Putin´s mafia state will not host the football World Cup 2018

It is becoming more and more obvious that Putin´s mafia state will not host the football World Cup in 2018. Vladimir Putin bought the cup through massive corruption, which in itself should be enough to move the games to a more civilized environment. Now there is the case of massive Russian state sponsored doping:

Russia’s hosting of the World Cup is becoming increasingly problematic for FIFA’s leaders after the International Olympic Committee withdrew support for sporting events being staged in the doping-tainted nation.
The IOC’s move followed this week’s second damning World Anti-Doping Agency report, which accused Russia of state-sponsored doping.
The scandal landed at FIFA’s door after Russian football was for the first time implicated in the alleged doping cover-up by a country that has been entrusted with football’s most prestigious event in 2018.
Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko, whose department is accused of orchestrating the deception, is also head of the country’s football federation and is a member of FIFA’s ruling council.
Football’s governing body is standing by the 2018 hosts – just as it has done throughout six years of scrutiny since the contentious vote to hand the World Cup to Russia for the first time.
“Preparations for the World Cup are in full swing,” Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, said Wednesday. “FIFA said yesterday that they are preparing for the World Cup to be held in Russia.”
And 2018 is not the only countdown. FIFA is less than 11 months from staging the Confederations Cup, an eight-team warm-up competition, in Russia.
Dick Pound, the former WADA president who authored the earlier report on doping in Russian track and field, said FIFA now has another “credibility issue” to confront following McLaren’s findings.

Former Uefa president: England should be given the 2018 World Cup instead of mafia state Russia

Of course former Uefa president Johansson is right. The dictator of the mafia state called Russia, Vladimir Putin, should be denied the games due to massive corruption:

England should be given the 2018 World Cup instead of Russia, the former Uefa president Lennart Johansson has said.
Johansson, who lost the 1998 Fifa presidential election to Sepp Blatter, says the 2018 and 2022 World Cup awards should be reviewed in the light of the new corruption charges.
Johansson, 85, speaking after seven Fifa officials including two vice-presidents were arrested by police in Zurich for extradition to the USA, told the Swedish newspaper Sportbladet: “I expect they will reconsider the [World Cup] decisions. Blatter himself has said that the decision to go east wasn’t proper. I am sure the initiative will now be taken to make a new decision.
“England haven’t had it since 1966 and it’s considered ‘the motherland of football’, whatever we might think. They are worthy of the attention.”

One excellent way to punish Putin: No World Cup!

NO!

Here is one excellent way to punish Putin:

How does one punish the autocratic, omnipotent president of a quasi-superpower? It is much harder to do so than to spank the piddling ruler of a smallish rogue state, but options exist. Putin believes that a World Cup in Russia can be sold to his people as an endorsement of his rule. Why should the world become an accomplice in a dictator’s Ponzi scheme of pride? As he preened for the cameras at the World Cup final in Rio de Janeiro on July 13, it was clear that Putin regards Russia’s staging of the cup’s next edition as a propaganda godsend, a global vote for his achievements. Imagine his consternation if he were prevented from putting on such a show.

Putin preys on the fact that the West thinks money and sport are neutral, or at least civilizing influences. So when Russian money comes to Wall Street or the City of London, it stops being political for the West; it is also a peculiarly Western conceit that the gathering together for sport has a civilizing effect on the nations participating. But for Putin, money and sport are tools, or weapons. Hosting the World Cup is the weapon he uses to prove to his people that he is all-powerful, that there is no point in opposing him. In letting him host that cup, we all become part of that weapon.

Read the entire article here

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)

Gazprom finally begins to diversify - wants to create a Soviet football league

Putin's new soccer league would not have to waste money on creating  a new logo.  This one would do fine, perhaps with the globe coming in the form of a football.

Putin's struggling pipe laying company is finally beginning to diversify. Gazprom is now proposing a football tournament for the top clubs of the former Soviet Union states:

Belarusian football powerhouse BATE Borisov say they will gladly compete in a tournament which would unite top clubs from the former Soviet Union states, currently proposed by Gazprom.

“The establishment of such a league is interesting by definition,” the statement on BATE’s official website said. “Given the strength of the Soviet Union championship, participation in the competition would be attractive to many teams.”

“However, it’s important to make the key points clear – the rules for participation of the clubs in this tournament, the principles of licensing, relationships with the UEFA and the terms on which the CIS countries’ representatives will take part in European tournaments. If these issues are resolved and specified in the competition’s regulations we think that from the point of view of the development of the Belarusian football and the country’s national team it would be a very interesting project."

The Belarusian club’s administration believes that the patronage of such a huge multinational company as Gazprom can really make the idea of the CIS league work.

This great idea must be the brainchild of Vladimir Putin himself. We all know that the dictator has during the last few years worked so hard in order to recreate his beloved Soviet Union. A Soviet football league would certainly be a step in the right direction. Who knows, maybe Putin even could get Gazprom's PR man, German football legend Franz Beckenbauer to promote this new tournament? And Putin's c lose friend Gerhard Schröder will of course be available, if the project needs political support.