world game and it might be argued that Havelange was simply lucky, the right man at the right time; but he foresaw these economic developments and recognized the need to work with an ally such as Adidas' Horst Dassler in establishing markets, attracting global sponsors, and reshaping the primary product of the men's World Cup. Havelange's business acumen and marketing vision were implemented with his faithful employee and successor Joseph Blatter, FIFA development officer initially on appointment in 1975, and the then general secretary for almost three decades before becoming president himself in 1998. As a graduate in economics going on to specialize in a blend of public relations and international negotiation with states, national bodies, and multinational corporations, Blatter was one of the first of a new breed of career diplomat in the world of international sport federations. FIFA's image and profile were developed under Havelange and Blatter as a form of institutional branding.31 Blatter was Horst Dassler's protégé, groomed at the latter's Landersheim headquarters. In the Havelange/Blatter era, at the head of FIFA, in football affairs and wider international relations of and through sport, the missionaries were superseded by the marketeers, and the diplomats by the entrepreneurs. This transformation made FIFA vulnerable to dramatically escalated forms of exploitation by individuals and well-placed agencies, culminating throughout Blatter's presidency in substantiated allegations of corruption in the administration and governance of world football. Throughout this, the autocratic hold on power of the president was also strengthened. Despite the representative nature of Congress delegations and, during Blatter's period in power, challenges for the presidency, FIFA personnel and committee members for the most part simply bow to the wishes of FIFA's leader: ‘As the supreme leader of FIFA, the President and his rights and duties are extensively dealt with in the FIFA Statutes', FIFA documentation reports.32 Havelange established, and Blatter consolidated, the basis on which this culture of self-aggrandizement, unaccountability, and sometimes corruption could thrive. Nally recognizes that the federations had to change, modernize, but claims that the way they were changing was creating power-hungry careerists: ‘people were becoming like Horst [Dassler] – megalomaniacs that could totally control things for themselves'. Recalling his split with Dassler, he said: ‘I am not good at paying bribes … at writing … lines of figures which are for extraneous expenses knowing damn well that they are payments to FIFA or UEFA officials'.33 Power and money, then, were reshaping the structures and rewriting the ethos of the ISF world. In the booming economic years of the 1980s, the foundations were therefore laid for the embedded corruption that has characterized the tenures of the last two presidents.

Financial corruption was at the heart of ‘alleged criminal acts to the detriment of FIFA' considered by the prosecutor's office in the Canton of Zug, with Havelange investigated specifically for ‘Embezzlement possibly Disloyal Management'. The case essentially proven, the prosecutor elected in 2010 to identify the appropriateness of a suspended prison sentence, given Havelange had no previous criminal record in Switzerland, had paid back monies, was now aged 94, and retired and so to dismiss the criminal investigation.34

The autocratic style that characterized the presidential tenure of Havelange did not ensure a totally smooth transition into the presidency for his successor. When Havelange accepted that he should stand down, he had long been in dispute with presidents of continental federations, in particular Lennart Johansson, president of the European federation UEFA (Union of European Football Associations). Johansson was unambivalent concerning the principles on which he challenged for the FIFA position. In his manifesto document, Vision for the Future Governance of Football (August 1997), he called for a move away from autocratic leadership:

What is needed is an international democratic network based on trust, transparency, loyalty, and solidarity … The world football movement is a community. For this reason, FIFA has to strengthen its democratic governance, as the United Nations of world football.35

Johansson had the institutional support of the African confederation as well his European base, and courted especially the national football associations of the newly independent nations of eastern Europe, but his solidarity and transparency campaign mustered insufficient votes to gain the presidency. He built alliances with the African confederation and in 1994 pledged UEFA resources to emergent states through the East European Assistance Bureau. But FIFA's democratic structure – one country/association one vote – played into the hands of the FIFA insider Blatter, who, supported by Qatari resources, could flatter, cajole, and reward small associations in particular in seeking their support and vote. FIFA has often prided itself on standing for, and inspiring others through, lofty values pitched at the level of universal idealism. But if, as has been argued, ‘public diplomacy leaders must practice the moral art of values-based leadership',36 the (a-moral) leadership values exhibited by Havelange and Blatter serve to exclude them from the networks of international sport diplomacy. It has become widely recognized that public diplomacy ‘as part of the fabric of world politics' involves ‘NGOs and other non-state actors' seeking ‘to protect their message in pursuit of policy goals'37; FIFA's leadership without doubt sees itself as part of this global picture. But the scandals, revelations, and corruption cases that have come to light during Blatter's presidential tenure have amplified the problem of ethics within FIFA, relating in particular to some of its most experienced leadership figures. Diplomacy, by definition, has involved the cultivation of institutional relationships between figures representative of disparate and widely incompatible values and moralities. The autocratic styles of Havelange and Blatter may have gained spectacularly successful results for FIFA's finances and the profile of the World Cup, but these leaders have tarnished reputations. The former FIFA vice-president and president of the Asian confederation, South Korean Chung Mong-Joon, has written, of Blatter: ‘A lot of dictators on this planet have used similar methods'.38

4. Ethical cases and issues

Barbara Keys, quoting Boli and Thomas' characterization of international non-governmental organizations as generally progressive and encouraging ‘friendly competition and fair play',39 observes that sports organizations share these characteristics apart from their autocratic forms of governance, self-appointed memberships, and closed voting systems.40 It is hardly surprising, then, that ethical issues have been peripheral to FIFA's concerns for most of its history; FIFA did not introduce an ethics committee until 2006, after controversies over relations with the bankrupt partner International Sport and Leisure and allegations from within FIFA concerning Blatter's mode of leadership came to light; it had previously chosen to deal with any ethical matters within its disciplinary committee.41 The ethical code, and its successor in a revised model in 2012 are not applicable to retrospective cases, ‘to facts that have arisen after it has come into force' (Article 2, p. 4). Article 5 (p. 6) deals with conflicts of interest and demands that officials ‘disclose any personal interests that could be linked with their prospective function … Private or personal interests include gaining any possible advantage for himself, his family, relatives, friends and acquaintances'. But individual cases of prominent current and former FIFA committee members illustrate how the workings of the FIFA system have been open to misuse, and how the pursuance of private and personal interests has long been accepted as the norm in FIFA.

4.1. The man from Malta: ‘big pressure if big boxes arrive'

Dr Josef Mifsud is from Malta, and was a FIFA Executive Committee (ExCo) committee member for several years.42 Buoyed by his recent elevation to the top committee in world football administration, he responded eloquently to my questions about the stories and rumours that were swirling around Paris among journalists and FIFA delegates on the eve of Sepp Blatter's election to the presidency, mainly related to allegations of vote-rigging and bribery for presidential votes:

In my opinion there should be a code of ethics … one of the points should be that if someone should make a strange offer or something, it should have to be declared. Should bidding groups visit you at home? No, in fact in my opinion, representation should be made jointly.

I asked him before that whether he felt big pressure if big boxes arrived:

Yeah, yeah … I think there should be an obligation for committee members to declare anything. I will, I will raise this point at a future executive meeting, because I think giving the World Cup should be a decision for the real good of football and not a decision from which one can personally gain. It should be outside our scope to gain personally from our position.

As we have seen, an Ethics Committee was put in place during Blatter's time as president. But however much Dr Mifsud campaigned on such principles and towards such an outcome, he showed no haste in telling colleagues about dynamics and economics underlying the prestigious football matches he brought to his small country in the years preceding the 2000 decision on the host nation for the 2006 men's World Cup. Germany's top team Bayern Munich arrived on his small island; the English national team turned up for a match. Dr Mifsud had one of the 24 ExCo committee votes to cast in 2000, and English and German football administrators were happy to collude in his demands, in exchange for the prospect of his vote, looking for even the slightest hint that he might look favourably on their bid. Dr Mifsud was also silent on the monies that found their way into his personal bank account for some of these deals, in no mood to respond to BBC Panorama journalist Andrew Jennings on this matter.43 Dr Mifsud is no longer at the FIFA top table, but is seen at significant UEFA meetings and events. The culture of corruption and personal gain has long been endemic in the FIFA ‘family'. Dr Mifsud, lawyer, long-term head of the Maltese Football Association, and FIFA ExCo member 1998–2000, has been less effusive about ethics since the revelations about his own practices. The activities of individuals in high positions within FIFA's representative structure illustrate a total lack of institutional transparency, particularly in financial dealings, during the Havelange/Blatter era.

4.2. Thailand tales: ‘human beings cannot be perfect'

Worawi Makudi is an effervescent and personable character, who as a representative of Thailand's national football association and the Asian Football Confederation has bounced in and out of FIFA's ExCo over recent years.44 When Germany won the vote for the 2006 World Cup in dramatically controversial circumstances – the Oceania president Charles Dempsey abstaining/departing, and Germany pipping South Africa by a single vote, thus saving the president from exercising a chair's casting vote – this was followed by countless allegations that New Zealander Dempsey had been paid off (or threatened) not to vote for South Africa. Germany's government, it was then revealed, had concluded arms deals with the Saudis close to the decision day. Worawi Makudi was one of those to cast his vote in the controversial ballot. I asked him about his relationships with the likes of Havelange, who had visited Thailand in his capacity as president:

When he came to visit us he offered us his personal help to send a coach to Brazil to take a coaching course there, at his own [Havelange's] expense. If you ask anything valid to him he will respond to you in the sense that he can.

I asked about Havelange's leadership style:

90% good, maybe 10% a mistake or something. For me, personally, I think that it's acceptable, you have to balance the good and the bad. You don't pick up on the negative points, a lot of good people make mistakes, human beings cannot be perfect.

In other words, turn a blind eye.

Makudi argued that FIFA has respected the autonomy of his own confederation: ‘FIFA will never jump over the confederation. In terms of respect I think they have treated us very nicely'. Makudi is a businessman who had his own club, a college team, and moved into an administration position in Thai football: ‘many people think that I have the capability'. He continued:

FIFA always gives us … FIFA is ready to help if they know what you require, what you want, this is what I understand from FIFA. They are ready, very ready. FIFA help and FIFA treat us the same as the other continents, and whatever FIFA give we all receive and that's normal.

Businessman, football administrator, FIFA top committee member: I asked whether any conflicts of interest arose, in all this giving and receiving, in Makudi's duties and activities: ‘I don't get the meaning of your question', he answered. As the 2000 vote was approaching for the 2006 World Cup, Makudi's business interests included car dealerships in his native Thailand with a major German company; Makudi was one of the members of FIFA's ExCo to vote for Germany to host the event. FIFA diplomatic relations have often been intertwined with such opportunities for personal gain.

Recent revelations on, and allegations of, corruption and bribery at the heart of some FIFA practices, such as the allocation of the World Cup and the election for the presidency itself, are hardly surprising. From the autumn of 2010, the higher echelons of the FIFA establishment came under unprecedented levels of global scrutiny. In the second half of that year, two members of the FIFA ExCo were suspended as the vote for the hosting of the men's 2018 and 2022 World Cup Finals approached. The vote went ahead in December, with a ballot of 24 not 22 ExCo members, Russia taking the 2018 prize and, to gasps of journalistic astonishment worldwide, Qatar taking the 2022 finals with a vote of 13–9 to rout the USA. Further controversies followed, with suspensions on charges of bribery and corruption of ExCo committee members who were also presidents of two of the continental confederations: Mohamed bin Hammam, of the Asian Football Confederation; and Jack Warner of CONCACAF/the North and Central Americas and Caribbean Federation. Issa Hayatou, president of CAF/Africa, also had to be cleared of allegations, though remained under investigation at the International Olympic Committee (IOC), where he was a member along with Sepp Blatter, and Blatter's predecessor as FIFA president, João Havelange.45 One of the members expelled in the autumn, Reynald Temarii of Tahiti, had been president of the Oceania confederation.

In this annus horribilis for FIFA, four of the six continental federation presidents were in the dock. Three departed the scene. A barrage of charges emerged as whistle-blowing and leaks, allegation and counter-allegation, sent shockwaves throughout the FIFA establishment; and revelations of deeply rooted corruption by South American FIFA committee men overshadowed Blatter's talk of road maps to reform. As Blatter invoked more meteorological metaphors, of fading sunlight (football ‘cannot always have sunny days'), stormy seas and talked of stabilizing the rocking ship, the world to which FIFA had been relatively unknown looked on aghast.46 Blatter turned tragedy into farce in setting up a Solutions Committee, made up of veteran US statesman Dr Henry Kissinger, Dutch football legend Johann Cruyff, and – FIFA frequently betters fiction – Spanish opera star Placido Domingo. At his Congress, though, Blatter claimed his fourth presidential spell unopposed, thanking and hailing the biggest affirmative vote in the history of the organization's presidential election process.

The modern, business-oriented FIFA shaped by Havelange, reaffirmed in his five successive unopposed re-elections, and supported throughout by Blatter, established a basis for networks of self-interest and potential self-aggrandizement that generated an embedded culture of privilege and personal gain that undermined, and in large part, replaced the principle of public service and ambassadorship that had characterized previous administrative régimes.47

Seib and Fitzpatrick assert that ‘in order to be truly effective, codes of ethics must have teeth – they must be enforceable and enforced', and also linked to ongoing revision; they must be genuine ‘living documents'.48 FIFA and its president have since 2006 reformed its committee structures, suspended committee members, and talked up the road to reform. But those most embroiled in the power dynamics and self-serving business deals of the football world and the global football economy, such as former CONCACAF general secretary and long-term FIFA ExCo member Chuck Blazer, have not faced scrutiny within any effective ethics policy.49 Such principles of transparency, accountability, and responsibility have been routinely absent from FIFA practices, and it has taken the revelations of investigative journalists and researchers to call the organization to account, and so to at least establish a basic apparatus of ethical processes and procedures.

5. Conclusion

The history of FIFA's leadership is not one of a crude contrast between the pure idealism of early presidents and an opportunistic dictatorial unaccountability of their successors. The FIFA secretary treasurer of the early 1930s, Carl Hirschmann defrauded the federation and resigned in shame.50 Such positions have long been open to exploitation. But the governance issues have become increasingly prominent in the era of the presidents since 1974; this is historically and analytically undeniable, as is the escalation of ethically unaccountable and, at times, corrupt practices at high levels within the organization. Taking the leadership profile of FIFA, and the ethical basis of its practices and procedures, as an analytical focus in investigating sport governance and some related aspects of sport diplomacy, we are led to three sets of reflections. First, the autocratic nature of the leadership styles of FIFA's seventh and eighth presidents belies the democratic gloss of the organization's constitution and public rhetoric. Jan Melissen has written of the ‘jazzy dance of colourful coalitions' that characterizes the relationship-building on which the new forms of ‘collaboration beyond the state' are based; no longer is diplomacy a matter of ‘a stiff waltz among states alone'.51 Large international organizations such as NATO or the EU consider public diplomacy to be ‘an existential necessity'; states and sub-state actors work with cities, looking to secure ‘milestone events' such as the Olympic Games or a World Expo. In these forms of joint lobbying, we see the kind of jazzy dance and colourful coalition into which bodies such as FIFA might be invited. Melissen observes quite rightly that this takes public diplomacy way beyond the closed club model, but new partners on the dance floor may have a far different choreographic agenda to the more traditional members of the diplomatic club. The Football Association sent UK prime minister David Cameron, FA president His Royal Highness Prince William and now Duke of Cambridge (heir to the throne of the UK), and footballer and model David Beckham to Zurich in November/December 2010 to make the final presentation for England's bid to host the 2018 football World Cup Finals. They were like guests from a past era, oblivious to the realpolitik of Vladimir Putin's travel schedule, as he zoomed by private jet to Zurich to celebrate Russia's success in securing the event.52

Second, the blatant lack of ethical procedures and conscience that has characterized much high-profile FIFA activity indicates that there is much to do before football's governing body is fit to be accepted and respected in the expanding networks of international sport and associated institutional partners. Diplomatic thinking should, Paul Sharp has said, seek to understand the character and workings of rogue states, greedy companies, crazy religions, and dumb publics.53 When asked about conflicts of interest, forms of accountability, and ethical issues more generally, FIFA committee members have responded with puzzled looks. It is as if the query has come from another language. We could add to Sharp's list those ISFs entering the diplomatic world on their own terms and with little in the way of any well-trodden path of accountability and transparency.

Third, together with recognizing the relevance of non-state and supranational actors such as ISFs to a changing international context, scholars must also examine the basis of the claims made by such actors/institutions in relation to those they purport to represent, and those for whom they claim to speak. There is a methodological imperative here. FIFA presents its four core values/principles as authenticity, unity, performance, and integrity. ‘Develop the Game. Touch the World. Build a Better Future' is the brand imperative that heads up the organization's mission statement. FIFA's organizational structures and processes are in theory dedicated to the defence and cultivation of these values. But deal-making within its inner circles, the continental confederations, national associations, and corporate sponsors show where for numerous committee members and employees FIFA ambitions and loyalties really lie; personal aggrandizement has shaped FIFA policy as much as sporting and internationalist ideals have.

FIFA remains accountable solely to its Congress, where the single votes of American Samoa or Vanuatu continue to be as significant as the single votes of Argentina or Spain; and the benefits of FIFA patronage are not cheaply given up by Congress members/delegates. The gap between the stated goals of the organization, and the practices of its leadership and core administration in particular, is so entrenched that the mission statement is little more than puffed-up rhetoric and hyperbole. To understand the history and contemporary politics of FIFA, it is essential to recognize its transformation from an INGO (an international non-governmental organization) to a BINGO, a business-oriented international non-governmental organization.54 The transformation of the organization in the second half of the twentieth century internationalized its structures and its global reach, politically and institutionally in the 1950s and 1960s; and economically from the 1970s and 1980s onwards. But the growth of such a supranational body, welcomed in the economically advantageous setting of Switzerland, has been on the basis of a form of ultimately unaccountable practices and procedures. There is no doubt that ISFs have established a significant presence on the international stage, contributing to an increased dimension of diplomacy in and through international sporting institutions and events; but potential partners of those ISFs, as well as researchers and scholars, must remain alert to the organizational characteristics of such institutions, and the drives and motivations of those who promote, represent, and lead them.

Acknowledgements

This article is in part developed from the following presentations: (1) ‘For the Game. “For the World – For What and for Whom? FIFA Revisited”', Plenary Address to the Political Studies Association's Sport and Politics Study Group Annual Conference, The Governance and Regulation of Sport, Birkbeck Sports Business Centre, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK, 21 February 2009. (2) ‘FIFA, the Peoples' Game and Global Sports Governance: Who Rules What?', paper delivered at the International Studies Association Annual Conference, San Diego, USA, 1–4 April 2012. I am grateful to all those delegates at these events who contributed critical and insightful responses to the presentation. Elements of this article have benefited from my research supported by the British Academy 2007–2010 on ‘The construction and mediation of the sporting spectacle in Europe, 1992–2004', Award Number SG:47220. I am grateful to the Academy for its support. I also thank the editors of this special issue of Sport in Society for their support and patience, and thanks go to the three anonymous referees whose sharp and incisive comments have contributed to a reshaping of the article and a strengthening of the argument.

Notes

^1. Joseph S. Blatter, ‘FIFA Brand – Our Commitment', Mission & Statutes, www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/organisation/mission.html (accessed October 8, 2013).

^2.Katwala, Democratising Global Sport, 90.

^3. Ibid., 92.

^4.Schenk, Safe Hands, forthcoming quotes from pp. 3 and 8.

^5.Pielke, ‘How can FIFA be Held Accountable?'

^6. Ibid., 265.

^7. The article draws upon what has been labelled as a form of critical interpretivism; see Gratton and Jones, Research Methods. It employs an investigative research approach as presented in Sugden and Tomlinson, ‘Digging the Dirt'; see too Tomlinson, ‘Lord Don't Stop the Carnival', endnote 3.

^8. The journalistic reportage has included features in Der Tagesspiegel, When Saturday Comes, New Statesman, and the Financial Times. In the coverage of FIFA presidents, the article draws selectively from Sugden and Tomlinson's three studies on FIFA: FIFA and the Contest for World Football; Great Balls of Fire; and Badfellas. Previously unpublished material is also drawn from Tomlinson, FIFA.

^9.Thompson, Voice of the Past, 64.

^10.Lummis, Listening to History, 88.

^11. Ibid.

^12. See Tomlinson, ‘FIFA and the Men Who Made It'.

^13. It was not until the end of Rimet's presidency in 1954 that FIFA recognized as partners new continental confederations representing the national associations of Europe (1954), Asia (1954), Africa (1957), North and Central Americas (1961), and Oceania (1966). With the independence of many nations in this post-colonial period, the membership of FIFA expanded dramatically, so that by 2013 what had begun as a European initiative of 7 nations (excluding the initially reluctant British) was now a global behemoth of 210 national associations.

^14. On Rimet, see three main sources – Guillain, La Coupe du Monde de football; Rous, Football Worlds; and Rimet, Le Football. See too Sugden and Tomlinson, Great Balls of Fire, chapter 2.

^15.Rous, Football Worlds, 131.

^16. See Beck, Scoring for Britain; and ‘Going to War'.

^17. Winterbottom was talking in a BBC radio tribute to Rous and in a personal interview with the author, November 24, 1996. On Rous' background, see Tomlinson, ‘FIFA and the Men Who Made It'. See too Pawson, ‘Rous, Sir Stanley Ford'.

^18. S. Rous, Post-war Development: A Memorandum Prepared by the War Emergency Committee for the Consideration of the Council, May 1943; and Post-war Development: An Interim Report, October 1944. Both these papers are in the minute books of The Football Association's Council.

^19.Dietschy, ‘Making Football Global?', 292. See too Sugden and Tomlinson, FIFA and the Contest for World Football, 134–7; and Darby, ‘Stanley Rous's “Own Goal”'.

^20. Patrick Nally, interview transcript, in possession of author.

^21. On Havelange's life and dealings, see Sugden and Tomlinson, FIFA and the Contest for World Football; Sugden and Tomlinson, Great Balls of Fire; Yallop, How They Stole the Game; Farah, Young Havelange; an interview by the author with Havelange, in Cairo, Egypt, September 2, 1997, in Sugden and Tomlinson, FIFA and the Contest for World Football, 232–41; and ‘João Havelange – The Powerful Chief', Playboy, May 1994, 124–30, 140–1.

^22. Ibid., Playboy, 126–7.

^23. Interview with the author, Cairo. Veteran Brazilian sports writer and journalist Juca Kfouri, with reference to Havelange's son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira's presidency of the Brazilian football federation from 1989 to 2012, calls the federation ‘a fruit of engineering created by … João Havelange, who … has always socialized with dictators. He reproduces in FIFA what he does here … he took his son-in-law, an unsuccessful and broken businessman, and put him in the presidency of the CBF, the national squad, and transforms it into the Brazilian football brand'. Kfouri was talking to Oliver Kawase Seitz; see Seitz, ‘Made in Brasil', 173–4.

^24. Havelange manifesto for FIFA presidential campaign, 1973–1974 (document in ownership of author).

^25. Letter to author, dated October 29, 1996, from FIFA, Zurich.

^26. See Tomlinson, ‘Making – and Unmaking?'.

^27. This oft-cited remark is quoted by Rob Hughes, ‘One of FIFA's Own Speaks Out', New York Times/International Herald Tribune (Global Edition Soccer), September 6, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/sports/soccer/07iht-soccer07.html?pagewanted = all (accessed June 14, 2012).

^28. The late Tony Banks was speaking to a parliamentary select committee; see too his comment: ‘Sports politics presents a byzantine complexity that would have made Machiavelli take up macramé', www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199798/cmhansrd/vo980605/debtext/80605-18.htm (accessed November 29, 2011).

^29. Interview with author, Zurich, Switzerland, May 21, 1996.

^30. See Sport Intern: The International Inside Sports Newsletter, vol. 23, no. 18–19, November 5, 1991, 4.

^31. States and national governments have also, of course, evolved brand-linked forms of public diplomacy through mega-sports such as the Olympics and the football World Cup, in a long history of national branding; see Olins, ‘Making a National Brand'.

^32. FIFA, ‘Fact Sheet: The 8 Presidents', FS-110_01E_Presidency.Doc 09/07, 1; www.fifa.com/mm/document/fifafacts/organisation/52/00/03/fs-110_01e_presidency.pdf (accessed November 27, 2011).

^33. Patrick Nally, interview transcript, in possession of author.

^34.Order on the Dismissal of the Criminal Proceedings of May 11 2010 in the Investigation Against Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), Canton of Zug, www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/footballgovernance/01/66/28/60/orderonthedismissalofthecriminalproceedings.pdf (accessed October 16, 2012). See pp. 4 and 36.

^35. The text of the manifesto is reproduced in Sugden and Tomlinson, FIFA and the Contest for World Football, 250–4. On Johansson's democratic credentials and their Swedish/Scandinavian roots, see Bairner and Darby, ‘Swedish Model and International Sport'.

^36.Nelson and Izadi, ‘Ethics and Social Issues', 342.

^37.Hocking, ‘Rethinking the “New” Public Diplomacy', 41.

^38. Chung Mong-Joon, in his memoir, released in September 2011, in a section entitled ‘FIFA, More Political Than Football', extracts available at: www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/sports/soccer/07iht-soccer07.html?pagewanted = all (accessed September 8, 2011).

^39.Boli and Thomas, Constructing World Culture, 34.

^40.Keys, Globalizing Sport, 41.

^41.FIFA Code of Ethics 2009 Edition is quoted in this section. It is available at www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/administration/50/02/82/efsdcodeofethics_web.pdf (accessed November 26, 2011).

^42. This vignette is based on an interview with the author in Paris, June 11, 1998, and BBC Television's Panorama, Fifa & Coe (2007). Andrew Jennings made the Panorama programme; for a lively and illuminating account of his approach to investigative journalism, see Jennings, ‘Investigating Corruption'; and on the lack of independence of many sport journalists, see Jennings, ‘Journalists?'.

^43. BBC, Fifa & Coe.

^44. This vignette is based on an interview with the author in Abu Dhabi, December 20, 1996, and BBC Panorama, Fifa & Coe (2007).

^45. Hayatou was reprimanded but not suspended by the IOC. Havelange resigned his life membership in early December 2011, days before he would have been suspended in relation to his receipt of monies whilst FIFA president.

^46. Blatter was speaking in Zurich, after his re-election to the presidency in June 2011 (author's notes).

^47. In May 2012, though, FIFA's Congress in Budapest approved a new 11-point code of conduct, a major part of the reform proposals from FIFA's Independent Governance Committee; see Mark Bisson, ‘New FIFA Code of Conduct Aims to Stamp Out Corruption', World Football Insider, April 26, 2012, www.worldfootballinsider.com/Story.aspx?id = 35086 (accessed June 1, 2012).

^48.Seib and Fitzpatrick, Public Relations Ethics, 24.

^49. Blazer has served on numerous influential FIFA committees, including the lucrative media and marketing committee, and this has provided networks and business contacts for personal deal-making as well as FIFA business.

^50. See Lanfranchi et al., 100 Years of Football, 74. Hirschmann did not face legal proccedings for FIFA, and actually received a life annuity.

^51. Jan Melissen, ‘Beyond the New Public Diplomacy', Clingendael Paper No. 3, October 2011, www.clingendael.nl/publications/2011/20111014_cdsp_paper_jmelissen.pdf (accessed July 29, 2012), 2. Succeeding quotes are from pp. 16 and 17.

^52. See Tomlinson, ‘FIFA's Exec Committee Unimpressed by Celebrity', WSC Daily (When Saturday Comes), December 6, 2010, www.wsc.co.uk/wsc-daily/1002-December-2010/6007-fifas-executive-committee-unimpressed-by-celebrity (accessed October 15, 2012).

^53.Sharp, ‘Diplomatic Theory'.

^54. See Sugden and Tomlinson, ‘Not for the Good of the Game'.