Assignment 16 - Ethan MacGillivray

The World Cup is the biggest sporting event in the world. Every four years, people from across the globe come together for a summer of soccer. The final alone had a viewership totaling 1.013 billion in 2014 (ESPN FC). No matter what country it is played in, the tournament is always a grand affair with every single country participating receiving between 8 million and 35 million dollars (USA Today). But what happens behind the scenes is a sharp contrast to what the public eye sees on TV. The tournament has been ridden by controversy and scandal in recent years, which need to come to an end, preferably without affecting the upcoming tournaments. We need to create a pure organization, through the election of past players, or the tighter supervision of the entire process.

         The International Federation of Association Football, or FIFA, the organization that hosts the event, has been plagued with scandal in recent years. They are a group of elected officials from every country with a soccer federation that presides over all things to do with international soccer competition. Sepp Blatter was elected the president of FIFA in 1998, becoming one of the most powerful men in sports. To choose which country is to host future World Cups, a committee made up of 24 officials votes on each country that has placed a bid, based on their ability to host a successful tournament (BBC). In 2010, the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were chosen, and they were Russia and Qatar respectively. The 2018 selection surprised everyone, given that Russia was up against England, the favorite to win, given their rich history and abundance of stadiums, but England ended up getting only two votes. Even more surprising was the 2022 selection, where Qatar was chosen. During the tournament, temperatures will reach at least 120 degrees; they have absolutely no history in soccer, and no infrastructure to host the tournament. Furthermore, over four thousand people have already died building stadiums in Qatar.

         In response to these selections, a few investigations were launched to see how Russia and Qatar won the right to host the tournament. One of these was conducted by the United States, who eventually got to talk to a member of the Qatar 2022 bid committee. This woman told us that she witnessed the exchange of massive sums of money in return for the official voting for Qatar. After this investigation, and one conducted by the Swiss, where FIFA is based, there was a lot of information uncovered about federations bribing officials for votes, rigging the elections.

         Since then, at least 40 officials have been charged with being involved in one of the biggest scandals in sports history. Over 150 million dollars has been allegedly dished out to various officials on the committee in the years leading up to the selections (Rosenberg). Although Sepp Blatter was suspended for six years, this kind of behavior can’t be allowed to continue once he gets back, or ever.

         The US and the rest of FIFA needs to come together to aggressively attack the system of bribes and cheating that has plagued the sport of soccer in the past years. We need to establish a system where everyone involved has to be truthful and choose what is best going forward. This won’t be easy by any means, many officials have become accustomed to receiving millions of dollars in exchange for their vote, and it will be hard to break the cycle that the officials and soccer federations are used to.

         The real question isn’t why, but how we should go about doing this. Sepp Blatter has innumerable connections throughout the world of soccer, and many still give their unwavering support to him through his suspension. There is not a doubt in anyone’s mind that he will try to reclaim the FIFA presidency once he has served his suspension, and he could easily do it. Because every country is even in FIFA voting, small countries can heavily outweigh big countries, like the US. During his tenure, Sepp Blatter brought money into many of the poorer countries in FIFA, establishing relationships with their governments and soccer federations (Morlidge). Because of this, he has the undying support of many officials that are still in FIFA, enabling him to immediately regain the presidency, and carry on as if nothing ever happened.

         To prevent this, we must take precautionary measures to make sure that bribes and rigging can never be brought back into FIFA again. Even though eliminating all of the current officials from the organization and starting from scratch would be nothing but beneficial, it is completely unfathomable if you think about it realistically. No country would ever agree to that, and it would be unfair to the officials that didn’t do anything wrong.

         No matter what else we do, the most important thing is to have much tighter control over the voting system. To do this, one thing we should do is create an anonymous system, so the voters don’t know which countries are placing a bid, and the countries that are placing a bid don’t know who the voters are. This way, the voters find out which countries have placed a bid right before they vote on the subject, eliminating all chance for soccer federations to bribe the officials.

         A more radical, but not completely unimaginable way to go about fixing FIFA is by electing former payers to the committee. They possess years of personal insight on what it takes to play in a World Cup, and what is best for the players along the road leading up to the tournament. This would greatly reduce the problems with distributing money to players, which hurt three African teams in the 2014 tournament. These players would also be much less likely to ever take bribes, given they have invested their entire lives in the game.

         Overall, the world of soccer needs to come together, before Sepp Blatter’s suspension ends. We should reform the FIFA voting system, either by changing the process, or by changing the people involved. The system of cheating and lying your way to personal benefit needs to stop, in FIFA and the world.