Monday, June 8, 2015

The Weekly Screed (#723)

What’s beautiful about it?
By David Benjamin

“If you’re pious, friend, open a church. Our business is our business.”
                               —    Jack Warner, indicted FIFA executive

PARIS — The prosecutors who uncovered the vast sinkhole of sleaze in FIFA, the world professional soccer outfit, dug really deep and worked hard to nail the perps, who still might include FIFA fuehrer Sepp Blatter. But, in a way, they didn’t need to look further than the logo on the jersey of FC Barcelona, the futbol team that just beat Italian power Juventus in the European Champions League final.

Corruption is spelled out plainly and proudly on that jersey, which doesn’t say, “Barcelona.” There isn’t a FIFA-governed professional soccer club anywhere that carries the nickname, city or logo of that team. Instead, they advertise.

Soccer fans patiently explain to American ignoramuses like me that my objection to using soccer players as corporate billboards is proof that I cannot possibly grasp the intricate nuances intrinsic to the “beautiful game.”

Yeah, right.

The Barcelona boys play proudly and loyally for Qatar Airways. That’s Qatar, an infinitesimal oilocracy in North Africa with no soccer stadiums, which has never qualified for the World Cup, whose princes bribed FIFA officials countless millions for the rights to host the 2022 tournament. That’s Qatar, where summer temperatures reach 140 degrees Fahrenheit, a climatic reality that poses for the world’s best soccer players the prospect of sprinting back and forth on a 100-yard hotplate for 90-plus minutes in a mid-day sun that has already killed at least 964 of the construction workers who’ve been put to work building those soccer pitches.

Barcelona’s players apparently see no symbolism or irony in representing Qatar more openly than their home city. Nor do their fans seem to mind that they’re cheering, drinking and beating each other up on behalf of Qatar Airways (which most of them can’t afford to fly). Nor did the fans of Juventus, in that Champions League final, display any misgivings about their passionate support for the logo printed on their heroes’ jerseys. No, it’s not “Juventus.” It says: “Jeep.”

“Go, Jeepers?”

I wonder about the conflicted loyalties among fans of FC Milano (Italy) when they play French rival Paris St. Germain. Both teams compete under the strange device, “Fly Emirates” (as do Arsenal and Real Madrid). When all the millionaires on both teams are flying Emirates and getting paid by the same bunch of billionaire oil sheiks in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, does it really matter who wins?

As long as the fans file in like sheep and wave their scarves…

Sponsorships in the FIFA empire include two teams — the Glasgow Rangers and Aston Villa in Britain — sponsored by online gambling companies. My friend John in London, who defends soccer as fiercely as I support the Green Bay Packers, roots for the venerable Tottenham Hotspurs. But the Hotspurs don’t play for John. They play, according to their jerseys, for AIA (formerly AIG), a disgraced insurance company now based in China. Russia’s top two teams, Zenit St. Petersburg and CSKA Moskva, wear the logos of giant state-owned corporations, Gazprom and OAO Rossetti. In sum, both squads are President Putin’s boys.

“Go, Vlads?”

The epitome of cognitive dissonance in FIFA sponsorships is Atletico Madrid, a team who — because they’re in it for the money, after all — have renounced both nation and city to wear a jersey that reads: “Azerbaijan, Land of Fire.”

I struggle for a comparison. What if the Packers were to give up the green-and-gold for promo-jerseys that say, “Minnesota: Land of 10,000 Lakes”?

After the FIFA indictments started piling up, the most ludicrous story in the sporting press puzzled over the absence of outrage among FIFA’s “sponsors.” The sportswriter was referring, I guess, to Qatar Airways, Gazprom, the Emirates Group, T-Mobile, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Hyundai, Kia, Budweiser, VISA and VW, among others — rootless, faceless, amoral multinationals who — for decades — gladly ponied up kickbacks and bribes and laundered it white before they slipped it to Chairman Sepp, probably in one of those bullet-proof silver-ribbed briefcases with a combination lock and a set of handcuffs.

Moneyed interests, of course, are rampant in pro sports, even the “amateur” ones, like NCAA football and AAU basketball. But few athletic cartels have sold out as eagerly and openly as FIFA — who displays its fealty to filthy lucre on the chest of every player on every team on earth. I’ll believe FIFA has actually cleaned up its act when Catalonian soccer nuts can fork over 80 euros for a replica jersey that says, “Barcelona” instead of an Arabian airline. Or my friend John can get one that doesn’t advertise an insurance company.

“Go, Underwriters?”

Right now, the “beautiful game” is played by athletes and watched by fans who are forced to offer public tribute to banks, sheiks and kleptocrats who don’t reside in their hometown, support the local schoolkids, know the players’ names or even follow the damn standings. It is governed by a club of aged plutocrats, most of whom never played and who understand it less well than even an American ignoramus like me. I know this because, while they’ve gotten rich, the Blatter gang — and the Joao Havelange coterie before them — did nothing, in decades, to make soccer cleaner, fairer, more fan-friendly or more entertaining.

Soccer is boring — compared to almost any other sport (except possibly Scrabble) — not because it’s players are boring, but because its coaches, its owners and its administrators are indifferent to everything about their “beautiful game” except its almighty bottom line.

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