Fifa today fired Jerome Valcke, it's Secretary General. In September he was banned from all football activities for 90 days, by Fifa, after he was allegedly implicated in a scheme to sell World Cup tickets above face value. He was also suspected of being involved in a bribe paid to former (now disgraced) Fifa vice president Jack Warner in return for his vote for South Africa to win the bidding for the 2010 World Cup. Last week Fifa's Ethics Committee extended his ban for another 45 days. Today he was fired. Are you surprised? Maybe, like me, you were surprised that he still had a job at Fifa after he was suspended and had his suspension extended.
But that's not even the worst of it, or funniest. If you weren't following Fifa's business as closely in 2006 you may not know that this is the second time that Valcke was fired....from Fifa. In 2006, as head of marketing he entered into discussions with Visa about a long term sponsorship agreement. By doing so he ignored MasterCard's right to a first re-negotiation. A judge in the case against him said he had lied to both Visa and MasterCard. A lawyer involved said that amongst Fifa's "white lies, commercial lies, bluffs, pure lies, straight untruths and perjury, Mr Valcke even lied when testifying about his lies”.
Eight months later Sepp Blatter rehired him as Secretary General, even though Fifa had to pay $90m to settle the case with MasterCard, about half the revenue Fifa was expecting from this sponsorship agreement.
Eight years later Valcke was suspended, on Blatter's orders, while he was in the air, aboard a plane taking him from Zurich to Moscow to attend the ceremony marking 1000 days to the start of the 2018 World Cup. The plane turned back to Zurich.
Today he is gone. But if his good friend, Blatter rehired him and with the way "friendships" come and go in the blurred world of football and politics, and with Blatter now gone, who's to say that Valcke puts himself in a position with the new President to score a hat-trick of firings.
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