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| "Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!" |
Only the world cup doesn't belong to football, to fans or to clubs. It is owned by the people in the caption above, an intractable, dull and elitist group who share nothing but backhanders, and for that reason it becomes rather difficult to fully enjoy something that should be a pure pleasure. I would simply like to show you why.
Instead of representing the interests of fans,clubs or players, FIFA acts as a middle man for international companies in each world cup it organiser. Brazil for instance, has had to re-licence the sale of alcohol in stadiums (Budweiser) which had been previously banned for public health reasons, and most tournaments have to create exclusion zones for the sale of local goods and products near the stadium, to protect the interests of sponsors. More importantly, FIFA imposes conditions (under confidentiality agreements only the Dutch/Belgium bid have yet broke) on countries which require wholesale changes to taxation, this from a 'non-profit', 'charity' organisation which pays next to no tax in Switzerland where it is based and further sits on a $1billion dollar 'reserve', which they claim is in case of a World Cup cancellation, rather than for a particularly rainy day.
South Africa 2010 gave us a physical representation of FIFA's governmental takeover with the infamous 'World Cup courts'. These were fast track courtrooms reserved for World Cup related offences (thefts, sponsors rights being infringed upon) which bypassed the due process of South African justice - which hardly has an impeccable history itself. This is not just an issue for the developing world, the U.K. gave some tax concessions for the Olympics, as well as for the 2011 Champions League final, which suggests they may do again if the U.K. won a world cup bid.
Making such demands is clearly a political act, and leads to a moral tragedy. A lot has been written about the poor conditions within the cities of Brazil, and the obvious inequality of the shining Maracana and Rio's Favelas, the government should be directing their efforts to looking after their own people rather than multinationals. The corporate environment of World Cup makes it hard to really love it, yet this stems from the bypassing of the rules of democratic government. Why do companies need tax breaks to operate in Brazil? That FIFA grant exclusivity to the loss of the local population is shameful enough, but the need to avoid any sort of taxation suggest and excessive level of greed. Tournaments could easily exist without these conditions, sponsors could still make money and football's governing body could surely still exist, it is in fact the completely unnecessary nature of this co-opting of the stare that makes it so saddening.
To really love the World Cup again, this level of control has top be removed. At the base of it, even the excessive wages cannot stop the tournament bringing a sense of childlike excitement to someone as critical as me. The only way I would stop worrying though, is if FIFA changed its direction quite substantially, restoring some of the freedom and inclusiveness their co-opting of the state seems to rule out.
