FIFA president criticises UEFA ‘disrespect’

Sepp Blatter has indicated he wants to seek a fifth term as FIFA president and called UEFA “disrespectful” following calls for his resignation.

He has been widely criticised over the damage corruption allegations have caused football's governing body.

But the 78-year-old Swiss said he was angered when a number of European football chiefs urged him to quit.

Some of Blatters antics in the last few days: calling the allegations levelled at Qatar racist, acting surprised that a lot of people have realised he’s useless and now throwing out this managers can challenge decisions during a game idea without thinking about it look like the actions of a man realising the end is nigh and is just melting down blurting out the first thing that comes to mind hoping he can somehow save himself.

I hope that’s the case because the World Cup starts later today and most of the talk is about an ageing Swiss crack pot and not the football, which is usually the beginning of the end and for footballs sake I hope this is true of Blatter.

Anyway enough of that feckin eejit it’s time to sit back and let the beautiful game take centre stage.  

Platini in Qatar re-vote call

UEFA president Michel Platini says he has no regrets about supporting Qatar’s bid for the 2022 World Cup - but says there should be a re-vote and sanctions if corruption is proved.

Platini’s name has been dragged into the furore surrounding payments authorised by former FIFA member Mohamed Bin Hammam to officials in Africa, allegedly to gain support for Qatar’s bid.

What more has to come out before the governing bodies of the game do the right thing and take the World Cup away from Qatar and re-run the vote and make sure whoever wins the re-vote has done it properly and fairly.

These allegations of corruption surrounding Qatar’s bid came out almost as soon as they won the right to host the tournament in 2010, and it has continued for the last three and half years and it will continue right up until the tournament.

The list of reasons why Qatar shouldn’t host the tournament is getting longer by the day, Blatter admitted it was a mistake, two FIFA members who were expelled for corruption were part of the voting process, the tournament will have to be played in the winter and all the European leagues will have to be disrupted because it’s 50c in summer and the workers building the stadiums are being treated like slaves.

Despite all that at this stage their still going to host the tournament!

Happily though there is still a long time for everybody at FIFA to come to their collective senses and award the World Cup to a proper footballing nation who can put on the tournament properly without all this excessive and unnecessary baggage.   

Conservatives see off UKIP to win Newark by-election

The Conservatives have won the Newark by-election, retaining the seat with a majority of more than 7,000.

Candidate Robert Jenrick polled 17,431 votes, beating UKIP's Roger Helmer, who finished second with 10,028 votes.

Well this result proves what I and many others suspected, the UKIP surge across in the recent Euro elections was one thing, in fact Nigel Farage himself described the Euro elections as a free hit, but winning seats in Westminster is a different animal entirely and UKIP have a very long way to go before they are, as Farage keeps saying, ‘serious players’.

It will be interesting to see what UKIP do in the next year as they have to announce a manifesto and will have to have their policies on issues other than Europe analysed, after that happens and we can see the public’s reaction to that then, and only then, can talk start about where UKIP are and what they can potentially do.