Football is the most popular sport in the world, a game that elicits so much passion and is a showcase of artistry, elegance and talent. The body that sits at the apex of power in football administration is FIFA. FIFA controls the game of football. FIFA is a registered nonprofit in Switzerland earning billions of dollars.
On Wednesday May 28, 2015 the world woke up to a sensational staged for the cameras show where in the early dawn 8 high ranking officials of FIFA mostly from Latin America and the Caribbean were arrested at their plush hotel in Zurich where they were staying for the upcoming FIFA conference on Friday which was expected to reelect Sepp Blatter to another term as FIFA president.
We are told by the Propaganda of Record, The New York Times, that the arrests were sanctioned by the US and its Attorney-General Loretta Lynch which believes that those arrested officials are involved in corrupt practices dating from the award of the World Cup to South Africa and then to Russia and Qatar. They claimed that they were on an exceptional mission to clean world football of corruption. The rationale they gave for applying US law to these FIFA officials was that they had laundered their bribe money through US banks, so this gives American authorities the right to prosecute these officials.
The nature of the raid was very suspicious. There were the Propaganda of Record, The New York Times, journalists conveniently on hand to witness the entire clownish spectacle. It is interesting to note how the New York Times has become an arm of the US Justice Department. We all knew it was already an arm of the State Department. Maybe it is high time they officially declare they are just another federal agency with an office in Time Square.
Let us now parse the real political reasons for this spectacle. We all know that international sports is rife with corruption with the US no exception. Corruption in the National Football League (NFL) in America is well documented with kickbacks and bribes paid in the millions. So why the laser like focus on FIFA and not on corruption in American sports?
The US put in a bid to host the World Cup in 2022 never mind that It had hosted it in 1994. Former US president Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State in 2010 lobbied FIFA for the US to be given the hosting rights. But FIFA rather chose Qatar to host the 2022 world cup. Mr. Clinton and Mr. Kissinger were so enraged that they huffed and puffed vowing to bring down FIFA by exposing the deep rooted corruption in FIFA.
Never mind that the Clinton Foundation owned by the Clintons is a well-known cesspool of corruption for accepting kickbacks and shady money from corrupt regimes in the Middle East to lobby their interests to the US government and the military-industrial complex.
We also should not forget Noble Peace Prize winning Henry Kissinger who authorized the massive bombing of Laos during the Vietnam War, a bombing which saw more bombs dropped on Laos than the entire quantity of bombs dropped for the entire World War 2.
These two are certainly paragons of morality and ethics to root out corruption in FIFA! We wish them a hearty best of luck in their righteous work for the lord! Hence after 2010, US secret services began a well-coordinated campaign against FIFA to bring the organization under their control.
Another western country which is raving mad about losing the bid to host the World Cup in 2018 is the UK. The UK lost to Russia the right to host the world cup in 2018. The British since then have been deliriously claiming that the Russians paid kickbacks to FIFA officials to be given the right to host the games in Russia in 2018 although they have not shown any iron-clad proof of that.
Now, we come to the geopolitics of the entire raid.
Since the start of the Ukrainian crisis many entities in the west have been calling for the world cup to be taken away from Russia because of its “aggression” in the Ukraine. Never mind that US aggression in Iraq and Libya just recently still gives the US the exceptional right to host the world cup in 2022 as the west thinks.
In fact two US senators Mr. McCain and Mr. Menendez sent a letter to FIFA to withdraw the hosting rights of the 2018 world cup from Russia. They followed up with another letter to FIFA associations not to vote for Mr. Sepp Blatter in the upcoming presidential elections in FIFA. They say Mr. Blatter is too chummy with Mr. Putin and that he has refused to take away the 2018 hosting rights from Russia.
Never mind that Mr. Blatter cannot do that. It is FIFA delegates from the national associations that are members of FIFA that decide something like that. But the fact that Mr. Obama being chummy with the head chopper in chief, King of Saudi Arabia, is okay in the realm of human rights and western values to say the least.
The real reason for the raid is not to unearth corruption in FIFA which we all know is deep, but to wrestle control of global football back to the western world. Note that the 2010 world cup was held in a non-western country South Africa, the 2014 world cup was held in a non-western Brazil, the 2018 world cup is going to be held in a nonwestern Russia, the 2022 world cup is going to be held in a non-western Qatar. Remember that the last time a western country held the world cup was in 2006 when it was held in Germany.
This means that for 16 years the western world will not get to host the biggest sporting event in the world and this is something they cannot bear. It just accelerates their decline and showcases the rise of the non-west. Hence this geopolitical move to embarrass FIFA and wrest control over global sports back to the “exceptional” west.
We can even now hear calls from westerners that the 2018 world cup should be taken away from Russia and given to the UK and the 2022 world cup taken from Qatar and given to the US. FIFA has said it will not do so. If it does so, that will be catastrophic for world football and will rather just accelerate the loss of control by the west of the levers of global football.
The reason why FIFA president Mr. Blatter had wanted to expand the geographical areal of hosting the world cup is simply for the fact that majority of the football loving population in the world is in the non-western world and as the nexus of global economic power is evidently moving to the non-western world, it makes sense for FIFA to maintain its credibility by having the increasingly powerful non-western countries host the world cup. The west has ceased to be the economic center of the world and FIFA even in its deep corruption understands that fact.
If the western world continues its drive to wrest back control of the global games the world cup back to the west, then the non-western countries should leave FIFA to them.
The countries of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Russia, China and the rest of Asia can form another body to host the world cup. After all, these regions contain the majority of the world population and with Asia now becoming the center of economic power in the world, these regions have the resources to host the world cup with all its excitement. The western world can host its own games if they so desire, after all that will be none of our business.
