Bribery And Corruption In The Football World
FIFA Uncovered is a four-part documentary movie on Netflix that–in total–is over four hours long. Below is a detailed summary of it all, as well as our thoughts.
The documentary aims to show that there is some political corruption within the FIFA body. We must first commend the makers of this documentary for how well-detailed it is. Regardless of whether you had prior knowledge of how football governing works or not, they carry you along, taking you through it step by step.
Prologue
FIFA began like every other startup there is, with a few individuals and without much financial backing. The main man at the time was João Havelange, who brought Sepp Blatter on board. FIFA didn’t have much money then, so Blatter approached companies like Coca-Cola and Adidas for sponsorship. That was the beginning of something new–with Havelange as the President and Blatter as the Secretary-General (second in command).
The Documentary then took us to Concacaf (The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football), where we were shown what its president, Jack Warner–a man from Trinidad and Tobago–did to some of his national team players who asked for a certain percentage for qualifying for the World Cup. It would seem that it was there that the corruption had begun, at least for that part of the footballing world.
From there, it was shown how South Africa paid $10M to this same Jack Warner, in their bid to host the World Cup.
Before we get into the main story, we must mention that we aren’t entirely surprised. Once money and power are involved, there is usually even an atom of corruption. The point, however, in this case, is to highlight how deeply corruption has eaten into the system.
As we said, this was just the prologue–something to water the ground.
The Story
Blatter became the 3rd FIFA President in 1998. Apparently, he asked Havelange to step down and make him his successor (since he had proof of the dirty things he had done).
Usually, when countries come to bid to host the World Cup, it’s done for the next available year. But when Blatter was in power, he decided to make the bids for 2018 and 2022 hosting open. Bidding countries typically ‘drop small something‘ when they come to bid. Blatter saw it as an avenue to cash in and collect bidding “bribes” from interested countries. His thinking was that he would no longer be on a seat by the time the next bidding was to be conducted.
All the FIFA executives had already agreed that the 2018 World Cup would be hosted by a European country and 2022, by a country outside Europe. As you know, Russia won the 2018 bid and Qatar won 2022.
From this point, the documentary suddenly seemed to be focused on the circumstances surrounding Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 World Cup (nothing was even said about Russia’s 2018 hosting).
Our attention was called to how Qatar bribed three of the African exco members (amongst whom was a certain Nigerian Amos Adamu). And then how some Qatari (a person from Qatar) took over PSG and immediately pumped big money into the club. Note that PSG is the biggest club in France football, and the President of UEFA, Michel Platini, was French. This was suggesting that Platini’s vote was bought as well.
Along the line, the president of Asian football, Bin-Hammam, a Qatari, challenged Blatter for the FIFA presidency. Blatter in a bid to soil his image, brought up all manner of allegations against Bin-Hammam which eventually forced him to withdraw.
It’ll interest you to know that both Blatter and Bin-Hammam were invited to this documentary and none of this was done behind their backs.
Jack Warner–the Concacaf President–had resigned because of his involvement in the Bin-Hammam controversy and decided to get his payback. Chuck Blazer was a U.S. citizen and Blatter’s Secretary General, who had been enjoying the money he was getting from FIFA’s illegal dealings before the FBI came into the picture (because Blazer is from the United States).
You know how in Hollywood movies, the FBI uses someone as a rat to snitch on a group? That was Blazer. In retaliation, Jack Warner had reported Blazer’s dirty doings to the FBI, who then cornered Blazer, and made him blow the whistle on FIFA’s corruption.
In 2015, there was a huge upset in FIFA, with so many arrests and eventually Blatter’s resignation.
The next person in line was supposed to be Platini, but somehow, his previous bad deeds resurfaced and Gianni Infantino became the 4th FIFA president (and still is to date).
Epilogue
With all of this, there was so much drama surrounding Qatar’s hosting (some talk about migrant workers dying while trying to bring the country up to host-nation-standard). We’re even surprised that eventually, Qatar is hosting the 2022 world cup. What we can say about all of this is that some people just didn’t want Qatar to host this world cup because of their LGBTQ ban.
Anyhow, with the kind of selections that countries have made for their national teams, we can only hope that the World Cup Qatar 2022 lives up to its billing.
Before we leave, in the end, just very few of all the allegations against Blatter and Bin-Hammam were accepted to be true.
Was this just a play at relevance?
#Sport is a segment that keeps you abreast of everything happening in the world of sports, shares facts, and sometimes also takes you down memory lane to relive some unforgettable sporting moments. In this edition, we summarize the Netflix documentary, FIFA Uncovered.
