Maybe you will be one of the likely two billion viewers avidly watching the World Cup on television over the next month. Or maybe you’ll keep the set turned off for fear of being drawn in to watch it willy-nilly. Or maybe your better half will give you no choice. Either way you’re unlikely to miss the fact that this four-yearly global soccer-fest will be trying to monopolise everyone’s attention till the victor kicks the winning goal in Rio on 13 July. But is the World Cup the crowning event of the planet’s most popular sport? Or is it a monster devouring what it should be nurturing, by polluting the original values of a popular, amateur game, and miring the sport in corruption and indefensible expense?
Statistically here is no doubting that football is the world’s greatest sport. No other game comes near it in its command of public attention. The most recent figures show that it seized 43% of the global sports event market. American football got nowhere near that figure, attracting only 13%. Baseball accounted for only 12%. Cricket, despite the size of India’s cricket-crazed population, isn’t in the same ballpark, so to speak.
So when Brazil was chosen to host the 2014 World Cup genuine football supporters must have thought this would provide an opportunity for the greatest celebration ever of the beautiful game. After all, no country is madder about soccer than Brazil, so Brazilians would be sure to create a huge love-in for the game. Initially, that seemed to be the case. But it hardly describes the mood in the country now, let alone among those on international football’s governing body, Fifa, who have assembled there to watch the contest.
Turn on your telly in these early stages of the tournament and you are as likely to see Brazilian police locked in violent confrontation with protestors as you are to catch the teams kicking a ball about. For far from enjoying their moment in the spotlight, many football-loving Brazilians have become alienated and outraged by the cost of the whole jamboree, acutely aware as they are of how many better ways the money could be spent in a country that, though powering ahead economically, still suffers enormous poverty.
It is a story familiar from previous World Cups and other international sporting junkets, like the Olympic Games. The initial estimate for the cost of Brazil, 2014 was £1bn, to be raised privately. It’s now thought the bill will come in around £11bn, in part at least because Fifa insists on the equivalent of gold-plated taps everywhere. The promise is always made that the outlay will be worth it because of the longer-lasting economic benefits such events are supposed to bring to the host country. But it almost never works out like that, in terms either of increased jobs, greater tourism revenues or faster growth.
Instead, when everyone has gone home, the host country is left with unusable stadiums where the weeds grow up through the cracks in the concrete, often built on land compulsorily seized from the poor who never get the compensation they were promised. And there is also a whopping bill to pay. It will be quite a surprise if Brazil turns out to be the exception, either after the World Cup this year or once again in two years time, when the Olympic bandwagon will temporarily take over the country before leaving its taxpayers to pick up the tab.
If this were not depressing enough, the 2014 World Cup is overshadowed by an internal scandal, within Fifa itself. Football’s international governing body has, to put it mildly, never enjoyed a reputation as a model of how to run a sport with probity and selfless commitment to the values of the game itself. Its decision some years ago to award the prize of hosting the 2022 World Cup to Qatar seemed to confirm everyone’s worst suspicions. Given the Gulf state’s lack of historical interest in the game and the fact that the country’s searing temperatures in the summer would make it dangerous, if not impossible, for any matches to be played, most observers concluded that only corruption could explain the decision. Now evidence has emerged which seems to justify the belief.
The Sunday Times has been publishing extracts from a huge trawl of emails which appear to implicate Mohammed bin Hammam, the Qatari former vice-president of Fifa, in alleged bribery of African officials in order to secure the bid from Fifa. The allegation is that a slush fund of $5m was used for this purpose, something Mr bin Hammam and the Qatari authorities strenuously deny. Fifa has launched its own inquiry but its critics say this is no more than window-dressing since the lawyer in charge of the investigation has no power to interview former Fifa officials, and Mr bin Hammam was fired from his job several years ago on other grounds.
Presiding over all this is Sepp Blatter, the 78-year-old boss of Fifa. This week he was disowned by the body running European football, Uefa, to whom he had promised that when his current, fourth term as president of Fifa came to an end, he would not seek another term. That, however, is exactly what he is now doing. And, despite Uefa’s opposition, he is likely to be re-elected because of support from enough other countries within Fifa.
Is that because they can see virtues in Mr Blatter to which the Europeans are curiously blind? Possibly. But there is a more obvious explanation: that the system works in a self-perpetuating, mutual back-scratching way that makes a mockery of the whole election process. According to Roger Pielke, a professor at the University of Colorado, “Fifa is a patronage organisation. The people at the centre disburse financial rewards to those at the periphery responsible for electing them.”
It seems that little can be done about this, even us the stench pervades the stadiums. Some suggest the outraged Europeans should simply pick up their ball and walk away. That, though, would mean the end of the World Cup, or certainly in the form we know it. And in any case most insiders say the Europeans would never reach the necessary consensus to do it. So things are likely to carry on as ever.
Does this matter? Some would say not. After all, what interests them is not the politics behind the scenes, however grubby they may appear to be. What matters is that we should be able to watch our football heroes kicking their way to national glory. We shouldn’t get so serious about it all. We should just lie back on the sofa, six-packs in the cooler, and enjoy the show. After all, it’s only a game, isn’t it? And as to whether a highly paid professional who manages to do what he’s paid to do and kick a ball into a net deserves the “hero” title… well, that’s a debate for another day.
Is that your view? If not, what is?
