Too little, too late in Blatter's apology to Socceroos

FIFA president Sepp Blatter apologised to Australian football fans on SBS TV over the weekend, saying that we should have gone through to the World Cup quarter finals at the expense of Italy. Blind Freddy could see a few things:

1. this was, and has been interpreted in the Aussie press, to be an apology for the referee awarding a penalty in the dying moments for a blatant dive;
2. the diving in the World Cup was unfortunate and prominent, despite a FIFA warning before the Cup not to dive;
3. the refereeing was generally poor - one recalls the three yellow cards given to Simic in the Croatia v. Australia match.

So, why the apology? Perhaps Blatter and FIFA can see the merit in a strong game in Australia and they may have received anecdotal evidence that Australian fans of other football codes deride the diving and rolling-about-on-the-ground of "soccer".

I for one am wary of welcoming Blatter's comments, given that his FIFA said Oceania would get a direct qualification spot to the 2006 World Cup but then he recanted under pressure from South America (the conference likely to lose the requisite 0.5 slot to give Oceania 1 slot).

Nonetheless, you can't get higher official recognition that we were robbed in the group-of-16 Italy match. The facts now show that Italy went on to win the World cup and one must wonder: what might have been.