Every blog in America and the rest of the world right now is saying the exact same thing I am saying.
Is anyone surprised?
This is not new. The topic of FIFA’s corruption was address by Last Week Tonight with John Oliver back on 6/8/2014. Anyone who remotely pays attention to soccer knows how bad it is. However, back to John Oliver, I highly recommend you find that episode and watch it. He is hilarious and he gets it exactly right.
Here is the gist of what happened. Swiss authorities raided the FIFA headquarters in Zurich and the Baur au Lac Hotel in Switzerland. At the same time, in Miami, the FBI and IRS raided the headquarters for CONCACAF – they preside over North America, Central America, and the Caribbean.
Some of my favorite things that I have read is “nine current or former FIFA officials face extradition to the U.S. after a 24-year probe into soccer corruption.”
What? 24 years!
Who takes that long to lead an investigation of an entity as corrupt as FIFA?
Absurd.
There are lots of absurd things, like awarding Qatar the FIFA World Cup.
Not shockingly, sponsors are questioning whether or not to stay involved with FIFA after this scandal. In my opinion, shame on them for sponsoring them in the first place. The reality is neither Coca-Cola or Adidas have actually pulled out yet.
Shame on them for not pulling out despite the racketeering corruption, but more so for the death toll involved with FIFA to begin with. FIFA placed the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, a location that has nothing at all in place for the event and needs to build it all from scratch. This is being done essentially with slave labor brought in from other countries because Qatar does not have workers. It is stated that 1 Nepalese worker dies every 2 days. There is an expected death toll of 4,000 migrant workers before the 2022 event. I mean, does that even compute to people? These workers will DIE building a stadium for FIFA. FIFA should not let a country win hosting responsibilities if it means that to hold the event, 4,000 people will die in the prospective host country. Who does that?
So shame on corporations who would want to sponsor this sort of thing.
I should also note that the Qatari officials would not release the Nepalese workers to go home after the earthquake because of the pressure to complete the project (building the FIFA stadiums) on time.
If you are not aware how the migrant workers are being handled and what arrangement that have with Qatar, it is as follows. Migrant workers sign up to work in the country and are sponsored by a company. The company has to provide the workers with an exit permit to leave the country. So what happens is these workers don’t get all of their pay, very little of it is paid in advance so that they can send it to their families, and there can be no complaints — because the workers will then never be able to leave again. Workers can’t switch jobs, because, again, it is the company that sponsors them. These migrant workers have very little power so they are forced to work in conditions that are horrifying, and, thus, why so many are dying.
Now, do you understand why the companies wouldn’t let their workers go home to grieve their families in Nepal? That’s because they know the workers will probably never come back.
This scandal is huge. Well, I don’t know if it is a scandal, because everyone knew it was going on. Perhaps we should call a spade a spade.
This is finally someone giving a shit and doing something about it.
Madeline Fresco 