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USA Today
July 17, 2015
by Roger Pielke, Jr.
The U.S. Senate did something Wednesday that it has never done before. No, not voting itself a pay cut. It held a hearing on the governance of soccer, and it raised disturbing questions about the federation that oversees the sport in this county, U.S. Soccer.
Congress gets a lot of criticism, much of it well-deserved. But on issues related to sports it actually has a strong, bipartisan track record of success. Whether it is steroids in baseball or athlete rights in the NCAA, Congress seems to be able to handle partisan differences and focus attention on what matters when it comes to sports. Wednesday’s hearing on FIFA, the Swiss-based organization that runs global soccer, was no different.
Soccer is becoming a thing in the United States. The U.S. women just won their third World Cup, and shattered viewership records along the way. The men’s team has its own record of successes in the World Cup and is currently trying to win its second consecutive Gold Cup tournament.
But as everyone knows, all is not well in the governance of the sport. In May, U.S. and Swiss governments collaborated in the arrest and indictment of 14 people associated with an investigation into corruption at the highest levels of the sport. Loretta Lynch, the U.S. attorney general, said that these arrests were only the beginning of a broad inquiry that has defrauded U.S. businesses and taxpayers.
Thus, it was no surprise when FIFA president Sepp Blatter declined an invitation to participate in Wednesday’s hearing. What was a surprise was that the president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, Sunil Gulati, also declined an invitation.
Instead, U.S. Soccer chief executive officer Dan Flynn represented the federation, claiming with a straight face to be more knowledgeable on the subject of the hearing than Gulati, who sits on the FIFA executive committee.
Flynn’s appearance before the committee was a disaster. At times evasive and others confused, Flynn even turned off his microphone at one point to consult with a colleague about how to answer a simple question.
U.S. Soccer are supposed to be the good guys in FIFA. Wednesday’s performance raised some doubts as to whether U.S. Soccer is really ready for the reform being forced by the Department of Justice.
When asked why U.S. Soccer hadn’t been more forceful to root out corruption, Flynn first pleaded ignorance – a stance hard to reconcile with years of media reports detailing FIFA’s corrupt practices. It’s also hard to reconcile when considering that the U.S. member of the FIFA Executive Committee, Chuck Blazer, lived in a swanky Trump Tower apartment in New York City, and kept a second one just for his cats. We now know that Blazer skimmed off tens of millions of dollars from soccer bodies, according to his guilty plea. Read more …
