* On some level the US going after FIFA really is just a smaller-scale and less harmful version of invading Iraq or stirring up violence in the Ukraine. They’re trying to impose their values, like democracy and integrity, on low-trust societies where those values aren’t going to work.
Fun fact: we don’t have words for “integrity” or “gender” in my Eastern European country. We had to import them recently from English.
* As you imply Steve, big sport is all corrupt, and that corruption spreads right up to the highest echelons. For example, deep down, every horse-punter knows that racing is all rigged, yet they still keep wasting money following it.
Fifa is an interesting case. Basically, England, the world’s biggest soccer nation – a nation which literally has billions upon billions of pounds, and a fair amount of export earnings, tied up in this ‘sport’ – was severely aggrieved when they weren’t awarded the world cup – which they saw as their ‘right’, correctly sniffed corruption at FIFA – although this is stating the obvious – and have been gunning for the head of Sepp Blatter ever since in that nasty, incessant witch-hunty sort of way only the British tabloid press can do.
Now, Blatter seems a decent enough fellow who isn’t any more ‘corrupt’ than any other FIFA boss, but the British tabloid press in full throat combined with the full pomposity of the BBC matched with a sense of wounded English pride is a ferocious beast, that just will not ease off.
The irony is that the domestic UK soccer industry is the most low down money grubbing cynical excuse for a ‘sport’ ever devised.
