The funeral rites to a football career were observed with unseemly haste last night. John McBeth was forced to walk away from his post as vice-president of FIFA to be replaced by Geoff Thompson of England in a deal hastily cobbled together by the English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh FAs yesterday.
McBeth's departure follows statements made to Sunday newspaper journalists last week. He told the media briefing that African nations had different ethics to the British fair play" approach and "want to grab what they can". He added: "I presume the Caribbean is just the same."
His comments caused outrage at the FIFA Congress in Zurich, much of it manufactured by Jack Warner, FIFA's vice-president for the CONCACAF region, who has been the subject of charges of alleged corruption.
McBeth, 63, had his fate sealed on Tuesday when the SFA distanced themselves from the comments of a man who will be their president until tomorrow when he is formally replaced by George Peat.
"While we feel that his comments were ill-advised, it is clear to all who know him that he is not a racist,'' said the statement, but the damage to McBeth had been done in a earlier sentence dissociating the body from the former Clyde chairman's words.
The decision came at a crisis meeting yesterday between the British associations in Zurich, called because of fears that a campaign to abolish Britain's privileged position in FIFA would gather unstoppable momentum if a replacement was not nominated quickly.
A deal was agreed to ditch McBeth and to nominate Thompson to serve for four years and then for him be succeeded by Irish FA president Jim Boyce.
Thompson, who will be inaugurated by FIFA today, said: "This is a great honour and I am very pleased. I have been mandated to represent the British associations and I will do so to the best of my ability. I want to continue my work for the benefit for the whole of football."
FIFA will now drop ethics committee proceedings against McBeth which were launched after his claims that African and Caribbean nations were tainted by corruption and greed.
A FIFA source said: "He is just a small footnote in FIFA's history now . There is nothing to be gained by continuing with the case."
Boyce said that it was important the associations moved speedily after Warner expressed his determination to seek an end to the special British FIFA position.
Boyce said: "The most important thing was to ensure that the British vice-presidency of FIFA, which is in the gift of the four British associations, was not put at risk and I am delighted with this solution for the overall good of football in the four home countries."
Warner, who had sent an official letter of protest about McBeth's comments claiming they were racist, expressed his delight at the news. "I am extremely pleased - good has prevailed over evil," he said. "Geoff Thompson should have been in that position in the first place - the other guy was just an idiot."
Brian Barwick, FA chief executive, said the announcement was "the icing on the cake" after the vote in favour of structural reforms of the FA on Tuesday. He added: "Geoff has given a lifetime's service to football and has made a contribution both domestically and overseas, and it is important that our FA now has that seat of authority, responsibility and power. The important thing was that the British associations retained their position."
Barwick said there were no plans for Thompson to step down from the FA earlier than next year in favour of a new independent chairman.
"I am overwhelmed," Thompson added. "Most of the big European associations like Italy, Spain, France and Germany have long held seats on the executive and it is about time the English voice was heard again."
McBeth won the nomination earlier this year when tactical voting went against Thompson in the bid to take over from David Will, the Scot who retired after 17 years in the role.
McBeth had wanted to tackle corruption and Warner may have been a future adversary. Warner and his son were accused of reselling thousands of tickets at inflated prices for last year's World Cup in Germany. Though FIFA's disciplinary committee eventually cleared Warner, his son was ordered to pay $1m to a children's charity.
In 2001, Warner was accused of a conflict of interest after acquiring lucrative television rights to international tournaments. Warner, a Trinidadian, said that he saw no conflict of interest in a top FIFA official buying the television rights to the organisation's football tournaments. He said he was reselling the television rights to individual stations throughout the Caribbean.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article