FIFA boss Blatter meets Russian dictator Putin in Moscow

Blatter on twitter from Russia:
"I tremendously enjoy this kind of direct contact with FIFA's members."

FIFA boss Sepp Blatter has met with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Moscow, according to news reports. While in Russia, Blatter also uttered these words in Russian:

With the FIFA World Cup 2018, it's people from the entire world who will gather, because football is more than a game.” 

Blatter is right. Football is "more than a game". In December 2010, when the 2018 World Cup was awarded to Putin's Russia, the Mail reminded readers that FIFA football is also this 

Amid strong suspicions of shady backroom deals, the tournament went to Russia, branded a ‘virtual mafia state’ in leaked U.S. diplomatic cables this week.

Shortly after Fifa president Sepp Blatter declared Russia the winner for 2018, he announced that Qatar, a tiny desert country which has never even qualified to play in the World Cup, would host the 2022 tournament, beating bids from Australia, the United States and a joint bid from Japan and South Korea.

Fifa’s controversial decisions reinforced suspicions that the voting process was corrupt and that the sport’s world governing body had been seduced by the energy-rich countries’ billions, meaning that England’s bid never stood a chance.--

After the recent allegations of widespread bribe-taking and corruption among FIFA officials who decide where the World Cup is staged, it is surely fitting that the winning bid went to a country being looted and misruled by a cabal of crooks and spooks - perhaps the biggest and most powerful organised crime syndicate that the world has ever seen.

(image by wikipedia)