Alerting Media: Starting With Brunt and Jennings

[KAS]

Just to let everyone know, Stephen Brunt is holding an on-line chat about soccer in Canada at Noon (ET) today. You have to go through globesports.com and register to ask a question. Their website is slow, so I am having trouble registering, but I will keep trying.

The editors screening questions/comments will ignore anything that can be considered a personal attack, unsubstantiated, inflamatory, or libelous, but Brunt knows what's going on, so I believe there are ways of getting the good questions through if you word it properly. BTW, they are also giving preference to questions asked by people who give their proper name (not chat room name) and city of residence.

If this Whitby boy is able to register, my question(s) will be something like:

"Dear Mr Brunt:

thank-you for writing about soccer in Canada. I was wondering if you had visited the website of fellow journalist Andrew Jennings (www.transparencyinsport.org), or read his book about FIFA and Jack Warner? Also, do you think that Canadian Soccer Association President Colin Linford should make a formal and public protest to FIFA about the Gold Cup semi-final match, or perhaps reinstitute the policy of flying in UEFA referees for future World Cup Qualifying matches as occured in 1993?"

I know that is abit long, and likely to be edited before it reaches Brunt, but I'm trying to sneak three questions in there and make it look like two. I hope that others here will try to get similar questions in so that something gets through and the volume convinces Brunt to investigate further and perhaps question Linford.

On another note, I went to Jennings' website and wrote a long message urging him to investigate the Gold Cup and possible match-fixing. As usual, my letter was long, but I tried to explain alot of the arguments to convince him that there was something here worth investigating and that I was not just some bitter fan. Since he already knows all about Jack Warner, it shouldn't take too much convincing to have him look into it. The website is www.transparencyinsport.org and it allows you to send him comments/ideas/secret documents.

If anyone knows of any investigative reporters like Jennings who might be interested in taking on Jack Warner and CONCACAF, then post in this thread. Hopefully, the media can be kept on this subject long enough for it to still be on their minds when the U-20s arrive. Although nothing would make me happier than to see the government add Warner and Archundia to the no-fly list and keep them out of the country with worldwide humiliation, I know it won't happen. A grilling from the media will have to do.

[john tv]

I have forwarded my message and showed my full name and obviously I ask the question,will the media departments stop making fun of soccer in a negative way and take this sport serious and will consider this to be a very major sport in our Canadian society.
I realize that the Globe already has taken those giant steps and I really don't know if he will be speaking for the others,but hey why not try to get him to assume something and first of all agree to that negative attitude that exist in other media departments..We will see.

[KAS]

quote:Originally posted by KAS

On another note, I went to Jennings' website and wrote a long message urging him to investigate the Gold Cup and possible match-fixing. As usual, my letter was long, but I tried to explain alot of the arguments to convince him that there was something here worth investigating and that I was not just some bitter fan. Since he already knows all about Jack Warner, it shouldn't take too much convincing to have him look into it. The website is www.transparencyinsport.org and it allows you to send him comments/ideas/secret documents.

If anyone knows of any investigative reporters like Jennings who might be interested in taking on Jack Warner and CONCACAF, then post in this thread. Hopefully, the media can be kept on this subject long enough for it to still be on their minds when the U-20s arrive. Although nothing would make me happier than to see the government add Warner and Archundia to the no-fly list and keep them out of the country with worldwide humiliation, I know it won't happen. A grilling from the media will have to do.

Sorry for quoting myself, but I thought I should provide an update.

I received an E-mail from Andrew Jennings in response to the message that I left on his website where I urged him to investigate the Gold Cup and possible match-fixing. Since I never said anything to him about posting it, I won't copy the E-mail here (I'm too technologically-retarded anyways).

He mentioned the difficulty of proving match-fixing, and therefore the need for caution, but said he would look into it. On the matter of referees who are dependent on or picked by Warner, he mentioned Spain and Italy in 2002. Does anyone know what he is referring to? I'm guessing some controversial calls from refs that Warner had selected, but I don't really know what it is about.

Anyways, he said that he would look into it to see if there was anything that he could write about it (and he mentioned that his book is now in paperback! ). I suggested that he look at this website and the relevent forums (Canada/Panama/Costa Rica) on Bigsoccer.com, and he said that he would look at those - so if you have anything useful then post it!

I was never able to get a message to Stephen Brunt on the live soccer chat, but I might write him an e-mail with questions like those I wrote in the first post of this thread. It would be nice to see a reporter in Toronto direct some serious questions at Linford and Warner at the U-20s.

[SF]

I suspect he is referring to the 2003 World Cup where Italy and Spain went out to South Korea and the referees. Italy was mildly screwed and Spain was raped. And the rest of us got South Korea in the semi-finals.

[SF]

I meant the 2002 World Cup, of course.

[Gian-Luca]

quote:Originally posted by KAS
[He mentioned the difficulty of proving match-fixing, and therefore the need for caution, but said he would look into it. On the matter of referees who are dependent on or picked by Warner, he mentioned Spain and Italy in 2002. Does anyone know what he is referring to? I'm guessing some controversial calls from refs that Warner had selected, but I don't really know what it is about.

Both Spain & Italy were widely considered to have been the victim of some pretty suspicious looking "home-town" biased officiating in favour of South Korea in the 2002 World Cup. South Korea eliminated both teams, but personally I think the home-town calls started long before they met Italy.

[KAS]

quote:Originally posted by Gian-Luca

quote:Originally posted by KAS
[He mentioned the difficulty of proving match-fixing, and therefore the need for caution, but said he would look into it. On the matter of referees who are dependent on or picked by Warner, he mentioned Spain and Italy in 2002. Does anyone know what he is referring to? I'm guessing some controversial calls from refs that Warner had selected, but I don't really know what it is about.

Both Spain & Italy were widely considered to have been the victim of some pretty suspicious looking "home-town" biased officiating in favour of South Korea in the 2002 World Cup. South Korea eliminated both teams, but personally I think the home-town calls started long before they met Italy.

I figured that it might be the 2002 WC, but the way the sentence was written, it looked like it may have been a Italy-Spain match, and I couldn't remember anything like that.

I certainly do remember the controversy surrounding South Korea. I wonder if Jennings referenced this purely as a case of suspicious favouring of tournament hosts, or if Warner may have picked the ref. I don't know who the refs for those matches were, but since it was European teams against an Asian team, it certainly could have been CONCACAF refs.

Anyways, I hope that Jennings is able to find out and write about something interesting about the Gold Cup. In the meantime, does anyone have a good idea to ambush Warner when he visits Canada?

[Grizzly]

quote:Originally posted by Gian-LucaBoth Spain & Italy were widely considered to have been the victim of some pretty suspicious looking "home-town" biased officiating in favour of South Korea in the 2002 World Cup. South Korea eliminated both teams, but personally I think the home-town calls started long before they met Italy.

This is true but it was also true in the last World Cup that almost all the poor reffing decisions benefitted European teams. Yet since the Euro teams are both popular and favourites everyone seems to ignore this and still talks about the reffing in Japan/Korea (which while bad was no worse than in 2006). It was particularly telling how little the South American teams dived while the European teams probably set a diving record, ie. the South Americans knew they wouldn't get away with it and the Europeans knew they would. I think one would be hard pressed to find an organization in the world as corrupt as FIFA and I don't believe that all of these decisions are merely a consequence of referree error or hometown advantage.

[Gian-Luca]

quote:Originally posted by Grizzly


This is true but it was also true in the last World Cup that almost all the poor reffing decisions benefitted European teams. Yet since the Euro teams are both popular and favourites everyone seems to ignore this and still talks about the reffing in Japan/Korea (which while bad was no worse than in 2006).

I think there were a lot of bad calls in the 2006 World Cup, but I don't agree that it mostly benefitted European teams, other than the fact that there were a lot of European teams that could be benefitted from the law of averages. The US got screwed against Ghana and then Ghana in turn got screwed against Brazil. Australia got screwed badly against Japan even though they came back to win the game. They also got screwed against Croatia, but it's difficult to put that down to anything other than incompetence on Graham Poll's part. Even if you were to argue that Italy shouldn't have gotten a penalty against Australia in injury time (which I would dispute, but not going to get into that again) they had already been screwed by an extremely harsh sending off.

Those are just some of the examples which come to mind, but generally I saw incompetence sporadically throughout the 2006 World Cup (including several examples in games between European teams like Holland vs. Portugal) without much rhyme or reason, rather than a specific single team getting the benefit of so many calls game in/game out the way South Korea did in 2002, which is why so many people think of them when thinking about biased officiating.

[dbailey62]

quote:Originally posted by KAS

quote:Originally posted by KAS

On another note, I went to Jennings' website and wrote a long message urging him to investigate the Gold Cup and possible match-fixing. As usual, my letter was long, but I tried to explain alot of the arguments to convince him that there was something here worth investigating and that I was not just some bitter fan. Since he already knows all about Jack Warner, it shouldn't take too much convincing to have him look into it. The website is www.transparencyinsport.org and it allows you to send him comments/ideas/secret documents.

If anyone knows of any investigative reporters like Jennings who might be interested in taking on Jack Warner and CONCACAF, then post in this thread. Hopefully, the media can be kept on this subject long enough for it to still be on their minds when the U-20s arrive. Although nothing would make me happier than to see the government add Warner and Archundia to the no-fly list and keep them out of the country with worldwide humiliation, I know it won't happen. A grilling from the media will have to do.

Sorry for quoting myself, but I thought I should provide an update.

I received an E-mail from Andrew Jennings in response to the message that I left on his website where I urged him to investigate the Gold Cup and possible match-fixing. Since I never said anything to him about posting it, I won't copy the E-mail here (I'm too technologically-retarded anyways).

He mentioned the difficulty of proving match-fixing, and therefore the need for caution, but said he would look into it. On the matter of referees who are dependent on or picked by Warner, he mentioned Spain and Italy in 2002. Does anyone know what he is referring to? I'm guessing some controversial calls from refs that Warner had selected, but I don't really know what it is about.

Anyways, he said that he would look into it to see if there was anything that he could write about it (and he mentioned that his book is now in paperback! ). I suggested that he look at this website and the relevent forums (Canada/Panama/Costa Rica) on Bigsoccer.com, and he said that he would look at those - so if you have anything useful then post it!

I was never able to get a message to Stephen Brunt on the live soccer chat, but I might write him an e-mail with questions like those I wrote in the first post of this thread. It would be nice to see a reporter in Toronto direct some serious questions at Linford and Warner at the U-20s.

I am totally impressed that Jennings replied!

His "Lords of the Rings" is magnificent!!!

db