Quote:
Originally Posted by jofillips
i agree thunderball - sepp blatters comments don't help either, he recently threatened players with criminal charges if they tackle and injure someone....
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I think more often than not, its the leadership at the top of leagues, and main associations like FIFA that are part of the problem. They are afraid to take real steps to weed out foul play, corruption and incompetence.
Take Serie A for instance. Juventus (and to a lesser extent AC Milan, Lazio and Fiorentina) get hammered for apparently match-fixing (the Italian media was not convinced by the evidence or what they called a showtrial, but regardless) and were penalized (and in Juve's case relegated). Everyone is essentially back now and served their penalties, so status quo has resumed despite Juventus and Lazio being significantly weakened from the experience. Yet no actual regulations changed.
They claimed they purged football of these evil elements and that the game is now transparent and fair, but lo and behold, nothing changed. In fact, the Italian media now claims that this season has the largest discrepancy due to "referee error." Sure Juve, Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio were purged of some directors, but the main people in the league and the referee association are still there.
Rather than clean house and increase accountability... they make poor decisions and destroy credibility. Maybe no one actually fixed any games... maybe they just have a group of incompetent refs that get overwhelmed in big games? Perhaps local refs are biased to their beloved teams and either influence the game for them, or influence a different game to help them? Could it be the one big team owned by the same person who owns the phone company who found all the now illegal wire taps that somehow no one pointed any fingers at and "inherited" two league championships, despite being in third place both years was somehow responsible? Who knows? Because the administration at the top is so poorly run, any number of those things are possible as well as some other variables.
Italy is not the only example of this, it happens in most leagues... this situation is just the most topical and well-known, especially with Calciopoli occuring right after WC2006 and now Inter falling to "ref errors" in CL, but thriving on them in Serie A.