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:
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“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)
“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)