How Sepp Blatter controls soccer

摘要

It can be hard to find the perfect way to describe Joseph "Sepp" Blatter, the head of FIFA. The Daily Mail has called him a "smug, self-righteous Zurich gnome." The Guardian has called him "the most successful non-homicidal dictator of the past century." In April, at the annual meeting of FIFA's North and Central American representatives, Osiris Guzman, president of Dominican Republic soccer, goes in another direction, comparing Blatter to Jesus Christ, Nelson Mandela, and Winston Churchill. "Why is he different from these other men?" demands Guzman, whom FIFA banned from soccer for 30 days in a 2011 vote-buying scandal. For good measure, he adds Moses, Martin Luther King Jr., and Abraham Lincoln.