A Cast Of Timeless Villains Revisited

“It’s frustration,” says World Cup general secretary Hassan Al Thawadi, with a straight face, when confronted with longstanding accusations by whistleblower Phaedra Almajid that Qatar’s bid campaign in a hotel in Angola bribed Issa Hayatou, Jacques Anouma and Amos Adamu, three powerful soccer officials, to land the hosting rights to the 2022 World Cup. “They are inherently false and there are facts on the ground that prove they are false.”

It’s one of the most dramatic moments in ‘FIFA Uncovered’, Netflix’sNFLX
newly released docu-series that focuses on the corruption that led to the FifaGate scandal and the downfall of Joseph Blatter, FIFA’s modern godfather. Al Thawadi even produces crocodile tears when he explains his ‘bout of depression’ after FIFA awarded Qatar with the hosting rights in 2010 and the Gulf nation faced a barrage of criticism. It was just the beginning: the outrage shifted from allegations of corruption to Qatar’s lamentable treatment of migrant workers – and the criticism has never stopped. Al Thawadi counters the accusations of vote-buying: “Gas is what we build our future on, we are not going to use it to buy a World Cup vote.”

The docu-series explains FIFA’s history of corruption in a comprehensive fashion for a global audience – and does so with verve. Ricardo Teixeira, Jerome Valcke and Mohammed Bin Hammam are among those whose interviews enrichen the story, often brilliantly told by investigative journalists Ken Bensinger, from the US, and David Conn, from England. From Joao Havelange to Chuck Blazer, the entire cast of villains that misappropriated the global game, feature. Havelange transformed FIFA from an amateur federation to a global, capitalist business. Blazer was the epitome of the Blatter-era official, obsessed with self-enrichment, acting from a position of absolute insulation, but the chickens came home to roost on that infamous 27th of May 2015.

The casting of Sepp Blatter, 86, is excellent. The eternal survivor was according to Conn ‘consummate at external politics’ and fell, not because of all the scandals and corruption under his leadership, but after a disloyal payment to Michel Platini, his protegée. Sepp remains the old pantomime villain, once seen as a corrupt, old uncle in a more centrist world. Blatter’s grin is still mischievous. He talks openly about politicking and eliminating powerful rivals. He knows neither remorse nor introspection. Guido Tognoni summarises his former boss’s character: “Blatter couldn’t control his ambition. He was the real Machiavelli of sports.”

The same lack of self-analysis applies to Blatter’s sidekick Jerome Valcke, FIFA’s secretary general from 2007 to 2015. Reflecting on all the scandals and turbulence, the Frenchman says dryly, ‘We were not perfect.’

The series however has a major flaw: it lets Gianni Infantino completely off the hook. Netflix producers do not scrutinize his record and while the incumbent constantly claims and trumpets that FIFA is no longer toxic – after all the DoJ has transferred $200 million to FIFA in restitution – the reality is somewhat different.

Infantino excels at the old system of patronage. In his opening speech as FIFA president in 2016, he told the electorate: “The money of FIFA is your money.” Have we heard this before? It was music to the ears of the 200+ presidents of the national soccer associations and set the tone for years of cosmetic reform and window dressing – think Fatma Samoura.

Transfer system reforms aside, Infantino has done little to clean up in Zurich: the lack of good governance – ignited by removing Domenico Scala, Hans-Joachim Eckert and Cornel Borbely – and transparency is persistent. The destination of FIFA’s development money often remains utterly murky. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Perhaps Infantino is just another self-serving soccer official in a long line of villains. As Conn rightly points out, the current crisis at FIFA is much deeper: where is the global game headed?