At Least Some Americans Are Interested In Soccer ....

[wesw]

no guin, I was paraphrasing RayTom s signature and trying to be funny by getting him and rube confused. sorry.

I was simply offering too distract rube for you since he seems to be homing in on you with his derision lately. don t get your dander up. I come in peace....

[oldr_n_wsr]

And you might leave in pieces.

[wesw]

bad, bad , Leroy bro-own...,

[rubato]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/won ... orruption/






I don't know about you, but I just don't think I have to suspend judgement about this.



yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

As Bill Clinton once said in a different context, I'd rather take a whipping then admit that rube made a valid point...

But when the boy's right he's right...

[BoSoxGal]

[wesw]

septic bladder makes a big splash in Switzerland. my goodness, how could he win again?

[Lord Jim]

septic bladder makes a big splash in Switzerland. my goodness, how could he win again?

By buying votes...

Also, since he knows where all the bodies are buried, the people on the take who didn't already get arrested probably don't want him pissed off...

I was puzzled as to why King Hussein's brother, (who was running against Blatter) dropped out after the first ballot...

It's true that Blatter only needed seven more votes on the second ballot to win and ordinarily you'd think somebody that close would be able to round up the votes, but this wasn't an ordinary situation. 133 votes may very well have represented a ceiling for Blatter. Some of those who voted for Blatter because they thought he would win anyway and they feared his retribution, might have been less fearful once they saw him wounded by the failure to win on the first ballot.

[Gob]

It seemed incongruous to stand in front of the courthouse last week, fielding questions from presenters in London about why a country with no interest in football had suddenly assumed the role of global policeman of the global game.

That line of inquiry seemed about a decade out of date. It is akin to the blanket condemnation that Americans lack a sense of humour or irony - this in the land of Jon Stewart, Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Chris Rock, Amy Poehler, Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman and Garry Shandling.

True, football, or soccer as it is known here, is not as central to American as it is to European, African or South and Central American life. Nowhere near. Up until recently, the game has been unloved by the major US television networks, which have long bemoaned the lack of breaks in play, the paucity of goals and the glut of draws. Absent from the US game are big-name male stars and big-name clubs. The New York Red Bulls will never rival the New York Yankees. Real Salt Lake pales, rather risibly, alongside Real Madrid.

However, football is no longer met with American indifference. Nor any more does it offer proof of America's sporting isolationism. In this polyglot nation, the game is growing in popularity and importance, an upward trend that will continue long into the future as America becomes less white and more Hispanic. Already, America is the number one country in the world for youth participation in football. More than three million youngsters were registered to play in 2014, compared with just 103,432 in 1974

Major League Soccer matches now have a higher average attendance - 19,148 in 2014 - than basketball and ice hockey. The game ranks third after American football and baseball.

Though the crowds here are significantly smaller than in the Bundesliga in Germany, the Premier League in England and Wales, La Liga in Spain or Serie A in Italy, they are on average bigger than in Argentina, Brazil, China or the Football League Championship. The Seattle Sounders, America's most-watched team, attracts larger crowds for home games than Everton, Tottenham, Aston Villa or even Chelsea.

The strength of the game in Seattle is also a measure of how its popularity extends well beyond the new immigrant hubs of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Sporting Kansas City, in the American heartland, is also one of the better-supported sides.

Last year's World Cup in Brazil witnessed record viewing figures in America, even though the national team did not make it past the final 16. And even after it exited the tournament, viewers kept tuning in - 29.2 million for the final between Germany and Argentina.

By comparison, that year's baseball world series attracted 13.5 million.

Nor is American enthusiasm for the World Cup a new phenomenon - more than 18 million people watched the 1994 final between Brazil and Italy - but it has been growing. The average viewing figure for matches in last year's World Cup matches was 4.3 million, up 50% from 2010.

All those kids who grew up playing the game are now, as adults, watching it.

It is also worth remembering that one of the most sought after demographics in American politics is the country's army of suburban "soccer moms."
The term is hardly new. It was coined in the mid-1990s.

Money is another indicator of the game's attractiveness.

NBC splashed out $240m (£160m) for the rights to Premier League football between 2013-16, three times more than Fox paid for the previous contract.
With a fierce bidding war now under way, the next deal is expected to dwarf that figure. The wider availability of Premier League matches, which attract much bigger television audiences than domestic games, is also helping to raise the profile of the sport.

Gone are the days when diehard fans used to have to find bars open on a Saturday morning with satellite feeds beamed in from Europe. Now every single Premier League game is available on cable. Ditto the FA Cup and Uefa Champions League. On Univision, the American Spanish language network with viewing figures on a par with the major US networks, soccer, unsurprisingly, is the number one sport. Broadcasting live matches has fuelled the channel's rapid rise.

No longer do foreigners have to explain the intricacies of the offside rule to perplexed locals, or why games are allowed to finish in a tie (a draw). Many Americans are now fully literate in the sport.

So while American soccer may never rival American football, the notion that it remains a niche sport is absurd. Though gridiron, baseball, basketball and ice hockey are known here as the "Big Four" sports, soccer has surely ousted ice hockey to join that quartet.

It is the fourth most popular high school sport for boys, and the third for girls.

There are many reasons why the US Department of Justice mounted these prosecutions. Two of those indicted, Jeffrey Webb and Chuck Blazer, were dominant figures in the American game. Jack Warner, of Trinidad and Tobago, used to head up Concacaf, the Miami-based Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football. Prosecutors claim the alleged bribery scheme relied heavily on the US banking system.

But although the US authorities have also targeted foreign nationals, they do not regard soccer as a foreign sport.

Announcing the charges, FBI director James Comey stressed how American kids and others at the grassroots had been deprived of resources. The FBI has cast a global dragnet, but this is also a homeland investigation. The Fifa allegations dominated the media here last week, and, paradoxically, that marks another milestone in the game's recognition.

The game has moved from the back pages to the front.

[Lord Jim]

Well here's an unexpected development...

The noose must be tightening:

Sepp Blatter resigns as FIFA president

Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s long-time president, announced on Tuesday that he will be resigning as soon as an extraordinary FIFA congress has elected a successor.

Blatter had won a fifth term as president just last Friday and seemed to feel vindicated in two victory speeches, after yet another round of scandals had beset him and his organization. A recent indictment by a the Department of Justice had led to the arrest of nine of his close associates last week.

The move comes as a total shock to the soccer world, which had assumed Blatter would remain in power through the end of his new four-year term, extending his reign to two decades.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/soccer-fc ... 51478.html

[wesw]

wild prediction: blatter pleads guilty to lesser charges in exchange for testimony against his cronies, sometime in the future.

[Gob]

Sepp Blatter resigns to spend more time with his bribes


FIFA President Sepp Blatter has announced his resignation insisting he plans to spend more time with the sacks of money he keeps in his various homes.

Despite being re-elected just four days ago, Blatter has resigned after telling reporters that spending so long away from his bribes was beginning to take its toll.

He told those gathered, “Football has been my life for over fifty years, but I am 79 now and I want to spend what good years I have left with the carefully acquired bungs that I have accumulated over the years.”

“It’s time reassess my priorities in life, and in a few years I won’t be able to throw my five hundred euro notes in the air, or play catch with my various jewel encrusted trinkets.”

“It’s important that I get to properly enjoy these bungs whilst I still can.”


http://newsthump.com/2015/06/02/sepp-bl ... is-bribes/

[Econoline]

From the inimitable Wonkette:

And now, because the ongoing investigation has begun to maybe implicate FIFA’s president, Sepp Blatter, we learned Tuesday that Sepp Blatter is resigning as president of FIFA, which means we won’t have Sepp Blatter to kick around anymore, which is sad considering that kids in poor third-world slums actually play soccer by kicking around an inflated sepp bladder. It’s all they have.

[Lord Jim]

This may have been the proximate cause for Blatter's decision to quit; it happened just a few hours before he made his announcement:

The position of Fifa’s powerful secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, is likely to come under intense pressure after new evidence emerged that showed he was aware of a $10m payment from South African officials to Jack Warner described by US investigators as a bribe.

The revelation will also put the embattled Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, recently re-elected for a fifth term, under renewed pressure over whether he knew about the 2008 payment and what it was for.

Just an hour after Fifa had released a statement denying that Valcke authorised the transfer of $10m to a Bank of America account linked to Warner, a letter from the South African Football Association was obtained by the Press Association that was addressed to the longstanding Fifa secretary general. It showed he was aware of it and contained detailed instructions for payment.


Fifa’s statement had said neither Valcke, Blatter’s longtime closest ally and fixer,[sounds like Sepp's "Sammy The Bull"] nor the president himself “were involved in the initiation, approval and implementation of the above project”.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/201 ... -10m-bribe

Blatter, who was not indicted by the Justice Department, said he will serve as president until a new one is elected.

Days before the election, the U.S. Department of Justice accused 14 people of corruption and racketeering conspiracy in a 47-count indictment released last Wednesday. Nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives were indicted, including two current FIFA vice presidents and the current and former presidents of CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football), Jeffrey Webb and Jack Warner.

The FBI declined to comment because Blatter has not been publicly identified as a target of the investigation. The sources said the feds are conducting the FIFA probe the same way they would handle an old-school New York-style racketeering case.

“Now that people are going to want to save themselves, there’s probably a race to see who will flip on [Blatter] first,” one source said, explaining how the feds typically try to get people to inform on their superiors.

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/fifa-presi ... d=31473282

I don't think this is going to sustainable:

Mr. Blatter’s resignation is not immediate; according to Domenico Scala, the independent chairman of FIFA’s audit and compliance committee, who spoke to the news media after Mr. Blatter, a special meeting of FIFA’s member nations will be called to elect a new president. According to FIFA’s rules, there must be at least four months’ notice given to members for such a meeting, so Mr. Scala indicated that the likely window for a new election is from December 2015 to March 2016.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/sport ... ident.html

At the speed this is unraveling, I just don't see any way this guy manages to cling to this job for another six to nine months...

If he tries to hang around that long, he'll be running FIFA from a prison cell...

Too many singing canaries...

I have no idea what the FIFA rules say about replacing the organization's president, but if indeed a new one can't be selected without giving the members four months notice, (hell, The Catholic Church can select a new Pope in a lot less time) then there must be some provision for an "acting president" if the current one is no longer able to serve...

I give Sepp two weeks, tops...