It comes as no surprise that FIFA as been condemned worldwide as a hive of corruption and that Sepp Blatter, frankly, couldn’t care less about that. While the recent allegations of corruption are unproven, the behaviour of the organisation has been bizarre enough for many to conclude that they’re true. Certainly, there’s been some exceptionally dodgy behaviour involved - organisations that suspend their president’s only rival for re-election weeks before said election aren’t often given the benefit of the doubt - and while we must stress that the corruption charges are at this point merely allegations, they certainly seem like they’re true.
Let’s Talk FIFA And Sepp Blatter
Yes, FIFA are corrupt. But fans would be better off relegating Sepp Blatter and company to the dustbin of irrelevance than ignoring the games to focus on the organization.
Naturally, the media and much of Twitter has been sent into an absolute frenzy over this, allowing the story to overshadow pretty much everything else at the end of the season. Sepp Blatter held a press conference today and was roundly lambasted by more or less everyone after assuming a hilariously ‘screw you attitude’, leaving #blatterout as a worldwide trending topic and more or less everyone calling for a major change in FIFA. I’m not going to get into the alternative options (but find it funny that anyone thinks a fan-power based solution is a fix), but it’s pretty clear that everyone thinks FIFA needs to change for the good of football.
But it’s not just FIFA who need to change. The level of outrage over an organisation that essentially does nothing except hand World Cups to Qatar and then stews in its own corruptness is staggering, the prioritising of the misdeeds of a band of irrelevant elderly males as a story over what has actually been a phenomenal weekend of football is significantly more depressing than FIFA being corrupt in the first place.
If football is in such a poor state, why is it so much fun? We had the Champions League final, a wonderful slate of MLS games, an absurd playoff in the Eredivisie, and Swansea beat Reading 4-2 in a nPower Championship playoff final that will live long in the memory. And instead of all that, we’re talking about FIFA. Or at least, I’m talking about it, and you’re reading about it. Right now.
I understand that FIFA matters. It goes beyond the English and US media throwing a fit over not getting the World Cups they wanted (although that’s almost certainly part of it). FIFA is the top of the tree in terms of football, and there’s an argument to be made by far more talented people than I that if FIFA is rotten, the sport is rotten. That’s something I can subscribe to, to a certain degree. But how can FIFA possibly be more important than the actual games?
These clowns have power over us because they tell us they’re important, and we believe them. How much does it matter that a tournament every four years is held in a different time zone than theoretically convenient? How would FIFA changing actually make a difference in, say, my footballing life? The answer: It probably wouldn’t change a thing at all.
To those trying to make the world a better place: I commend you, but you might do well to remember that the world would be a better place if football itself mattered a little bit more than the people who run it.
