EP61: Sepp Blatter

The Hated and the Dead

Sepp Blatter served President of FIFA, football's international governing body, between 1998 and 2015. To mark the beginning of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, my guest and I take a look at his time in charge of the world's most popular sport.
The irony of the Qatar decision is that Blatter didn’t actually want the World Cup to go there; instead, he lost control of the corruption that had infested world football governance for decades prior.
Amid some of the other things currently going on in the world, many might claim that focusing on something as trivial as a football tournament is unimportant. But I'm not so sure; there is, for example, something rather fitting about millions of Brits shivering in their freezing homes due to soaring energy bills, watching football matches played and attended by the wealthiest people in the world. And despite the constant attempts to make football a more accepting sport for gay fans and players, the current world cup and the one before it have been hosted by two of the most intolerant countries one could hope to find. On the contrary, then, the Qatar story isn’t a distraction from the worst things happening in the world today, but a reflection of them.

My guest for this episode is Martyn Ziegler, who is the Chief Sports Reporter for the Times and Sunday Times, and is the author of a recent article exposing the Qatar World Cup bid for that publication. As well as Blatter’s career, we discuss the inconsistencies and hypocrisies in world football, the potential for future tournaments to be hosted by unpleasant regimes, whether there is too much football played today, and, on a lighter note, who Martyn thinks will win the World Cup in Qatar.