Shake my hand.

Just when you believe you have this game figured out, one idiot has to go and mess things up again, the one person you don’t expect it to be is the leader of Football though.

Sepp Blatter has always been looked at as a bit of a tool, the apparent corruption of FIFA, his stance with wearing the poppy on the shirt are just recent examples of his idiocy. However, despite how incompetent you may believe Sepp to be, no-one quite expected this comment:

“Maybe one of the players has a word or a gesture which is not the correct one, but the one who is effected by that, he should say that ‘this is a game’.We are in a game, and at the end of the game, we shake hands, and this can happen, because we have worked so hard against racism and discrimination.” – Sepp Blatter (16th November 2011)

Firstly, Sepp’s very quick to make the interviewer perceive that a lot has been done to stop racial discrimination, and he even says that it’s not in Football at all, but doesn’t both his comments contradict themselves? How can racism be out of Football if players are still using “word or a gesture which is not the correct one” as in words or gestures deemed as racial or discriminative? Arguably Mr. Blatter is saying that all the recent alleged incidents are in fact isolated ones and that Football is not a sport tolerating racism and that it’s not at all rife throughout the game. With that I would have to agree with Mr. Blatter in that I too believe the recent Suarez/Evra and Terry/Ferdinand incidents here in England are isolated matters and most if not all players and those associated with the game are far to well educated to realise using such phrases or gestures is inappropriate in whatever context. I also believe Football is not to blame for racism, it should never tolerate it, but the sport is not the cause for it, and it’s also not right to say that it’s right because “this is a game”, poor education from an early age is the real cause of racism, that and people’s ego making them believe they are untouchable when they are not and should never be.

What I am most offended by is how out of touch Blatter seems to be, had he have made such comments in an interview forty years ago many of those who listened would have applauded, thought he was a genius and that these offended players were just overreacting. That’s because of the time, in the seventies a comment like that would be well-received, however, less than twenty years later many people would have called for the head of Blatter then, so how can he even believe a comment like that would go down well in the year 2011? Really, a hand-shake?! This is almost as bad as that journalist telling players like Evra and Ferdinand to get on with it, in fact it is as bad seeing as he’s effectively saying racial abuse, an offense so bad the MET Police feel it their business to launch an enquiry doesn’t matter.

I don’t believe Blatter’s a racist, but the seventy-five year old isn’t half out of touch, and this is why Blatter MUST resign.