Soccer / scorum blog

I had initially decided not to write about the sham of an award given by the Ballon d'Or organizers as it doesn't matter what is said, they never seem to care. However, the happenings on Monday during the UEFA Champions League Round of 16 draw triggered my settling fury. While I pen my opinion on the Ballon d'Or award for another piece, I'd be looking at UEFA's quagmire of a draw. The draw, which was held on Monday initially saw the likes of Real Madrid facing Benfica, Manchester United against Paris Saint Germain, but had to be re-drawn following claims that there was an error with the seeding, stating that Atletico Madrid, who finished second in the group behind Liverpool were not included as possible opponents to face Manchester United, hence, the re-draw. UEFA was reported to have said a "technical" error led to the re-run of the draw, which saw all teams except Chelsea get a different club from the first one. Rightly, Real Madrid were infuriated by this as they now face Paris Saint Germain instead of Benfica. This is not a draw that is just being held for the first time, how can such a basic error be committed? Agreed, no error or system is infallible, however, some things are not just excusable. How can you not know who is meant to be in a pot when we all know how the teams finished in their respective groups and who should be in which pot. This is a draw that a high school student would be able to run successfully without hitch because there is no rocket science required in knowing which pot to pitch which team since it is public knowledge how they all finished in their various groups. Other questions that would beg for answers are: was there no dry run or demo before the real draws? Was there no last minute quality assurance check to ensure that all boxes were rightly ticked before the draw proper? Or did they just decide to skip the checks or deliberately distorted things to suit their whims? It's a disgrace to UEFA and they should cover their faces in shame. For several years, there have been claims against Europe's football governing body on how the use of hot and cold balls have been employed to ensure that there are no big name clashes in the early stages of the tournament, which they believe would hurt their finances should big teams or teams that they feel pull more revenue exit the competition early. Although these claims have overtime been rubbished, they keep giving us reasons to doubt their integrity and, like the popular saying; there is never smoke without fire. We all saw how it played out in FIFA after many years of rumoured corruption and unethical practices, before everything eventually came to bare. UEFA is another ticking bomb and we shouldn't all be surprised if many years from now, we see another grave of corruption been uprooted. This is not the first time such misgivings would be surfacing at the apex football governing body in Europe. There have been accusations of them using hot and cold balls to identify big and small teams, hence influencing the draws. Flashback to 2017 during the draws for the Champions League semifinals when Real Madrid and capital rivals, Atletico Madrid were drawn to face each other in the semifinal in a draw pullled by Liverpool legend, Ian Rush. It was accused that after drawing the first ball that showed Real Madrid, the Liverpool legend went straight to pick the other ball without shaking the balls, which showed Atletico as their opponents, thereby ensuring that there was no repeat of the 2014 or 2016 finals - an all-Spanish final. A year before that, disgraced former FIFA President, Joseph Sepp Blatter when asked if there was anything of such in FIFA following his six-year ban from footballing activities after he was convicted of having gone against the governing body's ethics, he exonerated himself and FIFA, but gave hints of having witnessed such in UEFA draws. Accepted that there was an error with some parts of the draws while others were legal and correct, would it have been wrong if only the ones that were wrong were re-drawn? Does this new draw not point to accusations earlier amde against UEFA? UEFA claimed it was a third party error. It's always easy blaming a third force for things like this. When it happens once, we say it's a mistake. It happens twice, we blame it a coincidence. When it grows to three times or more, it becomes a pattern. We all are watching.