FIFA President Under Bribery Investigation

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Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Sports Illustrated senior writer Grant Wahl about the allegations of corruption swirling around FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. FIFA has placed its own president Sepp Blatter under investigation in a probe over bribery allegations.Download MP3

• Fifa president Sepp Blatter under investigation

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Lisa Mullins: Soccer fans like to call their sport ‘the beautiful game’ but downright ugly might best describe the atmosphere right now at FIFA, soccer’s global governing body.  The organization has put its own president, Sepp Blatter, under investigation for corruption. The probe into bribery allegations has already snared the only man challenging Blatter for the leadership of the organization. Well now there are calls to postpone FIFA’s presidential election, which is scheduled for next week. Grant Wahl is a senior writer covering soccer at Sports Illustrated and we should say, Grant you are also putting yourself forward as a candidate for presidency of FIFA, do you think that you have any chance in heck?

Grant Wahl: No I don’t actually, which I understand. I had to get a formal nomination by April 1st and was not able to do that, but was able, I think, to get my message out that FIFA really is not viewed as a clean organization at this point and all the allegations and investigations going on now support that.

Mullins: Well given that the other candidates are tainted by allegations of corruption, did you ever stop to think that it might enhance your candidacy if you weren’t quite so clean?

Wahl: I’ve had a few people ask me that. It’s just gotten to a point where it’s almost a farce in FIFA, it really is, just because, at this point I don’t think anyone would say that this is a credible organization.

Mullins: Well what is challenging, to put it lightly, its credibility? I mean how serious are the allegations and what do they pertain to?

Wahl: Well these are very serious allegations that really are, that you could call the biggest crisis in the history of FIFA because you’ve got leaders who are accused of trying to bribe voters in this election; $40,000 each. And then the response now that the FIFA president was aware of these bribes and did not have a problem with it. So it’s really, it’s similar to me to the Salt Lake City scandal that the International Olympic Committee had several years ago that really ended up causing changes in the IOC. And will this lead to change within FIFA? I don’t know. I have always been of the belief that you need to have an outsider come in and hold everyone accountable. Someone like a Bill Clinton or a Kofi Annan; who has international respect and can be seen as someone to really begin policing FIFA in a way that the organization never has done internally.

Mullins: Well normally I wouldn’t ask this of someone who is a candidate himself, but since you said that you don’t even stand a chance of being considered president of FIFA, I wonder what you – Grant Wahl – would do to clean it up? I mean is there any hope for this organization that’s so mired in muck?

Wahl: Well in theory, FIFA should be a good organization. My campaign promises included doing a WikiLeaks on FIFA, if I became president, and releasing every internal document to the public so that we could actually find out how clean or unclean the organization really is. But that wasn’t the only thing I was going to promise. There’s a lot of things that need to be changed in FIFA; there’s no women at all in the power structure at FIFA. There’s a lot of things on the field too, that need to change; you need to have instant replay for close calls on the goal line. So these are all common sense proposals that I put forward, and the funny thing is, is that if the world’s fans got to vote, I think I would win the election in a landslide because they can’t stand Sepp Blatter either. And yet it’s not the world’s fans who vote, it’s the federations from each country. And that’s why I was able to get nomination, because those guys, and they’re all guys, were impossible to persuade.

Mullins: Well you’re going to have to keep your day job as a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. Grant Wahl, long-shot candidate for the FIFA presidency. Thanks a lot, Grant.

Wahl: Thank you.

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