Haven’t we been here before?
The painful drip-feed of revelations as, one by one, those behind some of our most treasured childhood memories are exposed as criminals.
They protest their innocence, they dig in their heels throughout prolonged legals proceedings and attack their accusers before eventually succumbing to the inevitable, chastening, career-ending guilty verdict.
The news today that FIFA are contemplating sanctioning Franz Beckenbauer for his part in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process comes hot on the heels of Michel Platini being suspended by the world governing body.
Platini: SUSPENDED
Blatter: SUSPENDED
Beckenbauer: awaiting FIFA ethics verdict
(trio pictured in 2007) pic.twitter.com/4PKKQjUefB— Rob Harris (@RobHarris) October 21, 2015
Nobody with a functioning moral compass and a passing interest in football is surprised that long-time despot Sepp Blatter, his flying monkey-in-chief Jerome Valcke and a phalanx of bent administrators from around the world have been implemented in soccer’s global ponzi scheme, but Beckenbauer and Platini?
Proof (pending), if ever it were needed, that power corrupts.
Beckenbauer, Der Kaiser, inventor of the Libero position and the only man to win the World Cup as a player and a manager can now add to his CV that he “failed to co-operate” with a FIFA investigation into the awarding of the next two World Cups to Russia and Qatar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOVmQSH6DzY
Platini, one of the most elegant footballers of all time, European Championship winner with France, European Cup winner with Juventus and just about the only passer in the world good enough to supplant Liam Brady, and now under investigation for a €1.8million payment to him authorised by Blatter.
What next? Johan Cruyff to be implemented in a dog-fighting ring? Dino Zoff drilling for oil in the Arctic Circle? Socrates at the heart of a human-trafficking operation?
It is all so bloody disheartening and proof, if proof were needed, that football governance should be left to the politicians. Instead icons of 1970s and 80s football have got involved and found themselves knee-deep in muck and sinking fast.
But muck sticks and the pair will be tarnished by the FIFA scandal, whatever the outcomes of the “Ethics Committee” investigations. Their on-field triumphs, remarkable as they were, will always be accompanied by an asterisk.
It’s just as well David Ginola and Luis Figo’s bids for the FIFA presidency fell flat (or never really existed) because we don’t need anymore childhood memories destroyed.
Stars of music and television such as Gary Glitter, Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris have already been ruined by their own sick predilections, if football is completely tainted we’re going to be left with very little to romanticise about in later years.
