Several years ago, the company I work for was bought out by an American firm. No, I don’t need sympathy or support, thank you; our new owners are an employee-owned concern, so many staff at all levels of the organisation have been made millionaires thanks to their long service there, and the company’s genuine values of inclusivity and community care mean I’m proud to work for them. I include this aside to show, in these divisive times, the perils of binary thinking. Anyway, I’ll get back to the point [Ed: please do!].
I was talking to my boss on our weekly call; she’s based in Des Moines – birthplace of Bill Bryson, which should qualify it for UNESCO recognition in my book – but anyway…and we were discussing football, and yes, she calls it football, not soccer, and we got onto the forthcoming World Cup, which, alongside Mexico and Canada, her country is hosting.
She wanted to take her children to a game and was happy to do a six hour round-trip drive to facilitate this, but: not at the prices being charged. The most popular single-sport competition in the world is visiting your neighbourhood, and only the super-rich or the most dedicated of fans are realistically able to spend at least $500 to see a 90 minute game. If you are American and want to watch your team play, you can double that. Some tickets for the final are going – and this is official pricing, not re-seller scalping – for $32,970.
I sense that for many readers, my tale so far will elicit little sympathy; but the World Cup has an impact which spreads beyond the hosts of this year’s competition. East Anglia loves its football: Norwich, Colchester, Ipswich, Luton and Cambridge are all homes to professional teams, there are countless smaller clubs in the area, and the sport is loved across all divides of class, race and gender. So, with less than a month to go before the opening game, why does there appear to be, among the local fans I speak to, widespread apathy towards the competition (which both England and Scotland have qualified for)?
When the World Cup changed
Arguably, it’s been 20 years since we last had a World Cup that could be enjoyed without awkward questions having to be ignored. Germany 2006 was labelled “Die Welt zu Gast bei Freunden” (A time to make friends) and with the Second World War more than 80 years behind us, it lived up to the hype and the promise that football could unite us all in the love of the game.
Then came South Africa 2010, and the first stirrings of doubt, as FIFA forced the hosts to build expensive stadiums rather than use or update existing ones. According to FIFA’s own accounts, they made $2.35bn for the tournament, which cost the SA government $4.9bn to host, with two-thirds reportedly spent on stadium infrastructure, some of which has since been criticised as underused or difficult to maintain.
The next hosts, Brazil, experienced widespread civil unrest before the 2014 games took place: hundreds of thousands of people were reported to have been displaced during wider redevelopment and infrastructure projects associated with the tournament in cities like Brasilia or Manaus, that have no professional football team capable of filling the ground once the competition had ended. FIFA was also made tax exempt for the competition, which again gained them billions while costing Brazil the same amount.
Then came Russia 2018, and Qatar 2022. The selection of both hosts, given longstanding concerns raised by human rights organisations, remained controversial and prompted persistent questions about FIFA’s decision-making. Scheduling the 2022 World Cup during winter – deeply unpopular; but worse than that by a long way were concerns over worker deaths and conditions during stadium and infrastructure construction became one of the defining controversies of the tournament.
Learning all the wrong lessons
FIFA took this criticism on board by awarding the hosting of the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia, changing their bidding process at the last minute which meant that the Saudis had an unopposed field. That decision was followed, a year later, by Donald Trump being awarded the newly-created “FIFA Peace Prize” and the head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, publicly pushing for Trump to get the Nobel Peace Prize.
For critics, these decisions reinforced a broader concern: that commercial and political considerations increasingly outweigh football itself. FIFA’s own code of ethics requires political neutrality.
Next month will be the start of a tournament in which a staggering 104 matches will be played, a 62.5% increase on the 64 games played in previous competitions. Yes, this allows for more countries to compete, but it means the 12 group games will be fairly meaningless, low-quality affairs. So, even if the political mire that this event has been tainted by in the last 16 years hadn’t put off the fans, then the dilution of the competition combined with the avaricious nature of the seat pricing is ensuring that “the beautiful game” is now, at its premier event, resembling a bloated spectacle of advertising, sponsorship and product placement, with half-time shows just like the Super Bowl, and the fans wondering who’s stolen their game.
Can we have our ball back?
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