It’s official: we have a world government and its name is the FIFA football junta, writes the NRC in an editorial.

It’s not exactly what the World Federalist Movement had in mind in 1945 but there it is. FIFA has staged a coup in the sovereign republic of South Africa.
Chairman Blatter hasn’t done any of the dirty work; he leaves that to the South African authorities who obey FIFA’s every whim. Blatter, flying around in a helicopter, also ordained where the guest country’s new stadiums were going to be built, never mind if no one was ever going to make any money out of them after the World Cup.
There’s really nothing new about this state of affairs. Every nation or town that stages a major world tournament knows what the score is. This summer, Blatter is the coloniser. In 1212 London, Poland and the Ukraine will have to bow to the Olympic Committee (IOC) and UEFA.
Just as in South Africa sponsors will demand a monopoly on advertising in and around the stadiums during the Olympic games and the European football championships. Cafés will have to obscure the names of the competition and all establishments in this sporting no man’s land will have to accept payment by just one type of credit card. All this is neatly packaged in completely legal contracts in which the protection of brand names is paramount.
This has been happening for years and it is getting progressively worse. On Wednesday the FIFA dictatorship reached the bottom of the barrel by having two Dutch women arrested in Johannesburg because their dresses were deemed illegal.
On Tuesday they will have to go to court and explain why they illegally promoted a Noord-Brabant beer maker during the Holland-Denmark game. In front of a criminal judge.
According to FIFA law what the women were assigned to do by the beer maker was not a commercially illegal deed but a crime. Whether the company actually knew about these rules is unclear. If it did it shouldn’t have left these women open to the consequences of their ‘guerrilla marketing’ tactics. But it any case, it is FIFA which has overstepped the mark.
The Netherlands should learn lessons from what is happening in South Africa. The KNVB wants to organise the 2018 football world championships. Already lobbyists are complaining that the women’s actions have damaged the chances of the Netherlands hosting the tournament. When the time comes our government, blackmailed by FIFA and its cronies, will also bend legislation to please the sponsors. Such an attack on citizen’s rights must be prevented.
Early on in the bidding game the KNVB must be completely transparent about all the demands in the bid book, including contracts and side letters. Then, and only then the football world championships could possibly take place here.
This is an unofficial translation