FIFA

Couldn't find a single thread on FIFA, so started this one. 

FIFA is the next logical career step for Nigerian e-mail phishers.

Sepptic Blather has an Uncle who was in a plane crash and left him FIFA.

"Strange but true: every one of the World Cup's tickets comes via a modest two-storey office building on a business park in Cheadle Royal, South Manchester. The proprietors, Mexican brothers Jaime and Enrique Byrom, have enjoyed exclusive World Cup ticket concessions for many years, and are now guaranteed them for another decade under their latest deal with Sepp Blatter.

In 2006 the brothers agreed to let corrupt former Fifa vice president Jack Warner have more than 5000 tickets to be resold. They were caught by auditors Ernst & Young, but Fifa's leaders cleared Warner, and told his his son and business partner Daryan, now a co-operating witness with the FBI, not to do it again.

Unabashed, four years later the brothers again agreed to supply Warner with tickets to sell on to the black market. Blatter could not claim ignorance since email correspondence with Warner was copied to Fifa, and to a company called Infront - a sports marketing outfit run by Blatter's nephew Phillipe, who gets big chunks of World Cup TV rights to resell. These are awarded by uncle Sepp and his Fifa colleagues.

Meanwhile the Byroms have granted Infront a 5% stake in their subsidiary company Match, which has 450,000 tickets to resell to corporate hospitality clients in VIP boxes. These include 32,000 for Brazil games and another 12,000 for the final.

Blatter also gives the brothers the business of supplying accommodation for fans. Two years ago he gave the company jointly owned by the Byroms and his nephew a loan of 6mill,210,128 sterling from Fifa, interest free.

Oddly, this sweetheart deal has still not been reported in Fifa's accounts."

- p5, latest Private Eye: headline JUST THE TICKET.

"When corrupt Fifa vice-president Jack Warner sent the English FA a 35,608 pounds sterling bill for a banquet it sponsored in Trinidad in 2010, the English FA paid immediately. Now an FA spokesman admits the FA has no idea what the largest single item  - 13,636 pounds sterling - on the bill was for.

Cost of food was 6,827 pounds, plus another 4,645 pounds for 'decorations. Thousands more pounds were for lighting, programmes, invitations, a plaque, a video crew, photographers, ushers....

However Warner's masterstroke was the 13,636 pounds sterling listed only as "Tokens." The FA spokesman admits he has no idea what these 'tokens' were.

160 members of the Caribbean Football Union were in attendance."

- latest Private Eye

F1 driver Rosberg abandons celebratory helment for German GP due to FIFA complains of copy right infringement because it has a picture of the World Cup on the back.   Big brother is stupid sometimes

Is that a joke or a statement of fact? I am undecided on it!! ;)

Joke. I think. Private Eye cartoon.

Could be a fact which makes it a joke!

Here's another: ex Spurs dandy David Ginola to run for Fifa presidency (acc to today's 12.30 UK Sky Sport bulletin). Put up job by French bookmaking firm rumoured to be paying him 1/4 mill euros.

"Why are you confused?" said the great G. "This is a job. Much harder than playing football. For me football was easy, no work."

PS - his time at Spurs came with side benefits acc to non-Man U away fans of the time: 

"Posh Spice is a slapper,

She wears a wonderbra

When she's not f*****g Beckham

She's f******g Ginola!"