Fifa must take ‘painful’ steps to reform, says Olympics chief
'No comparison' between Fifa scandal and Salt Lake City affair insists Thomas Bach
Saying there is “no comparison” in the scale of the IOC’s Salt Lake City scandal and Fifa’s corruption crisis, IOC President Thomas Bach urged soccer’s governing body to take the “painful” steps needed to clean itself up and restore credibility in the organisation.
Bach gave his most extensive comments to date on the bribery allegations engulfing Fifa, a far-reaching scandal that led Sepp Blatter to resign as president last week pending new elections.
Bach said Fifa should press ahead with reforms, citing the measures taken by the International Olympic Committee to recover from the Salt Lake crisis in the late 1990s.
“It’s not up to the IOC to give advice, it’s just to remember that we had this kind of problems 15 years ago,” Bach said. “We also know from our experience that ... putting everything on the desk can be a painful experience, but it is absolutely necessary to do this as we have seen from our own history.”
Bach said the size of the Fifa scandal was much bigger than the case that led to the ouster of 10 IOC members for accepting improper inducements during Salt Lake’s winning bid for the 2002 Winter Games.