Letter from Rick Parry of the EFL | Vital Football

Letter from Rick Parry of the EFL

bfcpete

Vital Football Hero
I am no good doing links, but there is a thread on AVFTT which includes a letter to all supporters about the virus, the health service, the role of football in communities etc. It is a good letter and perhaps the most interesting part says that, whilst they don't know when football will resume or whether the season will be completed, when it does start it is likely to be behind closed doors. He mentions about streaming all matches if those are the initial restrictions.
 
Test them all they're young fit heathy men apart from the coaching staff (Woy Hodgsen) may need to stay at home football needs to return for everyones sanity bollocks to the tour de france or wimbledon get the footy back on.
 
It is suspected that Champions League ties were a major route of transmission between Italy and Spain.
 
I think they should end all other competitions European cup, fa cup, the lot just finish the leagues
 
and scrap that bollocks in Qatar to make room for it
 
and scrap that bollocks in Qatar to make room for it

Bearing in mind the additional corruption allegations against FIFA officials that were reported in the US this week, regarding the Qatar WC award, it should be taken from them. They wont do it though, because of the threat of litigation by Qatar, which has deep pockets
 
Here's the letter:

Dear supporter,

The COVID-19 pandemic has, quite clearly, brought about challenges which extend beyond the game we all love, and led to an unprecedented and testing situation for everyone.

In these circumstances, open and honest communication is more important than ever, and it is with this in mind that I am writing directly to supporters of every EFL Club today on the 132nd anniversary of the foundation of the Football League.

I want to start by offering my condolences to those who have lost loved ones to this terrible disease. I would also like to acknowledge once again the incredible work being carried out by key workers, including front-line NHS staff and carers, at this difficult time. Their collective sacrifice for the health and wellbeing of others is something to be truly proud of, and one which – on behalf of the EFL – I would like to sincerely thank them for.

It is often said that football is like a family, and we have seen that many of those undertaking vital work are fans of EFL Clubs. From Bristol to Bolton and Colchester to Carlisle, supporters across the country are among the heroes making a positive impact, and it has been heartening to see and hear the stories of people coming together at such a crucial time.

Our Clubs are also rising to the challenge and are carrying out important work in their local communities. We know that eight in 10 people in England and Wales live within a 15-mile radius of an EFL club, so whether it’s offering practical, emotional or physical support, the help football clubs are providing should not be underestimated.

It is, of course, by continuing to adhere to Government guidelines that we can all play our part in the national effort against coronavirus and so I’d also like to take this opportunity to urge you all to stay at home. In doing so, you will save lives.

When it comes to footballing matters, I understand the desire among fans for definitive answers, particularly around the conclusion of 2019/20 campaign. As I am sure you will appreciate, the situation presents significant operational and financial challenges, including the logistics of Clubs returning to full operational status, the practicalities of playing football behind closed doors, and the possible knock-on effects for the 2020/21 campaign. Please be assured that we are working hard on these and will update you as soon as we can once decisions have been made.

To give you an honest assessment of the current situation; the point at which you will be able to attend games again remains unclear. Please be assured, however, that we are going to welcome you back to stadiums as soon as it is safe to do so. Your contribution to the matchday experience and atmospheres created in stadia up and down the country is something we should never take for granted. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you today when football will resume, though whenever we do return, matches are likely to be played without crowds.

And whilst we are unfortunately without the presence of the hundreds of thousands of supporters who pass through EFL turnstiles each week, we will endeavour to bring live football direct into your homes once it returns. Plans are continuing to be worked up for all games to be broadcast either via our broadcast partners, iFollow or equivalent Club streaming services. We will update you on this once we know when matches will recommence.

The contribution to football’s finances made by match-going supporters should not be underestimated. It is critical to the business model of league football. Perhaps the biggest challenge right now is not knowing when we will be able to reintroduce football in front of crowds. We can only hope that the situation develops in such a way that we will be able to do with the shortest possible break.

With or without spectators, delivering a successful conclusion to the 2019/20 season remains our goal to ensure the integrity of our competitions. This, of course, means that a number of factors – including when, where and within what timeframe fixtures will be played – must be given careful consideration in line with Government advice. Similar factors must also be taken into account when agreeing an approach towards player training and testing, not least the appropriate level of medical resource and creation of an effective and efficient medical matchday protocol.

As we’ve previously stated, the health and wellbeing of our Clubs, their players and staff, and you – the fans – remains our first priority, and so you can appreciate that we want to give thorough and rigorous thought to these matters.

From the outset, we have committed to regular dialogue with each of these groups, as well as the Government, in order to tackle the challenges we face as effectively as possible. As well as taking into account the current climate in terms of public opinion, including those views of fans, we are regularly taking ideas and suggestions from our Clubs.

Aside from two catastrophic World Wars, this pandemic is arguably the most challenging issue to have affected football since the League was founded 132 years ago. Our Clubs have been left with significant outgoings while facing a sudden loss of income. With this in mind, I’m sure you will be aware of talk about wages and deferrals. Good progress is being made in these areas, with a view to this assisting in delivering medium to long-term solutions that protect our game for years to come.

As I said when I arrived, the EFL and its Clubs matter to many people, but most of all to the supporters. It is natural, at this stage, that you will have many questions, and we will endeavour to continue to provide answers and solutions, but we must do so with your health – as well as that of the entire nation - in mind.

I thank you for your patience so far and ask for more of the same; this is a serious situation which is changing by the day, and one which requires informed and considered decisions.

The next few weeks will bring more clarity when it comes to our operational plans and, as always, we’ll look to maintain regular communication.

One thing we can be sure of is that football, and normality, will return, and will so do more quickly if we remain united.

For now, thank you for your ongoing support and, please, stay safe.

Yours sincerely,

Rick Parry
EFL Chairman
 
Here's the yank revelations re: Qatar

After years of investigations and indictments, the United States Department of Justice on Monday said for the first time that representatives working for Russia and Qatar had bribed FIFA officials to secure hosting rights for the World Cup in men’s soccer.

Prosecutors made the accusations in an indictment charging three media executives and a sports marketing company with a number of crimes, including wire fraud and money laundering, in connection with bribes to secure television and marketing rights for international soccer tournaments.

The accusations were the latest in a yearslong corruption case that has already produced convictions of numerous soccer officials and executives as well as depositions from former leaders of FIFA, world soccer’s governing body. Never before, though, have prosecutors so clearly described the scheme that helped deliver the votes that gave Russia and Qatar hosting rights for one of the world’s biggest sporting events.

The U.S. prosecutors on Monday explicitly revealed details about money paid to five members of FIFA’s top board ahead of the 2010 vote to choose Russia and Qatar as hosts. Russia defeated England and joint bids from Holland-Belgium and Spain-Portugal to host the 2018 men’s tournament. Qatar, a tiny desert state that has spent billions of dollars to prepare for the 2022 World Cup, defeated the United States in a runoff by a group of voters that had already been trimmed because two members had been secretly filmed agreeing to sell their votes.

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Three South American officials, according to the indictment, received payments to vote for Qatar.

One of the officials, Julio Grondona of Argentina, died in 2014. Another, Nicolás Leoz, died in Paraguay last year while under house arrest and fighting extradition to the United States. The third man, Ricardo Teixeira, the former leader of soccer in Brazil, remains in that country, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.

Leoz and Teixeira were indicted in 2015 on charges related to bribery schemes to sell lucrative soccer rights to sports broadcasters.

The U.S. prosecutors also stated in Monday’s indictment that the former soccer official Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago, who has been fighting extradition to the U.S. since 2015, received $5 million through a string of shell companies to vote for Russia. Some of the money, the indictment said, came “from companies based in the United States that performed work on behalf of the 2018 Russia World Cup bid.”

Rafael Salguero, a Guatemalan soccer official who pleaded guilty in 2016 to money laundering and fraud charges, was promised $1 million to give his vote to Russia, the indictment said.

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None of the former soccer officials were immediately available for comment. Officials at Russia’s soccer federation and FIFA did not reply to an email sent after business hours to request comment.

Qatar has long denied allegations of acting improperly despite facing a slew of accusations since it started bidding for soccer’s biggest prize.

A FIFA document alluded to the bribery scheme last year. The names of Grondona, Leoz and Teixeira and references to payments they received were included in an ethics document justifying a lifetime suspension of Teixeira from FIFA.

The allegations against the South Americans mirror those made by Alejandro Burzaco, a former Argentine television executive who turned state’s witness after being named as a central figure in the soccer corruption case. He said at the New York trial of three other officials in 2017 that Leoz, Grondona and Teixeira had been paid to vote for Qatar.

ADVERTISEMENT

More than half the people involved in the votes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, including the former FIFA president Sepp Blatter, have been accused of wrongdoing, though not necessarily criminally charged.

Image

Lusail Iconic Stadium in Doha, Qatar, will host World Cup matches in 2022. Credit...Francois Nel/Getty Images

The choice of Qatar — a country with such hot summers that five years after the vote FIFA was forced to move the start of the 2022 World Cup to November — received most of the attention after the votes. But Russia, too, has faced allegations of improper bidding behavior.

Russian officials told a FIFA panel that investigated its bid that they could not turn over computers used during the process to a FIFA investigator because they had all been destroyed.

ADVERTISEMENT

Last May, almost a year after Russia staged the World Cup, Gianni Infantino, who came out of relative obscurity to secure the FIFA presidency after the corruption scandal took down almost all of the organization’s senior leadership, received the Order of Friendship medal from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Two of the sports media executives who were charged in Monday’s indictments, Hernan Lopez and Carlos Martinez, formerly worked for international subsidiaries of 21st Century Fox. This was the first time the federal government had formally accused Fox, which won the rights to televise the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, or any of its executives of wrongdoing.

During the 2017 trial, Burzaco accused Fox of bribing officials, an accusation that the company denied at the time.

Lopez, 49, was the president and chief executive of Fox International Channels, and Martinez, 51, was the president of Fox Networks Group Latin America. According to the prosecutors, the pair participated in a scheme that paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials of South America’s continental soccer federation, in order to direct how the officials awarded broadcast rights for the Copa Libertadores, South America’s premier club soccer competition.

ADVERTISEMENT

They are also accused of using inside information to help Fox win the English-language rights in the United States to televise the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Lopez and Martinez “relied on loyalty secured through the payment of bribes,” according to the indictment. Among other things, the prosecutors said, the bribes helped Fox obtain confidential information “regarding bidding for the rights to broadcast the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments in the United States.”

Through their lawyers, Lopez and Martinez denied the charges and accused the U.S. government of pushing forward a thin case.

“The indictment contains nothing more than single paragraph about Mr. Lopez that alleges nothing remotely improper,” Matthew Umhofer, a lawyer for Lopez, said in statement. Steven McCool, a lawyer for Martinez, called the charges “nothing more than stale fiction.”

Neither the Fox Corporation nor Disney — which acquired most of Fox’s international assets in 2019 — immediately responded to a request for comment.

ADVERTISEMENT

In 2011, it was announced that Fox had agreed to pay more than $400 million for the English-language rights in the United States to the men’s 2018 and 2022 World Cups, as well as to the women’s 2015 and 2019 World Cups. The win was a surprise, as ABC and ESPN had broadcast the men’s World Cup since 1994.

FIFA later awarded Fox the rights to broadcast the 2026 World Cup without holding an open bidding process, after Fox had challenged the federation’s decision to move the 2022 tournament to late fall from its traditional summer window.

Lopez left Fox in 2016 to start the podcast company Wondery; Martinez left in 2019.

Also charged Monday was Gerard Romy, a former executive of a Spanish media conglomerate, and Full Play, a Uruguay-based sports marketing company. Hugo Jinkis and Mariano Jinkis, the owners of Full Play, were charged individually in 2015 as part of the first FIFA indictments in the case.
 
Here's the yank revelations re: Qatar

After years of investigations and indictments, the United States Department of Justice on Monday said for the first time that representatives working for Russia and Qatar had bribed FIFA officials to secure hosting rights for the World Cup in men’s soccer.

Prosecutors made the accusations in an indictment charging three media executives and a sports marketing company with a number of crimes, including wire fraud and money laundering, in connection with bribes to secure television and marketing rights for international soccer tournaments.

The accusations were the latest in a yearslong corruption case that has already produced convictions of numerous soccer officials and executives as well as depositions from former leaders of FIFA, world soccer’s governing body. Never before, though, have prosecutors so clearly described the scheme that helped deliver the votes that gave Russia and Qatar hosting rights for one of the world’s biggest sporting events.

The U.S. prosecutors on Monday explicitly revealed details about money paid to five members of FIFA’s top board ahead of the 2010 vote to choose Russia and Qatar as hosts. Russia defeated England and joint bids from Holland-Belgium and Spain-Portugal to host the 2018 men’s tournament. Qatar, a tiny desert state that has spent billions of dollars to prepare for the 2022 World Cup, defeated the United States in a runoff by a group of voters that had already been trimmed because two members had been secretly filmed agreeing to sell their votes.

ADVERTISEMENT

Three South American officials, according to the indictment, received payments to vote for Qatar.

One of the officials, Julio Grondona of Argentina, died in 2014. Another, Nicolás Leoz, died in Paraguay last year while under house arrest and fighting extradition to the United States. The third man, Ricardo Teixeira, the former leader of soccer in Brazil, remains in that country, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.

Leoz and Teixeira were indicted in 2015 on charges related to bribery schemes to sell lucrative soccer rights to sports broadcasters.

The U.S. prosecutors also stated in Monday’s indictment that the former soccer official Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago, who has been fighting extradition to the U.S. since 2015, received $5 million through a string of shell companies to vote for Russia. Some of the money, the indictment said, came “from companies based in the United States that performed work on behalf of the 2018 Russia World Cup bid.”

Rafael Salguero, a Guatemalan soccer official who pleaded guilty in 2016 to money laundering and fraud charges, was promised $1 million to give his vote to Russia, the indictment said.

ADVERTISEMENT

None of the former soccer officials were immediately available for comment. Officials at Russia’s soccer federation and FIFA did not reply to an email sent after business hours to request comment.

Qatar has long denied allegations of acting improperly despite facing a slew of accusations since it started bidding for soccer’s biggest prize.

A FIFA document alluded to the bribery scheme last year. The names of Grondona, Leoz and Teixeira and references to payments they received were included in an ethics document justifying a lifetime suspension of Teixeira from FIFA.

The allegations against the South Americans mirror those made by Alejandro Burzaco, a former Argentine television executive who turned state’s witness after being named as a central figure in the soccer corruption case. He said at the New York trial of three other officials in 2017 that Leoz, Grondona and Teixeira had been paid to vote for Qatar.

ADVERTISEMENT

More than half the people involved in the votes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, including the former FIFA president Sepp Blatter, have been accused of wrongdoing, though not necessarily criminally charged.

Image

Lusail Iconic Stadium in Doha, Qatar, will host World Cup matches in 2022. Credit...Francois Nel/Getty Images

The choice of Qatar — a country with such hot summers that five years after the vote FIFA was forced to move the start of the 2022 World Cup to November — received most of the attention after the votes. But Russia, too, has faced allegations of improper bidding behavior.

Russian officials told a FIFA panel that investigated its bid that they could not turn over computers used during the process to a FIFA investigator because they had all been destroyed.

ADVERTISEMENT

Last May, almost a year after Russia staged the World Cup, Gianni Infantino, who came out of relative obscurity to secure the FIFA presidency after the corruption scandal took down almost all of the organization’s senior leadership, received the Order of Friendship medal from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Two of the sports media executives who were charged in Monday’s indictments, Hernan Lopez and Carlos Martinez, formerly worked for international subsidiaries of 21st Century Fox. This was the first time the federal government had formally accused Fox, which won the rights to televise the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, or any of its executives of wrongdoing.

During the 2017 trial, Burzaco accused Fox of bribing officials, an accusation that the company denied at the time.

Lopez, 49, was the president and chief executive of Fox International Channels, and Martinez, 51, was the president of Fox Networks Group Latin America. According to the prosecutors, the pair participated in a scheme that paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials of South America’s continental soccer federation, in order to direct how the officials awarded broadcast rights for the Copa Libertadores, South America’s premier club soccer competition.

ADVERTISEMENT

They are also accused of using inside information to help Fox win the English-language rights in the United States to televise the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Lopez and Martinez “relied on loyalty secured through the payment of bribes,” according to the indictment. Among other things, the prosecutors said, the bribes helped Fox obtain confidential information “regarding bidding for the rights to broadcast the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments in the United States.”

Through their lawyers, Lopez and Martinez denied the charges and accused the U.S. government of pushing forward a thin case.

“The indictment contains nothing more than single paragraph about Mr. Lopez that alleges nothing remotely improper,” Matthew Umhofer, a lawyer for Lopez, said in statement. Steven McCool, a lawyer for Martinez, called the charges “nothing more than stale fiction.”

Neither the Fox Corporation nor Disney — which acquired most of Fox’s international assets in 2019 — immediately responded to a request for comment.

ADVERTISEMENT

In 2011, it was announced that Fox had agreed to pay more than $400 million for the English-language rights in the United States to the men’s 2018 and 2022 World Cups, as well as to the women’s 2015 and 2019 World Cups. The win was a surprise, as ABC and ESPN had broadcast the men’s World Cup since 1994.

FIFA later awarded Fox the rights to broadcast the 2026 World Cup without holding an open bidding process, after Fox had challenged the federation’s decision to move the 2022 tournament to late fall from its traditional summer window.

Lopez left Fox in 2016 to start the podcast company Wondery; Martinez left in 2019.

Also charged Monday was Gerard Romy, a former executive of a Spanish media conglomerate, and Full Play, a Uruguay-based sports marketing company. Hugo Jinkis and Mariano Jinkis, the owners of Full Play, were charged individually in 2015 as part of the first FIFA indictments in the case.

Obviously rigged, why would any one want to play football in Qatar. defies common sense. The whole thing stinks of corruption.