Summary: New revelations from an ISL Bribery List, a CONCACAF Intergrity report and a rather bizarre Jack Warner rally called Straight Talk in Trinidad and Tobago are the backdrop upon which a very important episode begins to look back at the transition from João Havelange to Sepp Blatter in 1998 and how modern FIFA politics have been forever shaped by this process. Joining for a discussion into the ethical erosion of FIFA since those days and what its legacy has served up in the matter of reform, transparency and justice inside world football is David Larkin who serves as Co-Director and General Counsel for the ChangeFIFA organization. At the core here is how the events have shaped what FIFA now presents as its own version of the truth to the public, how the ground level politics have operated since 1998 and how Sepp Blatter might just be finally running out of bodies to sacrifice, and whether recent revelations in an CONCACAF Integrity Report and a strange press conference by the deposed Jack Warner might have tossed yet two more important wrenches into this process. Also in view here is the ISL Bribery List published from Switzerland which again corroborates a vast number of investigative stories about how money was moved inside FIFA, effectively turning entire regions of the world into a plantation for votes, ensuring that Sepp Blatter would retain power. However, at the deepest point of this important episode is how justice and fair play have been subjected to a deep and troubling sense of ethical erosion in this sport to the extent that people are in danger or left in a world of institutional slavery, threats, broken elections and even human rights abusers being elected a president of an entire federation. The question is whether people and politicians wish to wake up to these realities and whether we believe the sport is worth the fight. Even the processes inside world football governance are failing to create even a perception of reform outside of incessant PR spin and independent analysts are leaving their posts in protest of a system defined more by conflicts of interest and rampant self-interest than transparency and reform. Meanwhile, the long shadows of ISL, Blatter, Havelange, Bin Hammam and Warner are becoming even more linked together than ever before and FIFA is simply running out of the disgraced to toss over the railing.
