Historians tell us that in centuries past, some absolute rulers adopted a somewhat enlightened attitude to their vassals. Dictators they may have been, but benevolent ones who actually did some good things for their subjects. They were known as well, benevolent dictators or enlightened absolutists, and one of them, Emperor Joseph II of the Holy Roman Empire, described his reign as “Everything for the people, nothing by the people.” You may have seen a caricature of him in the movie “Amadeus”, when he pronounced that memorable advice: “Too many notes, Mozart, too many notes.”

Many observers will say that even today, centuries later, we have a benevolent dictator in our midst, and he runs world soccer. They refer to Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, the Swiss who runs the Federation Internationale Football Association (FIFA). Dictator he certainly is, trying to put his personal stamp on the world’s most popular game. Occasionally he is right, but too many times he comes across as a real numpty (a popular Scottish word to describe someone who embarrasses himself because of his own ignorance). Here’s a few of his best.

In 2004 he suggested that women players should have more feminine (read: skimpier) kit to increase the popularity of their game. That comment created uproar in the women’s game, needless to say. For the head of FIFA to suggest that players should be concerned about how they look, and not how they play, is the remark of a right numpty. Then he made himself look even more dumb when he added: “. . . they already have some different rules to men - such as playing with a lighter ball. That decision was taken to create a more female aesthetic, so why not do it in fashion?” (The ball is the same in men’s and women’s soccer.)

In the 2006 World Cup, after Australia were knocked out by Italy on a controversial late penalty-kick, he caused another brouhaha by publicly declaring that the penalty shouldn’t have been called. “I would like to apologize to our fans in Australia. The Socceroos should have gone into the quarter-finals in place of Italy . . .” This, from a man who never refereed at any decent level!

Not too many months later, in January of this year, he created more controversy when as a guest speaker on the eve of the election of a new president for UEFA, he came out and in his speech, publicly supported his long-time ally, Michel Platini, the great French midfielder. Would anyone in the audience dare to vote for the other candidate after that endorsement by the guy who controls the money? Conflict-of-interest rules apparently don’t apply when you are a dictator holding sway over 207 national associations which are members of FIFA. (The United Nations have only 192.) But his blathering didn’t stop there.

Somewhere he had developed the idea that for medical reasons it would be a good thing to ban matches at high altitude. That doesn’t affect many countries except some south American and Andean ones: Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and the place where Mexico play difficult matches (Toluca). It didn’t matter to the enlightened despot that there is no medical evidence of danger in playing a soccer match at eight or nine thousand feet, and it was only after outrage from the countries concerned, that a month later, FIFA rescinded the ban.

Blatter was made to look even more foolish when to emphasize the silliness of the original decision, the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, not only personally challenged the ruling in a meeting with FIFA’s caudillo, but traveled up to 6000 meters (almost 20,000 feet) with some of his staff and played a 15-minute game against some local mountain-dwellers. Morales scored the winning goal and also pronounced that “Wherever you can make love, you can play sports.” But for President Sepp, forced to back down, it was edictus interruptus.

It can’t be much fun being a dictator when no one listens to you. At least no one in the community you rule. Don’t they understand that I was making these suggestions for them? Don’t the women players want to be feminine and get sponsorship from cosmetic and lingerie companies? And why wouldn’t the Europeans want my friend Platini as their boss? I thought everyone would be happy that I supported the underdingos against the Italians, who have won the World Cup before, and it’s not fair for the Brazilians and Argentineans to climb mountains to play. Why don’t they love me and praise me?

Maybe the next thing to do is to take on a more powerful opponent, and show my people that I will protect them. I could imagine Sepp thinking that way, and sure enough, just over a week ago, he decided to take on nothing less than the entire European Union; not UEFA, but the EU itself. He must have thought that each member-nation in UEFA would agree that the most important part of soccer is the international match. If he protects the national teams, surely no one could object to that?

But most experts agree that the highest quality of play is not in internationals, but in international club play, or in national leagues, where the players are together week after week, perfecting their strategy and tactics. Blatter wants to reduce the number of foreign players on each team, for he thinks that that somehow will magically improve the quality of domestic players. “Blatter’s trying to protect the World Cup”, said Arsene Wenger, coach of Arsenal in the Premiership. “I’m trying to protect the quality of the game — they’re not the same thing.” Sometimes Wenger puts eleven foreigners on the field to represent his historic English club. “Do you really think that if I regularly started with five average English players, England would win the World Cup?”

Blatter’s foolishness lies not in his idea about foreigners, an idea which some writers agree with, because they are concerned that (for example) England haven’t been doing too well internationally since 1966. The fallacy in his thinking is that he can make the European Union give up one of the basic principles of its constitution: that labor is free to move about the continent. Fat chance! Blatter thinks that somehow soccer players are not like other employees, or maybe he admires the system in Major League Soccer, where the players sign contracts with the league, not individual clubs. Even Platini, his friend and protégé, thinks Blatter won’t win that fight.

Blatter, however, gave away his true motives for taking on the EU. “Football is strong enough to organize itself,” Blatter said, implying that labor laws should not apply to FIFA. He means that if the European Union backed down, he, the benevolent dictator, would be back in charge of all that he could see. No one in soccer could contradict him, for he and he alone knows what is best. And if you have any doubts about how the Swiss dictator operates, check here.