The Kick Project

With news that FIFA bigwigs Sepp Blatter, Michel Platini and Jerome Valcke have been "red carded" by FIFA and will have to sit out the next three months, it looks like finally the dead wood is being pruned at the world game HQ. However, worse may be yet come. What can be done to get the people's game back to the people? The current danger is that as the poison is leeched from FIFA, nothing will be left. If corruption is as rife as many - including us here at The Kick Project - believe then more will be shown the door and still more, aware that the gravy train has terminated, will move on voluntarily. The result may well be a vacuum at the heart of the world's most valuable sport. The immediate consequences of this may be no Confederation Championships and no World Cup in three years time or beyond. That's bad enough, but the real concern is who or what will fill this void. There are essentially three likely outcomes. One, would be to hand FIFA over to e...

Pic:Lockerdome.com A good friend of The Kick Project, Jared Genser, founder of the human rights activist group Freedom Now, alerted us to this piece he co-wrote with well-known Chinese dissident Yang Jianli, in the Wall Street Journal, on the sometimes fraught relationship between big sporting events and human rights. It's an issue that's dear to our hearts here, especially given the plight of migrant workers employed to help construct the facilities for the Qatar World Cup in 2022 (the same year as the Beijing Winter Olympics) It's Important reading. Let's hope it focusses more attention on the negative impacts of big sport in relation to human rights and social justice so as to better harness the many positive outcomes sport can generate. BEIJING OLYMPIC SCANDAL REDUX August 7, 2015 Beijing has been selected to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, making it the first city tapped to host both the Summer and Winter Games. In deciding this, the Internationa...

When I first heard that Qatar has won the 2022 World Cup, I admit I thought it was all over. The World Cup as a magical, beautiful and uniting event was, in 2022, to be run through the mud of vested interests, corrupt decision-making and the special insanity of money over morals. I still feel that to some extent. But this article gives me hope.  It is true that the first Arab World Cup may indeed be a means not only to promote Arab culture in general but can unite the Arab world and allow it to rise to the potential it offered during Europe's Dark Ages, when it effectively ruled the world in cultural sophistication. We can only hope the organisers and FIFA move the event in such a direction.

FIFA vice-president Prince Ali bin Hussein, half-brother of Jordan's King Abdullah II, plans to introduce "new work ethics" in Asia, he told AFP in an interview on Thursday. "We want to introduce new work ethics, not ones based on coming from above, but through working hand in hand with the national associations," said Prince Ali, who on January 6 unseated South Korean Chung Mong-Joo as FIFA vice-president. "This is very crucial because sometimes when it comes to work and development and football, they will take a model, let's say a European model, and they want to implement it completely on the continent." The prince has become the youngest member of the FIFA executive committee at the age of 35 after rallying Arab support behind him. "We have different countries, different societies, different economic backgrounds," he said. "We have to build things on a case-to-a-case basis. We want to fulfill that," he added, calling...

A Wall Street Journal article focusses on South Korea's unsuccessful pitch for peace as part of its World Cup bid. Being pipped by similar arguments for Qatar and Middle East peace is no cause for shame as Qatar had more money to throw at FIFA than anyone (Is it just me but doesnt moving stadiums to "third world" countries as Qatar is proposing seems a little redundant in the face of starving hordes? And isnt all that air-conditioning an environmental nightmare and how are poor countries going to afford it when the stadiums are plonked in their backyard?) Meanwhile, the Koreas face off on other sporting fronts . Such a shame, as this article I wrote for Australia's National Times just prior to South Africa (it also popped up in the Jakarta Post and a few other pages), that the Koreas didnt meet in South Africa. Given they could only meet in the late knock-out rounds the chances were always slim, but I for one would have backed a bit of draw-rigging to get them t...