Criticism
Given the fact that the IFFHS was not created by a committee of national bodies linked to Football or the compilation of statistics related to this sport, the use of the words "federation" and "international" in its name is misleading about the origin and nature of this organization. This is in contrast with the case of FIFA, which was created by an initial group of eight national associations (those of Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and Sweden), progressively incorporating other countries until reaching the current membership of 209 associations.
In some cases continental football bodies are at odds with IFFHS statistics. The South American Football Federation (CONMEBOL), for example, recently ranked Ecuadorian Liga de Quito and Brazilian Internacional as first and second above third-placed Club Universidad de Chile in the pan-South America rankings. In comparison, the IFFHS ranked Quito and Internacional in 54th and 36th place respectively.
Karl Lennartz, a soccer expert and professor at the University of Cologne, Germany, calls the organization "obscure", describing it as a one man show of its chairman Alfredo Pöge.
Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA), Germany's largest press agency, refuses to publish stories involving IFFHS statistics.
Read more about this topic: International Federation Of Football History & Statistics
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)