Bungling Blatter loses the plot
Who would have thought a poster could create such a stir? When Sepp Blatter unveiled the official poster for 2010 in Durban last week - a clever representation of Africa with the northeast of the continent as the face of a player in the act of heading a ball - the Fifa chief sparked speculation about what the image was really about. His description of the logo left no doubt that he was referring to Samuel Eto'o, the Barcelona striker, although he never mentioned him by name.
'You will have no problem to recognise first of all that it's Africa and you have the face of one of the most popular and well-known faces of the continent,' Blatter said.
'He was not able to participate in the last World Cup, but what is more important here is to give this continent a face, a human face in football.'
That left most observers scratching their heads as to why Blatter would refer to Eto'o, who's not a South African, but a Cameroonian.
Fifa's spin-meisters didn't take long to start reinterpreting their boss' words. 'It was a spontaneous remark,' they explained. And when the media information sheets were distributed the president's flight of fancy was nowhere to be found, excised in the most Orwellian manner. 'Africa is the official 'hero' of the event poster,' read the release.
'The unique shape of the continent almost naturally lends itself to the shape of a man's profile, while the face represents every single African supporter from Morocco in the north, Gambia in the east (sic), Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia in the west (sic) to South Africa in the south.' For an organisation and an event so wedded to the African idea, you'd think their geographic knowledge would be better.
