FIFA VP Montagliani: English-speaking soccer officials pompous on ethics
LONDON — Corruption will never be eradicated from soccer and officials in the English-speaking world should try to be humble rather than pompous when they talk about ethics, a FIFA vice-president said Tuesday.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Canada’s Victor Montagliani pointed to how recent allegations of wrongdoing in English soccer over the last week shows that no part of the game is immune from scandals.
As president of the CONCACAF for five months, Montagliani has been overseeing the cleanup of a confederation covering North and Central America and the Caribbean that became synonymous with bribery after the sprawling American criminal investigation into soccer. Three of Montagliani’s recent predecessors were forced out of CONCACAF under a cloud of misconduct.
“I don’t think you will ever eliminate (corruption) — you get it in regular society,” Montagliani told the AP. “But what we need to do is put enough checks and balances in place so we minimize the impact on the game and make it very difficult for people who are entering our game who want to do those nefarious things to be successful.”