The Guardian Football weekly podcast posted an episode last week (24 February 2021) which was titled “Has FIFA really changed? Football Weekly Special, part two.” It’s an intriguing expose by Max Rushden and Philippe Auclair on what FIFA has been doing in Trinidad and Tobago where they have taken over the local FA, ousted the duly elected president, installed their own administrators, and refused to pay their portion for the case to go the Court of Arbitration for Sport. If you have a few hours today, and care at all about FIFA and international football, I strongly recommend listening to part one and two.
The highlight of both episodes was something Shaka Hislop said at the end of part two and I wanted to quote it here because it’s important. It’s a reminder of the primary calling for football. I know we all get upset when our teams don’t play beautiful football and I know that many of us, myself included, agree with Arsene Wenger – that football should be an art, that it should entertain us, give us a respite from the drudgery of the real world. But Shaka Hislop reminds us that those things are a byproduct of the primary calling for sport.
“Sport has an ability to empower the least of us. Has an ability to give each of us a reason to dream. I feel that the game has to continue to serve that.
So, while I complain about FIFA at its head, and some of the decisions that it makes, I applaud what happens within the FIFA foundation. And how they work with organizations all around the world in providing opportunities for young boys and girls the world over.
And I say ‘I’ve lived every aspect of that’. You know? And I mean that sincerely.
Without the game, I was a very awkward young man but was able to find my confidence. It was through the game that I was able to get an education, through a soccer scholarship in the United States. It was through the game that I was able to live my wildest boyhood dreams and play professionally and represent Trinidad and Tobago on the World Cup stage. I have lived every promise that the game affords us. And I firmly believe that, ultimately, is the game’s primary calling.
Not about producing teams that play wonderful football or play in the World Cup. That’s a byproduct of the game’s primary calling.”
Shaka Hislop.
Empowerment, opportunity, confidence, education. This is what football should be serving. Not the other things – the trophies, the £75m signings, the squabble over referees, or even “playing beautiful football.” That stuff will come, if you focus on the other things first and foremost.
I wrote about this a few months ago: I can’t stand FIFA but when I saw what the FIFA foundation was doing, how it was giving opportunity to people all over the world, I changed my mind.
That doesn’t mean that it’s absolved from criticism. In fact, it means we need to be more diligent, we need to hold them to a higher standard, and demand that they hold themselves to a higher standard. What’s happening with the deaths at the construction projects at World Cup Qatar is obscene and needs to be exposed and people held accountable for those lives lost.
My pea brain is incapable of squaring an organization which gives opportunities to boys and girls all over the world in one hand and in the other hand holds a bloody brick that was just used to kill a migrant worker in Qatar. I almost feel like the whole thing (all of FIFA) just needs to be completely dismantled and started fresh.
Great post Tim. No lie, I think FIFA needs to be dismantled and it’s true we share the same ideology about the whole situation. I have friends from Kenya who travelled all the way to Qatar for a decent pay overseas and never have I ever heard about construction workers(immigrants) losing their lives over there. It’s so sad when you actually think about it. On the other hand, Wenger needs to step up and vie for the FIFA top seat. ‘Football is an Art in deed’
Refreshing take from Shaka. It’s easy to get pulled away from the good that FIFA does do, especially in less fortunate corners of the world.
I think an interesting question to consider here is … If there weren’t massive cash cows, like the WC, how would FIFA’s humanitarian efforts be effected?
Of course, there’s got to be ways to improve and clean-up how the WC is run – and I’m not naïve to think that FIFA’s greed is driven by a desire to fund FIFA Foundation efforts – but it is an encouraging silver lining.
Very well said. There are so many institutions like FIFA. Corrupt, incompetent and unethically led, and capable of doing great harm, but that also do genuinely useful and helpful work at the grassroots.
I have strong views about this. I’ll spare you.
I don’t have an ounce of trust in any government beyond its ability to perpetuate itself. But isn’t that the whole point of a government? As long as the structure stands, we can get on with our perfectly wonderfully ordinary lives regardless of what palace intrigue goes on in the back rooms. Isn’t that what we want at the end of the day, to be free to do what we want and live well in relative security? A government’s very nature of being selfish, corrupt and unethical ensures the survival of the whole construct because they selfish a-holes whose careers depend on it can’t let it fail. It’s mostly all a shared societal mental construct and as such, incredibly fragile. If aliens came down and wiped our memories tomorrow, we’d descend into utter chaos. Government is not by and for the people, it’s by some of the people and for those same people, for all the good and bad that entails.
I don’t believe there’s such a thing as an honorable politician. The nature of the job is cutting deals, making promises and watching out for #1. It takes a certain type to want to do it and any true believers who may wish to impose big new ideas will find themselves circled and removed by the others if they don’t play nice. Nobody can escape it, nobody can expunge the corruption and install new officials that are pure of heart. It’s not happening now or ever. It takes an a-hole and we need those a-holes so they can keep the darn thing running so our kids can graduate from school and so forth. FIFA is the same. If you remove Blatter and Infantino and Platini and so forth, cool, but it won’t change much. It may make us feel better for a few days. Another Blatter will come along because they’re the types who do what it takes to get these jobs. It’s self selecting. And who will police them? Another Blatter. And so it continues as it ever has since humans were humans.
To you this may sound like a diabolically Machiavellian “greater good trumps the means” fascist adjacent 1984 nonsense, and I can respect that you see it that way. We are far apart on this stuff. I mainly mean to say that acceptance doesn’t have to mean ignorance. It’s not one bad guy forcing everyone else to misbehave. It’s human nature. This is how we behave when given the opportunity, the power and the anonymity. We need those bad guys to be in charge because it’s a dirty job and somebody’s gotta do it. Without those guys, there’s no FIFA, no US government and no Boy Scouts of America, etc. etc., and then are we better off as a society? If all institutions are corrupt by nature, is the answer to have no institutions at all? In my opinion we have to keep our eyes open and be true to ourselves, but we have to accept that the world is such as it is and function within it. It’s up to us to choose what we want to be a part of and what we want to represent. You can be a part of FIFA and do the work of 1000 saints regardless of the kickbacks and Nassau bank accounts of the people writing your paycheck. Or, you can, you know, steal other peoples’ money and buy yourself a hip condo in Bali and be the next guy who writes those checks. Burning FIFA to the ground, even if we could do it, makes both impossible. The bad guys pivot to a new, similar position elsewhere and everyone else is simply left to fend for themselves.
I might be coming into this with a different take, but here goes.
I regularly travel around the African continent and have had the opportunity to see a lot of the good that FIFA does for people from some of the most disadvantaged countries. I have also been around spaces that have revealed a lot of fraudulent dealings between many football associations and FIFA. I applaud the work they do, but what is budgeted for and what is actually utilized in these poor countries is not the same. But if you ask any parent whose child is benefiting from FIFA’s projects about corruption, they simply answer “as someone who has nothing, how can I complain about something that my child is getting for free? We take what we can get and move forward. Its better than nothing after all.”
I have come to accept FIFA for what it is. A huge corporation that does a lot of good, but isn’t clean. And to be honest, its hard to find any large corporation that isn’t like that.
My fault though is in how you, Tim, and Shaka Hislop put beautiful football as a byproduct of the game instead of a very important aspect of the game, especially at development level.
I have always held the belief that sport in itself, as a competition is played to see who is better at it. We come to that conclusion by playing and seeing who wins, and thus winning is already the aim the moment you participate in competition. What sets football apart, and what is very important at development, is the inherent need or craving for beautiful football.
I work with young kids a lot in development structures throughout the continent, and as much as football is a way to get young people busy and in productive spaces, keeping them there is of similar, if not of more, importance. I have travelled with the NBA, and they have put together similar programmes for kids in South Africa and Senegal. Their biggest problem? Kids staying. As a sport, Basketball does not seem to give youths what football can give, which is the different iterations of the sport which make it fun.
Football has something that other major sports don’t, and its the concept of beautiful football. its an aim, an ideal and almost mythical, but somehow dominates football success. Kids wanna have fun, be part of something and still be challenged enough to learn life lessons. Academies where beautiful football isn’t a priority lose out on talent and end up with kids who decline the sport for being work without pay. Because at the end of the day, billions play this sport, but a few million make it. What the sport does for those who don’t and already knew they wouldn’t make it, it gives them a way out of the temptations of street life and provides them with a sense of purpose, gives them memories, confidence and most importantly, teaches them how to be a valuable part of teams within society.
But they have to be kept there and as kids, the easy way out is always tempting for kids. You have to give them something to love, not like, that they will grab onto and run with. Something they can cherish and also be appreciated for, even if the result does not go their way. Its very important for a child to be happy doing something, for them to not only continue, but also push themselves to reach its highest peaks.
“At a young age winning is not the most important thing… the important thing is to develop creative and skilled players with good confidence.”
Arsene Wenger
FIFA’s work goes far beyond those that make it at the top, or just make it in general. For those that make it, maybe beautiful football isn’t as relevant as opportunity, but for the majority? Its a priceless aspect (no, requirement!) that puts football at the forefront of the development of youth because it keeps them playing, keeps them developing as human beings and reduces a lot of social ills by young people, at least on the African continent that’s how it is.
The point that I take from Shaka isn’t that we can’t have both but rather that if you focus on the health and well being of people, if you give them education and opportunity, that’s the best way to get them to play beautiful football. People who are suffering can find beauty in the escape of their own football, but for them to be truly actualized humans, to play beautiful football they need to have an opportunity.
Wenger’s quote on that is one of my all-time favorites:
“First you need the talent, but also you need to meet someone who believes in you and gives you a chance. You can imagine though, that plenty of people have talent in life but they do not meet someone who gives them a chance. Can you name one Formula One driver from an African country, apart from South Africa? And can you really imagine that there is not one guy in Africa with the talent to be a Formula One driver? Why are they not there? Because no one has given them a chance. So in life it’s important to meet someone who will give you a chance, and when I can do this in football, I do it.”
I think that’s what Hislop is talking about.
Hope your achilles is healing!
Funny enough, I live in Trinidad and Tobago. Well, Trinidad actually. The country is made up of 2 islands, and I live on the bigger, more industrial, less touristy one.
Almost no one I know is exercised about what FIFA did. There’s much to come out in court still, so Im not going to start pointing fingers. I dont know enoughto know definitively where the blame lies anyway.
But, some context. Let me tell you something about local, small country FAs and Olympic Associations. They are great organisations for executives to travel the world, first class and in fancy suites. Theyre not so much about developing the game locally.
FIFA isnt spotless. Neither are local FAs, but man…
They are not standalone organisations. They are affiliated to FIFA, and subject to its strictures and regulations.
In one country I wont name, the OA president has presided over a grand total of 1 bronze medal. He’s been head honcho for more than 40 years. His suite in Tokyo is probably already booked. In London, they all had BMW sedans ferrying them everywhere, and the best box seats to any event they wanted to see. His athletes should be so lucky. Speaking of which, it is not unusual to see a flag march past with more officials than athletes.
I do not know the full ins and outs of the T&T case. It’s quite technical. FIFA may be in the wrong here. But dont automatically assume that they are..
btw, Jack warner, charged with fraud by Obama’s former AG Loretta Lynch, was a pretty effective ambassador for T&T football.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Warner_(football_executive)
Shaka? I watched him play against Sweden and England in the 2006 World Cup in Germany. I think I saw TV games of him playing for West Ham. T&T hasn’t qualified for a WC since, although they did stop USA from qualifying for Russia, by beating them in Trinidad. It was the game that ended Bruce Arena’s career.
Decent footballing country, supplying players across the divisions in England and Scotland. Dwight Yorke, who had a habit of playing well against Arsenal for ManU, is the country’s best ever player.
It’s a legitimate gripe that these things tend to mostly serve the wealthy. And we should demand that they do more, be held accountable, travel more modestly, have fewer staff, and so on.