Former Fifa vice-president and Concacaf president Jack Warner yesterday reserved comment on Fifa president Sepp Blatter’s decision to step down from the helm of the world governing body for football.
Contacted by phone hours after Blatter, who was returned for an unprecedented fifth term just last week, made the surprise announcement yesterday, Warner said he preferred not to comment at this time. Pressed further, he said he was in a meeting but promised to speak on the matter at another stage.
However, only last week Warner had claimed Blatter had brought more shame on Fifa by refusing to step aside to allow a younger leader to take over the organisation.
“Why are there no investigations in Asia, or in Europe? Why are there no investigations into Sepp Blatter? No other person has brought so much shame and disgrace on Fifa.”
Meanwhile, Minister of Sport Brent Sancho yesterday admitted he was not surprised by the resignation.
“Clearly the walls of Fifa were crumbling.”
Sancho was questioned about Blatter’s resignation in the Senate yesterday. He said the matter should be of concern to Concacaf as well.
“This is a wake-up to everyone,” adding the people will “no longer allow sporting organisations to run ‘vie-ke-vie.’”
Sancho said that “holds true to all sporting organisations locally. They need to understand that sponsorship dollars, corporate money and taxpayers’ dollars need to be properly accounted for and we have to realise that there are repercussions for your actions.”
Sancho said, as minister, he was “happy to see people are being called to task for their operations.”
He said there have been allegations of a lack of proper accountability and transparency at the world governing body for football for several years and the writing was on the wall for Blatter.
“So these latest developments are really no surprise. I hope there is a good ending,” he added.
But Sancho insisted: “Football needed the shake-up and to see this happening now one could only hope that the next steps moving forward will be positive ones.
“This is a shake-up of epic proportion (as) Fifa has run itself separate and apart from international law, so this is a massive shake-up that many would have wanted for a very long time.”
He said what was important was what was the next step to “pick up the pieces in football and how do you chart a course forward.”
Sancho said: “Clearly the way things were going (being done) at Fifa were not right. Charting the course forward is the real question.”
He said with the existing Fifa structure and procedures “whomever comes in as president would have to make some serious changes in the way things are done at Fifa.”
He said the success of Fifa was dependent on who were selected to run the body.
According to Sancho over the past several years “administrators have starred, not only in football, but in all sports and the athletes have always suffered.”
He said with the expected changes at Fifa the footballers would be the true beneficiaries.
In response to another question, Sancho said while there were laws and regulations for there to be transparency in Fifa “they were never implemented.”
He said: “You can have all the laws as you like, if the people that govern the sport have no interest in applying these processes, it makes no sense.”
Sancho said personnel was critical to the advancement of football in the world.
“It has to have the right people with the right intention, to move the sport forward.”
He said football was now in jeopardy because of what had transpired at Fifa.
Asked if it was now logistically impossible to move the staging of the next World Cup finals from Russia, Sancho said: “It was impossible to get rid of Sepp Blatter and the rest of his group, so clearly nothing is impossible.”
But he said it might be difficult to change the venue.
He added: “No one in Zurich with a Fifa jacket on can predict anything for the next day or two because anything can happen,” adding: “For the first time since Fifa was established they (executive members) are not in charge of their own destiny.
That is scaring a lot of people over there.”