As an organization, I cannot stand FIFA. Corruption runs rampant and often unchecked until some major news outlet gets a hold of and then FIFA just cuts loose one of their executives as a scapegoat, it doesn't matter to FIFA President Sepp Blatter (here after referred to as Captain Slime) as long as it's not his skin that's on the line. The video below is old, but also one of the funniest (and most complete) overviews of the corruption in the FIFA organization. Seriously, if I could ever convince you to watch a video, watch this one.
Some of the points in there (for those of you to strapped for time to watch the video) are utterly shocking. A non-profit organization with over $1 billion in their rainy day fund... and on top of all that cash, they will walk away with nearly all directly soccer related profits from Brazil, Brazil the country that poured $11 billion into preparations for the World Cup, faced civil unrest for months over the spending and eventually suffered an embarrassing defeat the likes of which Brazil has never suffered at a World Cup final. I would call FIFA parasites, but that would be greatly underselling the damage that FIFA and Captain Slime can do.
In 2022, FIFA selected Qatar to host the World Cup, a nation that not only reaches upwards of 120 degrees Fahrenheit but is, to quote Jon Oliver, "a modern day slave state"(I won't go into detail here, but watch the video and prepare to be disgusted). Now rumors have begun to swirl that Qatar will not, in fact, be hosting the World Cup, a midst yet another corruption scandal. So what does Captain Slime do to quell these rumblings? He hires former US Attorney Michael Garcia to lead an independent investigation into the corruption surrounding the 2018 and 2022 bidding process. Hey, that's great right?? They finally want to work on the public opinion and put the charges of corruption... Wait what? Oh FIFA isn't going to release the results of the investigation? They're just going to receive it, pass judgement on themselves and then decide what their punishment should be. It's the equivalent of having a student take a test, and then grade the test themselves. And, no one else will ever see the test so there's no chance of the student getting caught cheating.
The craziest part of this whole thing, is that I watched almost every game of this year's world cup. I just discussed for a couple hundred words, how corrupt FIFA and Captain Slime are, and how disgusted I am by it, and yet I won't stop watching the games or talking about the sport. And that is because, soccer is a drug, and FIFA is our dealer.
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