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evilweasel posted:I'm not sure why anyone bothers asking "Why did FIFA do [x]?" anymore, the answer is always "because of a briefcase full of money". The mental image of Qatar officials just backing a dump truck full of euros into Sepps house makes me giggle.
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Jun 2, 2015 19:06
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StandardVC10 posted:Why did that happen anyway? Did someone have a friend in the astroturf business? While I'm sure in this case it's because of hookers, blow, and fat stacks of cash artificial turf isn't terrible to play on provided you're not constantly diving and poo poo, so while it makes sense to use it on little league fields to save water past that skill level it's pretty loving dumb.
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Jun 2, 2015 19:08
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Can whatever billion he has really not buy your way out of switzerland? Maybe I'm greatly underestimating how locked down the swiss border is but I'd figure there would have to be some way to pull it off if you have that kind of cash. Captain_Maclaine posted:While not on lockdown, the Swiss authorities clearly have a solid eye on him and making a run for it would only result in him seeing the inside of a jail cell sooner rather than, as it appears, later. Unless everyone is completely wrong about RICO and these other guys rolling it would seem it's basically his only chance though, wouldn't it be worth the risk at this point?
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Jun 2, 2015 19:09
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mdemone posted:Nike bribed FIFA $10 million to secure the Brazil uniform contract, oh poo poo son It was a little more than that. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nike-brazilian-national-football-team-143840916.html Edit: wait, that was for the marketing company.
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Jun 2, 2015 19:09
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BI NOW GAY LATER posted:The mental image of Qatar officials just backing a dump truck full of euros into Sepps house makes me giggle. Could you imagine what will happen in Qatar if, say, a year from now after another year of construction and slave deaths, Qatar lost the World Cup? Out a huge sum of cash and a lot of corpses and stuck with a bunch of half-finished stadiums with no potential use ever?
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Jun 2, 2015 19:09
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Radish posted:I hope whatever fucker made the decision for the women's world cup to have astroturf (I'm assuming with a nice kickback) is one of the people getting destroyed by this. tbh, though, modern field turf is pretty rad and not the same poo poo as carpet of yesteryear Patter Song posted:Could you imagine what will happen in Qatar if, say, a year from now after another year of construction and slave deaths, Qatar lost the World Cup? Out a huge sum of cash and a lot of corpses and stuck with a bunch of half-finished stadiums with no potential use ever? They'll keep finishing them anyway. They really should just kill the 2022 Cup in Qatar and let us host it.
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Jun 2, 2015 19:09
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How difficult is it to leave a country that has open borders with all neighboring states? Also, he could make his way to Poland and then would only need help to get into Kaliningrad to escape into the safety of Putin's Russia.
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Jun 2, 2015 19:12
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Torrannor posted:How difficult is it to leave a country that has open borders with all neighboring states? Also, he could make his way to Poland and then would only need help to get into Kaliningrad to escape into the safety of Putin's Russia. Because I am sure Interpol and the Swiss government aren't watching him or anything...
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Jun 2, 2015 19:13
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BI NOW GAY LATER posted:tbh, though, modern field turf is pretty rad and not the same poo poo as carpet of yesteryear Nahh, lets garner some more international goodwill and let Spain/England host it.
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Jun 2, 2015 19:15
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A Winner is Jew posted:Nahh, lets garner some more international goodwill and let Spain/England host it. Spain... ahahahah why yes. I am sure they can totally pull that off. England could pull it off, but gently caress it. We slayed the giant, we reap the benefits.
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Jun 2, 2015 19:16
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StandardVC10 posted:Why did that happen anyway? Did someone have a friend in the astroturf business?
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Jun 2, 2015 19:17
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StandardVC10 posted:Why did that happen anyway? Did someone have a friend in the astroturf business? It happened because most of Canada has winter six months of the year, because most of the existing stadiums big enough to host the WWC were built for or shared with Canadian football teams and use FieldTurf, because temporary grass installations over turf are even worse than turf (particularly with the short turnaround times that would have been involved), and (mostly) because the only other country that bid for this year's WWC was Zimbabwe.
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Jun 2, 2015 19:18
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Big hand to our friends in Saudi Arabia for taking on the responsibility of hosting the World Cup at short notice!
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Jun 2, 2015 19:19
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tsa posted:Unless everyone is completely wrong about RICO and these other guys rolling it would seem it's basically his only chance though, wouldn't it be worth the risk at this point? Nah because he'd never make it and he knows it. The time to skip, if he was going to, would have been last week when the indictment was announced, and at that time Blatter was still operating under the delusion (which, given today's panicky press conference, appears only now to have ended) that he'd be able to weather the storm and/or this case was just another go-nowhere annoyance rather than the legal equivalent of an Ohio missile sub rising to launch depth and flooding its missile tubes. Now that Valcke appears to have sung, or is about to, Blatter's only real hope is to delay, complicate, and obfuscate in the hopes of betting less-than-fully destroyed.
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Jun 2, 2015 19:35
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Jun 2, 2015 19:37
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Looks like this Blatter has been relieved. 
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Jun 2, 2015 19:40
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Torrannor posted:How difficult is it to leave a country that has open borders with all neighboring states? Also, he could make his way to Poland and then would only need help to get into Kaliningrad to escape into the safety of Putin's Russia. Leaving Switzerland will put him into EU territory no matter which way he goes, and he's probably much too well-known for him to be able to quietly get onto an airplane. And as much as I'd like to see Blatter get into a Mercedes SLK and hightail it for the (Bela)Russian border, OJ Simpson style, it's a 16 hour drive if you go straight through Germany.
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Jun 2, 2015 20:02
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BI NOW GAY LATER posted:tbh, though, modern field turf is pretty rad and not the same poo poo as carpet of yesteryear America the Liberator shall assume responsibility for the 2022 World Cup. However, in fairness to Qatar and the teams who have been training so hard for its desert conditions, we are pleased to announce that the 2022 World Cup finals will be held in Death Valley, California.
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Jun 2, 2015 20:07
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Oh man, I would love to seem him pull an Assange and spend his life stuck in some lovely Russian embassy.
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Jun 2, 2015 20:07
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So word has it that Blatter was the target of the FBI investigation. With the DOJ invoking the prosecutorial powers of RICO it's likely that they induced a bunch of underlings to roll over on him and implicate him. Similar to how they would get a bunch of Capos in the mafia to roll on the godfather in a RICO case. And similar to a RICO case they probably wanted to take down Blatter right from the start.
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Jun 2, 2015 20:09
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I'd like to add that this whole thing is possible only because of the arguable over reach of American prosecutors and the fact that nobody in America gives a gently caress about soccer. I mean why would American prosecutors be interested in taking down such a large organization wthat has virtually no power in America and that the average American doesn't even know exists? That makes it all the more delicious.
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Jun 2, 2015 20:12
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Xandu posted:Oh man, I would love to seem him pull an Assange and spend his life stuck in some lovely Russian embassy. Thought he just chills in Moscow now? Or am I thinking of the other one. Vladimir Putin posted:I'd like to add that this whole thing is possible only because of the arguable over reach of American prosecutors and the fact that nobody in America gives a gently caress about soccer. I mean why would American prosecutors be interested in taking down such a large organization wthat has virtually no power in America and that the average American doesn't even know exists? That makes it all the more delicious. America doesn't give a gently caress about FIFA, but this idea that americans don't like soccer is kinda from the 80s. It's second only to baseball w.r.t the number of households who have at least 1 person playing, it's more popular than hockey, etc. This is really great news for many US corps because soccer is becoming big money, the viewership rights for World Cup matches are on the same level as the world series or NBA finals-- in fact some US games have higher ratings than those. And it is only getting bigger as America becomes increasingly more diverse.
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Jun 2, 2015 20:32
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tsa posted:Thought he just chills in Moscow now? Or am I thinking of the other one. That's Snowden. Assange is the one living in the Ecuadoran embassy since 2012.
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Jun 2, 2015 20:36
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V. Illych L. posted:we'll see. my money is, again, on platini angling to run but we will see. Platini's gutless. If he had any character, he'd have challenged Blatter in the last election.
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Jun 2, 2015 20:37
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Does anyone have an update to that handy slide showing the FIFA power structure and each one was stamped "arrested"?
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Jun 2, 2015 20:37
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Xandu posted:I wonder what changed. A lawyer finally managed to ram how hosed he is in a RICO into his brain.
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Jun 2, 2015 20:42
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tsa posted:America doesn't give a gently caress about FIFA, but this idea that americans don't like soccer is kinda from the 80s. It's second only to baseball w.r.t the number of households who have at least 1 person playing, it's more popular than hockey, etc. If you exclude children this number goes down by a very large amount (and you should exclude children because next to none of them keep up interest in the sport after they reach a certain age).
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Jun 2, 2015 20:43
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Vladimir Putin posted:I mean why would American prosecutors be interested in taking down such a large organization wthat has virtually no power in America and that the average American doesn't even know exists? That makes it all the more delicious. Despite the reflexive cynicism people have about governments, I have to say that the couple of Federal prosecutors I've ever met really do have a serious hard-on for justice as a concept. It's not impossible that the fact of a major international organization engaging in widespread bribery got prosecutors salivating about nailing them purely out of the chilling effect it might have on other people thinking about bribery.
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Jun 2, 2015 20:43
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computer parts posted:If you exclude children this number goes down by a very large amount (and you should exclude children because next to none of them keep up interest in the sport after they reach a certain age). Isn't that retention rate increasing as parents stop their kids playing gridiron for health reasons and the kids realise football is cool and good?
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Jun 2, 2015 20:48
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Cantorsdust posted:America the Liberator shall assume responsibility for the 2022 World Cup. However, in fairness to Qatar and the teams who have been training so hard for its desert conditions, we are pleased to announce that the 2022 World Cup finals will be held in Death Valley, California. Lol 
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Jun 2, 2015 21:00
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quote:@DougMacESPN Well, there we go
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Jun 2, 2015 21:04
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http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/fifa-president-sepp-blatter-announces-resignation/story?id=31473282#.VW300gsPTzd.twitterquote: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.
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Jun 2, 2015 21:07
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With something like that Nike bribe, is the issue not that they paid millions for a contract deal (which I assume is normal), but rather HOW they paid for it?
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Jun 2, 2015 21:10
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Total Meatlove posted:Isn't that retention rate increasing as parents stop their kids playing gridiron for health reasons and the kids realise football is cool and good? The people who send their kids to American Football don't have them play soccer in the first place (because they're in training camps since the age of 8 or so).
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Jun 2, 2015 21:12
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ToastyPotato posted:With something like that Nike bribe, is the issue not that they paid millions for a contract deal (which I assume is normal), but rather HOW they paid for it? They didn't just pay for the sponsorship, which is obviously totally normal, but that they paid an intermediary millions for arranging it.
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Jun 2, 2015 21:13
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Notahippie posted:Despite the reflexive cynicism people have about governments, I have to say that the couple of Federal prosecutors I've ever met really do have a serious hard-on for justice as a concept. It's not impossible that the fact of a major international organization engaging in widespread bribery got prosecutors salivating about nailing them purely out of the chilling effect it might have on other people thinking about bribery. It's also to lay the groundwork early to excuse the US based financial institutions and companies that facilitated and were basically complicit in said bribery.
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Jun 2, 2015 21:14
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I wonder if today was the day when Blatter finally got around to asking an American lawyer what to expect, who then promptly told him he's hosed, there's no way out, and he should have fled right after the arrests just like that other FIFA official who ran off to Brazil the day before the vote.
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Jun 2, 2015 21:16
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Xandu posted:They didn't just pay for the sponsorship, which is obviously totally normal, but that they paid an intermediary millions for arranging it. That's legal though, the only exception is when you are in a closed bidding process with other competitors, in theory if you cheat, you can be subject to a breach of contract etc.
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Jun 2, 2015 21:19
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Powercrazy posted:That's legal though, the only exception is when you are in a closed bidding process with other competitors, in theory if you cheat, you can be subject to a breach of contract etc. Yeah, Nike will probably only be facing a fine and maybe loss of the contract but I seriously doubt they will walk away from this unscathed.
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Jun 2, 2015 21:20
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Xandu posted:They didn't just pay for the sponsorship, which is obviously totally normal, but that they paid an intermediary millions for arranging it. Powercrazy posted:That's legal though, the only exception is when you are in a closed bidding process with other competitors, in theory if you cheat, you can be subject to a breach of contract etc. Yeah this is basically what I am assuming here. That there was some kind of bidding system set up, and they circumvented it in a way that breached some kind of agreement or law even. I legitimately don't understand this particular part of the case.
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Jun 2, 2015 21:21
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