It has been reported in the English media that Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats Party in the UK government with 72 seats, has announced that in his view Fifa no longer serves football.   And although it is not very often that I can agree wholeheartedly with a political statement, with that one I am 100%.   And although I wouldn’t like to claim that the right honourable MP picked up that notion from this website, I can say that it is something I fully agree with.

Although I would add that it is quite a remarkable adoption of the view that has been expressed on this website since its launch so many years ago that I can’t quite remember how many.   But nevertheless very welcome.

The right honourable gentleman’s recommendation which emerges from this thought is that Fifa should be completely dissolved – something we have been suggesting since the earliest days of Untold Arsenal.    Sir Ed therefore appears to be the first knight of the realm openly to agree with a controversial viewpoint expressed by Untold Arsenal. It would have been nice if he had acknowledged us, but still, the policy is more important than this blog.

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Indeed, Sir Ed didn’t actually leave it at that for he he has gone so far as to suggest that Fifa should be completely dissolved and I think we can all go along with that as well, especially since they have just declared that the now thankfully completed WC was a great success.

It would appear that the motivation for this move by the Liberal Party comes after Fifa’s somewhat expected decision to reverse the ban on an American player after President Donald Trump got involved in affairs in the competition, although it is also understood that the introduction of ticket prices that go far beyond ever seen before at matches has also influenced the decision.

There has also been talk of a split between Uefa and Fifa over a number of issues, and it is just possible that Uefa might take one or two serious steps towards separating itself from Fifa, given the depth of the dislike of Fifa that there now seems to be in football generally.

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Certainly Uefa’s decision to allow Balogan to be banned had been a step too far and used words like “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable”.

Now the problem is that such words have become fairly commonplace in the discussion of actions by football administrators, but in this case Fifa seems to have gone too far, given that their reputation has already been trashed in relation to ticket pricing issues, and before that the range of people it decided not to let into the country to participate in the World Cup because of alleged terror offences in the past.

Of course the big problem is that Fifa events represent the biggest freebie in the season for many football administrators; and as a result few officials are liable to criticise Fifa for fear of losing even one or two of the many perks they get from representing Fifa, even in the most minor of capacities.   But at least it is good to see the LibDebs claiming that Fifa had gone too far on this occasion.   And of course they were helped by the President defending Fifa, so we know exactly whose side he is on.

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What we can now do is watch the English FA and see what stance they take – do they oppose Trump, side with him, or simply remain silent?.   In the past the FA has bent the knee to Trump and Fifa on every occasion.   This is probably their last chance to recover from their craven subservience to the man who now seems to be lording it over football.  Certainly a co-ordinated exit from Fifa for as long as Trump invents his new rules would be enormously powerful and could finally stop Trump’s policy-making on the hoof.

If there is no move, then Trump could stay in office for another five years by which time I rather suspect football will be unrecognisable.

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Source: Untold-arsenal.com