The biggest story in soccer right now isn't that the Sounders are leading all of Major League Soccer after Wednesday’s win over Colorado. Nor is it the upcoming Champions League final between Barcelona and Juventus, nor even the Women’s World Cup, which looms less than a month away.
No, the biggest story in soccer right now is the mass arrest of FIFA officials that has ranged from Switzerland to Trinidad, leaving some of the most powerful administrators in sports either behind bars or functionally under house arrest. It’s a fascinating story, a John le Carré novel unfolding in real time that has managed to hem in the power of the world’s worst man named Sepp.
On a fundamental level, these arrests are good: Powerful men who allegedly committed extensive indiscretions are now facing punishment for their actions. FIFA has been ostentatious in its disregard for international law and basic human decency. This kind of justice plays out too rarely in our society.
Yet the arrests also make me a little uneasy.
Firstly, it's weird that this is all happening at the behest of the US Justice Department. I'm used to America functioning as the world’s policeman in ways that defy logic. In this case, however, we're casting our gaze outward, cracking down on sports organizations in other countries while turning a blind eye to what’s happening within our own borders. Sure, FIFA bribes are explicitly illegal and ugly, but are they any more repugnant than our sports oligopolies extorting local governments? And in the case of the NFL, doing so while covering up evidence of the detrimental effects of playing the game on its athletes? Those are really bad, and the notion of the federal government doing anything about them is farcical.
Also, this all feels rather petty. The United States was expected to be awarded the World Cup in 2022, but instead the tournament went to Qatar. Is this a retaliatory move by the United States? No country is entitled to host a World Cup. And why shouldn’t Qatar have an event, even if they had to grease palms and leverage their autocracy to get it? Qatar is, to quote Jean-Ralphio, flush with cash. The wealth of the US is what makes them a compelling home for soccer's biggest event, not our history with the sport. So why not Qatar?
Well, there's a really good reason why Qatar should not have been awarded the World Cup. According to the Washington Post, Qatar is also flush with a humanitarian disaster directly related to the construction of stadiums for the event. Since 2010, 1,200 migrant workers have died. And estimates put the expected death toll at more than 4,000 by 2022. (Note that these are total migrant worker deaths, not just those exclusively related to the construction of stadiums.) Let’s let Google do some autocompleting for us:
"Death" should not be one of the first Google search autocompletes for your sports tournament. Ever. Obviously. And if the United States stepping in now doesn’t just stop a corrupt sports organization, but actually stops a mounting death toll? Well, I can more than abide US exceptionalism saving lives for once.
But the question remains, will this actually do anything? FIFA just happened to reelect Sepp Blatter, the head of FIFA, despite these arrests. But even if he had been deposed, would Jordanian Prince Ali, his top competitor, have changed the fundamental corruption plaguing world soccer? Or would Ali's relative lack of power (Blatter has been a bigshot at FIFA for decades) made him a Roger Goodell-esque stooge? Which is to say, at least Blatter has power to wield. The forces below him in the economy of world soccer are even uglier and, in their way, more corrupt.
For now though, this story is fascinating, and as the scope of it becomes clearer, hopefully the United States's place in the investigation will as well.
