Mr Biznuz

Tracking the Football Crisis

4th June 2010

Mr Biznuz – the business columnist of the Central Brittany Journal, provides an analysis of the football crisis..

Recent developments in and around the World Cup have been causing wry amusement amongst people who are not passionate followers of the beautiful game, but they do, in fact help to highlight a significant trend in the shift of power away from national governments towards global institutions - and this is a subject of paramount importance to business, because when you are in business it is vital to know who is actually holding the reins of power, and who is simply pretending.

The International football association is reported to have issued an ultimatum to Nigeria that unless its president reverses its decision to stop its football team playing in international competitions for two years, Nigerian football will face an indefinite ban from world football. The president of the association has also issued a verbal warning to the president of France, essentially threatening the same thing to France unless he changes course on a proposed government enquiry into what happened to the French team at the world cup. The interesting thing about these stories is that if the international football federation goes ahead with these threats, it would have a serious impact upon the popularity of the governments of both countries. As it stands, the threat is almost couched in terms that France and Nigeria would be banned from participating in world football whilst their current governments remain in power - or at least this is how it would be interpreted by large sections of the population, and in both countries, such a perception would make it difficult for the government to stay in power. So who has more power in these countries - the elected government, or the International Football Association?

Possibly, the presidents of both Nigeria and France viewed football as a soft target - they may not be able to do much about the international debt crisis, falling incomes, rising prices, international security, etc., but at least they could act tough in the field of sport, especially with respect to their national teams. But apparently this is not the case. National governments are becoming increasingly irrelevant in a world controlled by global institutions.

This is a phenomenon well-known to people working for multi-national corporations for many years, but it is now also something that people running small to medium sized businesses should also now take into consideration.