Year in review 2015: In sport, fair play principles take a hard fall

Sport rarely gets the governance it warrants – the unravelling of Fifa and Russia’s national Olympic Committee this year only strengthens such perceptions.

The now banned Fifa president Sepp Blatter is showered by fake dollar bills during a press conference at the FIFA headquarters on July 20, 2015 in Zurich, Switzerland. Philipp Schmidli / Getty Images

Gary Meenaghan

If Fifa's banned president Sepp Blatter were the type of man to harbour regrets, he might feel a twinge or two while reminiscing about last January's Asian Cup final in Sydney. Not only did hosts Australia show continental supremacy to lift the trophy, they also proved the country's growing love of football by setting new attendance records. How Blatter must rue his governing body's decision to snub Australia's bid for the 2022 World Cup in favour of Qatar.

That is not to say Australia’s bid was better, but it was undoubtedly less controversial. The Fifa Executive Committee’s decision in December 2010 to elect the gas-rich, football-poor Gulf country to host the sport’s grandest showcase proved the catalyst for intense investigations into the organisation.

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Allegations of corruption soon followed Blatter and Fifa across the globe. Whistled at inside Wembley and booed in Belo Horizonte, the Swiss and his governing body’s popularity plummeted. Yet even he could hardly have imagined quite how much further Fifa would fall in 2015.

In late May, seven Fifa officials were arrested during dawn raids at the hotel where they were staying ahead of the 65th Fifa Congress in Switzerland. The charges included racketeering, money laundering and tax evasion and the officials would later be extradited to the United States. With bedsheets hiding their identities, they were taken from the hotel in unmarked police cars in scenes reminiscent of old mafia films.

Blatter, the Teflon Don, continued unperturbed and was re-elected president two days later, but it was clear his house of cards was about to collapse.

Within a week, investigations by the FBI and Swiss prosecutors had led to 18 senior football executives being charged and Jerome Valcke, Fifa’s secretary-general, being caught up in a US$10 million (Dh36.7m) bribe allegation relating to South Africa’s successful bid to host the 2010 World Cup.

Finally, on June 2 and under intense pressure, Blatter caved and announced he would step down, albeit on his own terms. He revealed an Extraordinary Congress would be held in 2016 to elect a new president. Almost immediately, rumours began to swirl that Russia and Qatar's hosting rights for the World Cups in 2018 and 2022 might be in jeopardy.

In many ways, Russia had benefited from the controversy surrounding Qatar. With the focus of the international sports media trained on the Gulf, awkward questions regarding Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the country’s lack of action in tackling social issues such as racism and hooliganism ahead of a globally inclusive football event went unasked.

Russia’s comfortable situation of operating in the shadows, however, would not last.

In November, a report by an independent commission appointed by the World Anti-Doping Authority essentially accused Russia of operating a state-backed doping programme. Widespread doping, cover-ups and extortion were running through the country’s athletics and spreading into the International Olympics Committee (IOC), it said.

The report led to Russia's athletics federation being provisionally suspended by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in November and the country's track and field athletes being indefinitely banned from global competition. Their participation in August's Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro is now under threat, although the nation's Olympic Committee is confident its three-month road map will ensure reform and prevent the doping scandal from stopping honest athletes from competing in Brazil.

Rio also has serious issues to contend with. As was the case with the 2014 Fifa World Cup, the 2016 Games is rampant with overspending, missed deadlines and allegations of corruption. But an independent study published in July also found high levels of viruses from human waste at all of Rio's Olympic water venues. German sailor Erik Heil fell ill in August after competing in the heavily polluted Guanabara Bay.

Sport is important because it can unite social classes, bridge bonds between conflicting nations and create healthy, passionate, disciplined individuals. Yet it rarely gets the governance it warrants. The unravelling of Fifa and Russia’s national Olympic Committee this year only strengthens such perceptions.

In 2002, the bribery scandal relating to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City forced an overhaul of the IOC and the hope is something similar can now happen at Fifa. “Enough is enough,” the IOC said in an October statement. “We hope that now, finally, everyone at Fifa has at last understood that they cannot continue to remain passive. They must act swiftly to regain credibility.”

Two months later, Blatter and Michel Platini, the president of European football’s governing body, were banned from football for eight years by Fifa’s Ethics Committee. The two men were found guilty of breaches surrounding a 2 million Swiss franc (Dh7.4m) “disloyal payment” made to Platini in 2011, but there was not enough evidence to impose a corruption charge. Both men deny any wrongdoing and plan to appeal the ruling.

The decision to ban Blatter was viewed as progress by many media, yet of the five Fifa presidential hopefuls, few – if any – represent the clean break required. Likewise, while Russia’s road map promises a systematic overhaul, the damage has already been done.

The trust in sporting governance is gone and it may take decades for it to be reestablished – but next year is as good a place as any to start the process.

Gary Meenaghan is a freelance sports writer based in the UAE, UK and Brazil.