The gringos vs. FIFA
Old news: in Switzerland, the U.S. government has caused a dozen or so of FIFA’s bigwigs to be arrested.
No doubt these bigwigs are guilty of corruption. No doubt they’ve violated international law – or, under U.S. jurisdiction, U.S. law. I don’t know the details … but I’m sure the gringos can legally justify the arrests.
According to the Russians, this is just “another case of illegal extra-territorial implementation of American law.”
But I don’t think it is illegal. Or I’ll assume it isn’t, for discussion’s sake.
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Nor will it matter to what I’m going to say that the arrests are being done in a vindictive spirit.
What if the U.S., and not Qatar, had been awarded the 2022 World Cup hosting rights? Would the gringos have pursued the bigwigs? I doubt it.
But I won’t dwell on this.
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What interests me is how FIFA’s members will react to the arrests, and what all of this means for international tournaments.
FIFA’s members, the national soccer bodies, determine how FIFA is governed; and up until now, what they’ve done is to insist on FIFA’s (and their own) autonomy from sovereign states. No national soccer body is permitted by FIFA to be housed by an interfering state. A national soccer body is punished by FIFA if the state which houses it does not refrain from meddling in its affairs (and in those of the soccer bodies of other nations).
This is to preserve the integrity and voluntariness of the sport. FIFA wishes to arrange neither gladiatorial contests between slaves, nor “champion” warfare between nations.
Punishment takes the form of simple banning. FIFA isn’t going to confront anybody with planes and tanks, but it may disallow teams from playing in tournaments.
There are lighter bans, too.
For example, in 1993, the Aussie government refused to allow Diego Maradona to play against Australia in a World Cup qualifier. (Aussie law blocked convicted drug offenders from entering the country.) FIFA judged that this was an unwelcome political intrusion upon the sport, and threatened to move Australia’s home game to a neutral site. The Aussie government relented. Maradona was allowed to play.
Notice: the Aussie government could have permitted its soccer federation to receive punishment. Or, in protest, it could have withdrawn the Socceroos from the World Cup. It did neither of those things. It chose to refrain from enforcing the law of the state.
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Faced with lawbreaking, the U.S. government also could have chosen this option. But instead it has chosen to prosecute FIFA’s elected officials.
Let me stress that in the present case, the gringos aren’t just reacting to a crime. In effect, they’re enforcing their own idea of how FIFA should be governed, not minding that these officials were elected, wisely or foolishly, by FIFA’s other members.
Now usually when the U.S. government behaves like this, there is little that the opposition can do. But this time the opposition has a good deal of clout. The national soccer bodies have the power to impose some kind of ban against the U.S. Soccer Federation.
Will they do it? My guess is, no. Should they do it? Well, yes, if they want to preserve their autonomy from the states.
This is the situation. X, Y, and Z have long been coming together to hold a sporting contest – jointly deciding how to hold it. Those who won’t cooperate simply are left out. But now the godfather of one of the contestants is insisting, coercively, that the contest not be held in a certain way.
Suppose X, Y, and Z acquiesce. Whose contest is it, then? Is it still theirs? One thing, for sure: it’s the godfather’s. The participants, X, Y, and Z, are no longer making the decisions of this joint activity all on their own.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Do the various national soccer bodies really want the gringos to have de facto veto power over them?
My guess is, they’ll put up with it, because the U.S. has a lot of political and cultural influence – as well as a lot of money, some of which will trickle down.
In effect, the soccer bodies will be selling out, again … and then again … and as long as they continue to allow the U.S. to have de facto veto power. And by selling out to this (de facto) administrator, they’ll be privileging one participant over the others; and not just for one tournament (as Qatar is being privileged for 2022) – or even for a handful of tournaments – but indefinitely.
If the soccer bodies set out to contain corruption on their own, they’ll at least be able to do it with some fairness. The sporting benefits of corruption will be spread out more or less evenly around the world. Contestants like Qatar will have fifteen minutes of glory, and that’s all.
But if the gringos have veto power over the governance of FIFA, the sporting benefits will skew towards them. I couldn’t specify the mechanism. But we all know how it’ll turn out.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
For the sake of sport, then, I think that what the gringos are doing is bad, and that FIFA will be shirking its sporting duty if it doesn’t punish them. This isn’t yet an argument about morality (though one may try to draw further moral lessons from it). Morally, is U.S. hegemony in global affairs a bad or a good thing? I know what I think about that, but I don’t have the time to discuss it here. It’s taken long enough for me just to hint at how tacky it is that the U.S. should dictate sporting justice. Moral justice is yet another problem.
No doubt these bigwigs are guilty of corruption. No doubt they’ve violated international law – or, under U.S. jurisdiction, U.S. law. I don’t know the details … but I’m sure the gringos can legally justify the arrests.
According to the Russians, this is just “another case of illegal extra-territorial implementation of American law.”
But I don’t think it is illegal. Or I’ll assume it isn’t, for discussion’s sake.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Nor will it matter to what I’m going to say that the arrests are being done in a vindictive spirit.
What if the U.S., and not Qatar, had been awarded the 2022 World Cup hosting rights? Would the gringos have pursued the bigwigs? I doubt it.
But I won’t dwell on this.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
What interests me is how FIFA’s members will react to the arrests, and what all of this means for international tournaments.
FIFA’s members, the national soccer bodies, determine how FIFA is governed; and up until now, what they’ve done is to insist on FIFA’s (and their own) autonomy from sovereign states. No national soccer body is permitted by FIFA to be housed by an interfering state. A national soccer body is punished by FIFA if the state which houses it does not refrain from meddling in its affairs (and in those of the soccer bodies of other nations).
This is to preserve the integrity and voluntariness of the sport. FIFA wishes to arrange neither gladiatorial contests between slaves, nor “champion” warfare between nations.
Punishment takes the form of simple banning. FIFA isn’t going to confront anybody with planes and tanks, but it may disallow teams from playing in tournaments.
There are lighter bans, too.
For example, in 1993, the Aussie government refused to allow Diego Maradona to play against Australia in a World Cup qualifier. (Aussie law blocked convicted drug offenders from entering the country.) FIFA judged that this was an unwelcome political intrusion upon the sport, and threatened to move Australia’s home game to a neutral site. The Aussie government relented. Maradona was allowed to play.
Notice: the Aussie government could have permitted its soccer federation to receive punishment. Or, in protest, it could have withdrawn the Socceroos from the World Cup. It did neither of those things. It chose to refrain from enforcing the law of the state.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Faced with lawbreaking, the U.S. government also could have chosen this option. But instead it has chosen to prosecute FIFA’s elected officials.
Let me stress that in the present case, the gringos aren’t just reacting to a crime. In effect, they’re enforcing their own idea of how FIFA should be governed, not minding that these officials were elected, wisely or foolishly, by FIFA’s other members.
Now usually when the U.S. government behaves like this, there is little that the opposition can do. But this time the opposition has a good deal of clout. The national soccer bodies have the power to impose some kind of ban against the U.S. Soccer Federation.
Will they do it? My guess is, no. Should they do it? Well, yes, if they want to preserve their autonomy from the states.
This is the situation. X, Y, and Z have long been coming together to hold a sporting contest – jointly deciding how to hold it. Those who won’t cooperate simply are left out. But now the godfather of one of the contestants is insisting, coercively, that the contest not be held in a certain way.
Suppose X, Y, and Z acquiesce. Whose contest is it, then? Is it still theirs? One thing, for sure: it’s the godfather’s. The participants, X, Y, and Z, are no longer making the decisions of this joint activity all on their own.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Do the various national soccer bodies really want the gringos to have de facto veto power over them?
My guess is, they’ll put up with it, because the U.S. has a lot of political and cultural influence – as well as a lot of money, some of which will trickle down.
In effect, the soccer bodies will be selling out, again … and then again … and as long as they continue to allow the U.S. to have de facto veto power. And by selling out to this (de facto) administrator, they’ll be privileging one participant over the others; and not just for one tournament (as Qatar is being privileged for 2022) – or even for a handful of tournaments – but indefinitely.
If the soccer bodies set out to contain corruption on their own, they’ll at least be able to do it with some fairness. The sporting benefits of corruption will be spread out more or less evenly around the world. Contestants like Qatar will have fifteen minutes of glory, and that’s all.
But if the gringos have veto power over the governance of FIFA, the sporting benefits will skew towards them. I couldn’t specify the mechanism. But we all know how it’ll turn out.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
For the sake of sport, then, I think that what the gringos are doing is bad, and that FIFA will be shirking its sporting duty if it doesn’t punish them. This isn’t yet an argument about morality (though one may try to draw further moral lessons from it). Morally, is U.S. hegemony in global affairs a bad or a good thing? I know what I think about that, but I don’t have the time to discuss it here. It’s taken long enough for me just to hint at how tacky it is that the U.S. should dictate sporting justice. Moral justice is yet another problem.