Fifa president Sepp Blatter says he is delighted by the number of giant-killing acts at this World Cup.

I do not want to lay myself open again to charges of being anti-European, but I find that a good thing."

Blatter was easily-re-elected to a new four-year term as secretary-general of Fifa before the finals began.

*under widespreads accusations of corruption and having bribed his way to re-election*

A major reason was his popularity among the smaller nations in Fifa.

Blatter remains at loggerheads with Uefa, the governing body for European football, which argues he is trying to reduce the influence of European football.

Several teams have been unhappy with officials
Fifa has admitted that major mistakes have been made by referees at the World Cup.

President Sepp Blatter, who had already publicly criticised the standard of the assistant referees, now wants to review the way every official is chosen and assessed.

And he personally stepped in to oversee which officials were appointed for the semi-final matches, in an effort to avoid any further blunders.

The Mexican Edgard Codesal, member of the Refereeing Commission, revealed this monday the pressures that led to the designation of Ragoonath from Trinidad as line assistant of the match. Codesal announced his resignation of the commision, in the wake of Villar's (the Spanish representative)

Codesal revealed that Emerson Mathurin, president of referees from Concacaf, was hte one that proposed Ragoonath. Codesal admits that “there are pressures in all places. Mathurin has had trouble with everybody. It should be asked to the rest of his companions how they regard his work”.

Mathurin, from Santa Lucía (small Caribbean island), is the trusted right hand of Jack Warner, president of Concacaf and compatriot... of Ragoonath. Warner supported Blatter in the recent FIFA elections. Codesal denounces that “part of the renewal the Cocancaf must undergo is that Jack Warner from Trinidad must leave”.

Codesal goes on saying he's disillusioned with the ways things are in the FIFA and that his resignation is irrevokable as "it's unfair to continue in this fashion"


The trident Warner-Mathurin-Ragoonath was the protagonist of and odd episode in October of 2001. Warner organized in Trinidad y Tobago a 4 day course for referees and assistants. Who was the director of the course? Mathurin. Moreover, who was one of the 32 attending referees? Ragoonath. The last day of the course was dedicated to *the study of the offside rule*

Codesal admitted that he was shamed when he saw the Concacaf president, Jack Warner, embracing jubilant the president of the Republic of Korea, just after Spain's elimination.
"Those things just cannot happen...in public, in front of the TV cameras..that should never happen because both the followers and the team deserve justice."

Codesal talked again about Mathurin, the man that Concacaf had chosen to be inside the Ref Comission with thear mission of "placing" Ragoonath (from Trinidad y Tobago as Jack Warner, president of Concacaf) in the Spain-Korea match, something he would finally achieve. “He proposed four names; two refs and two assistants, of wich the Commission approved three,*and* that the assistant from Trinidad and Tobago had to be in the match. There existed pressions to designate the line judge”.