Gabriele Marcotti: There's still hope Garcia Report may lead to justice being done

So unless you thought there wasn’t a “culture of entitlement” that made Fifa vulnerable to backhanders and corruption, then the report is, by and large, old news. That said, re-reading the individual testimony it is shocking how few of the bids come out of well (in fact, it’s only the Belgium-Netherlands bill who got a clean bill of health, detailed in just 37 words).

Between computer hard drives that get destroyed (Russia) or that suddenly can’t be accessed (Spain), executive committee members who decline to be interviewed, can’t be located or appear to threaten the investigators by questioning their jurisdiction, and brazen offers of assistance disguised as “development” (funny how the bidders are especially keen to devote development funds to nations that are home to a voting ExCo member) it quickly becomes obvious how much of a cess pit Fifa’s top committee was at the time.

And yet, there is no smoking gun. No actionable evidence for a new vote. Not according to the Ethics Committee anyway, which has limited itself to pursuing individual cases against five ExCo members.

Tempting as it may be to call it a whitewash, it is also worth remembering that Michael Garcia and his sidekick, Cornel Borbely, didn’t have police powers. They could not subpoena anybody. Nobody was under oath. All testimony was voluntary. And if documents were “lost” it’s not as if they had a forensic SWAT team at their disposal to find them.

Maybe that’s the real story here and the real hope. Sporting justice does not have the tools to go any further than this. But criminal justice - investigations brought in individual nations like the one in the United States that took down Blatter - are a different matter. Now the information is out there, you would hope individual nations - perhaps led by Britain and Australia - might pick up the ball and run with it.

It’s all there and downloadable from the Fifa website. The question is whether there really is an appetite to go after and grill the people involved, many of whom “fell short of ethical standards” according to the report’s limited investigative tools… particularly when they straddle the sphere between big business and politics.

THE Confederations Cup comes to a close today in Saint Petersburg with Chile and Germany contesting the final. And if this time it hasn’t made much of a splash it’s not just because the defending world champions left eight or nine of their biggest stars at home, the host nation aren’t particularly good at football right now and the European and South American champions - Portugal and Chile respectively - offer somewhat less in the glamour department than, say, Spain or Brazil.

Nope, it’s more a case that bad news resonates more than good news and there hasn’t been that much bad news to write about, certainly not when compared to South Africa 2009 or Brazil 2013. In addition to the usual concerns about organisation and infrastructure, Russia carried additional ones in terms of racism, hooliganism and security.

Those tests have been passed with flying colours. Logistics and transport worked well, at least in the four cities involved: Sochi, Moscow, Kazan and Saint Petersburg. The feared Russian hooligans haven’t been seen, other than in the many feature interviews they have give to western media. The biggest “crime story” concerned a Chilean journalist who had been overcharged by a taxi driver and called the police: it ended with the cabbie being arrested (he was later released after the Chilean declined to press charges) and the victim enjoying free transport for the duration of his stay. The only tale on the radar of anti-racism monitors had to do with some Mexican and Chilean fans directing homophobic slurs at certain players, in keeping with a long-standing - but rightly under fire - tradition.

So far, so good then. It doesn’t mean there aren’t potential problems down the road. The four Confederations Cup cities are one thing, how the other venues cope remains to be seen. Some grounds remain unfinished and, if reports are to be believed, well behind schedule. Transport is far from straight-forward given the distances involved and the fact that, if you are flying, in most cases you have to go via Moscow. Communication is bound to be tricky as well, for the simple fact that few people speak English - that’s true in Moscow and St Petersburg, let alone places like Saransk or Ekaterinburg - and the writing, obviously, is in cyrillic. And that’s before you get into the political situation, relations with Russia’s neighbours and the fact that, in such a centralised, top-down country, if something were to happen to Vladimir Putin, the nation would be thrown into chaos.

Thus far though, we are doing about as well as could be hoped and better than was feared. And that is not insignificant.

ON the football front, it is a good time to be German. On Friday, they won the European Under 21 Championships, overcoming heavily-favoured Spain. And, today, they could add the Confederations Cup to their trophy cabinet. Rather remarkable when you consider that their squad at this competition left out the likes of Toni Kroos, Manuel Neuer, Mats Hummels, Jerome Boateng, Sami Khedira, Leroy Sane and Benny Howedes. That meant Jogi Loew had to rely heavily on the Under 21 side to fill out his squad and the kids have been up to it. What is more, it also puts the Euro Under 21 triumph in context: they won the tournament despite missing eight guys who were with the national side in Russia.

There is no question about it. Loew’s single biggest problem at this stage is one of over-abundance. And that’s a good problem to have.