A Spectacle of Scoundrels
This is an edition of The Great Game, a newsletter about the 2022 World Cup—and how soccer explains the world. Sign up here.
This World Cup doesn’t start until Sunday, but I already loathe it.
It says something about the depths of corruption at FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, that it has managed to take one of the most joyous events in human experience and trash it in pursuit of power and profit.
Watching international soccer, it’s always been hard to avert one’s eyes from the purchased at Vladimir Putin’s behest with the intention of bolstering the image of his regime. The British government forced the oligarch to sell the club this spring following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But only four years ago, when the world descended on Russia for the last World Cup, I don’t recall pundits or players or broadcasters loudly complaining about the Russian government’s suppression of political dissent or its brutal occupation of eastern Ukraine.
