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:
“Good criticism is very rare and always precious.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)