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.
Monday, June 8, 2015
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