Blazes! Chuck comes clean, and buries the Safa spin

Never trust anyone who looks like a drunk Santa stand-in. That’s what the world has learned from roly-poly American embezzler Chuck Blazer. In newly unsealed court testimony that dates back to 2013, Chuck turned snitch in order to save his wheelchair-bound ass from spending the rest of human history in jail. Chuck, the testimony makes perfectly clear, scammed just about every major CONCACAF and FIFA tournament from the mid-90s to the late 2000s, and his Mister 10% sobriquet turns out to be perfectly apt.

Check out what Chuck had to say:

“Among other things, I agreed with other persons in or around 1992 to facilitate the acceptance of a bribe in conjunction with the selection of the host nation for the 1998 World Cup” while “I and others on the FIFA executive committee agreed to accept bribes in conjunction with the selection of South Africa as the host nation for the 2010 World Cup.”

So we’re done here, right? Nothing more to say. The so-called “Madiba Magic” was actually envelopes stuffed with cash, and we’re now right up there with France as having bought our World Cup. The French, one learns, are heinously corrupt, and it’s not exactly company we want to keep. Then again, it may not have been the French who doused Blazer in money—it might have been the Moroccans, who are also heinously corrupt. You see what’s happening here, right? We’re learning things about ourselves as a species. None of which are pretty.

Anyway, here’s another thing that makes total sense: while the bankers who brought the financial system to a crashing halt in 2008 still swan around in their Bentleys, FIFA has been so fully discredited that it will be nearly impossible to repair its image. FIFA brought out the worst in governments, who lusted after those lucrative stadium contracts and all the slush that came with them. What plays in France plays in South Africa plays in Morocco plays in Costa Rica—the world is little more than a cesspit of rot, and the beautiful game evoked that rot perfectly.

That said, the South African government has to answer to the South African people, not to the FBI or to the US Department of Justice or to anyone else. It’s time for them to fess up. I somehow doubt they’ll bother. DM

Photo: FIFA Confederations Cup 2005 organisation committee chairman Chuck Blazer, FIFA President Joseph Blatter and domestic organisation committee chairman Franz Beckenbauer (L-R) pose for the journalists in Frankfurt Main, Germany, 27 June 2005. EPA/Frank May