Sepp Blatter acting like a clown is not news. He is a clown and ‘Clown in Clownlike Behaviour’ does not a good feature make. His ridiculous defence of football as a racist-free environment this week might be his lowest low, it might not be; we can agree it’s only his latest.
A Summary Dispatch Of Sepp Blatter’s Latest Nonsense
The FIFA President’s latest outburst is just the latest reason to ignore him. Ignore him.
Getty Images
FIFA under Blatter has been a parade of PR disasters (one of which, but probably only one, was an illegitimate stitch-up job) and straight-up outrages. It’s not worth dissecting the latest one. It may not even be possible to dissect near incoherent nonsense like that*
*It’s not worth dissecting, but making endless fun of Sepp Blatter’s views of racism on football? We’re not above that.
Of course Blatter should have more sense. Of course he should act with responsibility. But that he doesn’t is, at this point, no surprise. Indicting him, demanding he show more respect, suggesting he take his head out of (what Roald Dahl would rather sweetly call) his rump is, at this stage, a waste of time. By all means retweet Rio Ferdinand’s disbelief or Stan Collymore’s umbrage but don’t expect it to make any difference. He’ll ‘explain his comments’ to CNN and the sorry circus will keep on swinging.
Even ‘defending football’ against him is unnecessary. What we should do instead is stop pretending that what Blatter says matters. Treat his misogynistic, homophobic and implicitly racist ejaculations as you would those of any other overly exposed, misguided mouthpiece. Ignore them.
Like falling trees in lonely woods, Blatter’s words have no impact on football. So, like we did with the trees, we just need to learn to stop worrying. Racial slurs are not going to illicit handshakes on Sepp’s say so alone. I could justify that on the grounds that, unlike the two-footed tackle, racism is a societal problem. Of course, as such, it taints football. But from the outside - Blatter’s got things the wrong way round. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that nobody acts like Blatter speaks for football. Or for football fans. He simply doesn’t.
We can speak for ourselves. We can decry the sorry state of Sepp’s stewardship of FIFA and say that we don’t want him in football and we can say that racism is wrong and that we don’t want it in football.
What this means, of course, is that racists can speak for themselves too (and our stopping listening probably won’t stop Sepp talking). So, instead of reading ‘What Sepp said’ or ‘Why what Sepp said is wrong/WRONG!’ click on Change FIFA and Kick it Out. He doesn’t matter. They do.
