Eight World Cups

by George Vecsey

  In 2011, João Havelange, the imperious Charles de Gaulle lookalike who had served as the president of FIFA before Blatter, and his former son-in-law, Ricardo Teixeira, both came under investigation in their homeland of Brazil and also in Switzerland, the home of FIFA. Andrew Jennings testified in Brazil, claiming that Havelange had taken upward of $50 million in bribes or commissions through a front company called Sicuretta. Days before an ethics committee of the International Olympic Committee was to convene, Havelange resigned as a member.

  Teixeira resigned from FIFA in March 2012 and was said to be living in Miami. He and Havelange repaid some money to FIFA but because commercial bribery had not been a crime in Switzerland in the mid-1990s, they were not prosecuted.

  Havelange’s disgrace was particularly inconvenient for Brazil, inasmuch as the country would be hosting the 2014 World Cup and the main Olympic Stadium for Rio de Janeiro in 2016 had been named for him.

  Jack Warner’s star began to dwindle when he supported bin Hammam’s audacious run for president against Blatter, who ultimately was reelected without opposition. In the words of Machiavelli, “Never do an enemy a small injury.”

  In 2011, a British parliamentary committee reported allegations of corruption, adding, “FIFA has given every impression of wishing to sweep all allegations of misconduct under the carpet.” Prominent European soccer officials began to connect Blatter with the laissez-faire climate in the organization he had led since 1998. “Mr. Blatter always knew that Warner was an embarrassment, but he had thirty-five votes,” said John MacBeth, a former president of the Scottish soccer federation.

  On April 19, 2013, CONCACAF’s special Integrity Committee issued a report on the financial activities of the longtime allies Warner and Blazer. “I have recounted a sad and sorry tale in the life of CONCACAF, a tale of abuse of position and power, by persons who assisted in bringing the organisation to profitability but who enriched themselves at the expense of their very own organizations,” said Sir David Anthony Cathcart Simmons, the former chief justice of Barbados, who was the chairman of the Integrity Committee.

  Warner had taken money from Havelange and erected the Dr. João Havelange Centre of Excellence in Trinidad, ostensibly to foster soccer among the poor people in the region. But Warner had never registered the complex as property of FIFA. In fact, it was built on land belonging to the Warner family. “Approximately $26 million of CONCACAF funds went into Center of Excellence and that is no longer an asset of CONCACAF,” the Integrity Committee reported.

  The Integrity Committee also concluded that Blazer “misappropriated at least $15 million in compensation payments” from CONCACAF. Some of this money went to support his various apartments. According to the Integrity Committee, Blazer also mixed his personal and business accounts on his American Express card so he could gain all the membership points—worth $29 million at last count.

  The two former allies faced possible legal action as well as FBI and Internal Revenue Service investigations. Blazer resigned his position with FIFA, and Warner said he was now gone from soccer and could not locate any records pertinent to his work for CONCACAF.

  Another powerful FIFA official, Nicolás Leoz, age eighty-four, the longtime head of the South American confederation known as CONMEBOL, was said to have offered his vote for England as 2018 host if the legendary British club championship, the FA Cup, was named for him. As a Paraguayan, Leoz had no history whatsoever with the FA Cup. The former chairman of the British Football Association, Lord Triesman, claimed Leoz had asked for a knighthood in exchange for his vote for England in 2018. In 2013, Leoz resigned from FIFA, citing health problems.

  With so many powerful figures departing from FIFA, Damian Collins, a member of the British parliament who had been investigating FIFA corruption, told the New York Times, “This shows that FIFA can’t be trusted to run their own investigation.” He added, “This demonstrates that they have totally failed. This means we will never know the truth about what happened.”

  In July 2012, FIFA hired a new lawyer to conduct an internal investigation: Michael J. Garcia, a partner with Kirkland & Ellis of New York and Washington, who from 2005 to 2008 had been the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York. FIFA also hired Hans-Joachim Eckert, a highly regarded judge from Munich, to handle any information Garcia might develop.

  Early in 2013, Garcia turned in a four-thousand–page report to Eckert, who soon issued a scathing judgment of Havelange, Teixeira, and Leoz. Eckert wrote: “There are … no indications whatsoever that President Blatter was responsible for a cash flow to Havelange, Teixeira or Leoz, or that he himself received any payments from the ISL Group, even in the form of hidden kick back payments.” But he continued: “It must be questioned, however, whether President Blatter knew or should have known over the years before the bankruptcy of ISL that ISL had made payments (bribes) to other FIFA officials.”

  The most striking link between Blatter and the money flow was noted in Eckert’s report: a payment of 1.5 million Swiss francs ($1.6 million) which was sent to FIFA’s offices in Zurich in 1997 and earmarked for Havelange. When the payment was brought to Blatter’s attention, he ordered it returned to ISL. This connection of Blatter’s awareness of money intended for his predecessor had been developed by Andrew Jennings. Blatter told the investigator he did not suspect the money was a payoff or bribe.

  Eckert concluded, “President Blatter’s conduct could not be classified in any way as misconduct with regard to any ethics rules.… The conduct of President Blatter may have been clumsy because there could be an internal need for clarification, but this does not lead to any criminal or ethical misconduct.”

  In April 2013, Havelange resigned as honorary president of FIFA for “health and personal reasons.”

  Blatter put out a release saying he had been exonerated, but the word “clumsy” has been attached to him ever since. His stewardship includes game rigging and gambling scandals around the world that surfaced in recent years, including in Italy, where Juventus was forced to play in Serie B for one season after indications of favoritism in the choice of referees. In 2012, news broke of a gambling ring, presumably based in Singapore but extending into eastern Europe and Italy and run by Tan Seet Eng. More than 100 matches from 2008 to 2011 in Italy’s three top leagues were suspect, as part of 680 matches under investigation by law enforcement. Again, there was no suggestion that Blatter was directly involved or knew anything about these gambling rings, but his supervision of FIFA, including game influencing, would seem to deserve Judge Eckert’s well-chosen legal word “clumsy.”

  With his longtime comrades going down all around him, Blatter began shooting off an unprecedented number of press releases—FIFA was in favor of education, FIFA was in favor of women playing soccer, FIFA was in favor of friendship between Israel and Palestine, FIFA was in favor of building stadiums in impoverished lands, and most of all, FIFA was against the racist chants heard in many stadiums across the globe.

  Blatter also took his head out of the sand regarding technology. The World Cup had a heritage of questionable goal-line calls—the highly debatable goal by England’s Geoff Hurst in the 1966 final and the shot by England’s Frank Lampard that clearly crossed the line in 2010. Yet Blatter remained stuck to his position of 2002 about goal-line technology: “I will make sure that no technical help will be introduced in refereeing, because we shall rely on persons and human beings.”

  There was another terrible call during the 2012 European tournament, when a shot by Marko Dević of Ukraine clearly crossed the goal line but was not allowed by the officials. England received the inadvertent gift, and Ukraine, one of the cohosts, was eliminated. With tennis, American football, and baseball increasingly using technological aids, in 2013 Blatter announced that FIFA would use modern goal-line technology in the 2014 World Cup. He was trying to morph into Sepp the Techie. At the same time, he had to cope with FIFA’s choice of Qatar for the World Cup of 2022.

  Showing the same fl
uid moves that had made him such a great player, Michel Platini was now claiming that his vote in 2010 for Qatar had been conditional. This was très drôle, since Platini had given head fakes that he might favor the American bid but had clearly gone along with the French tilt to Qatar. By March 2013, Platini was suggesting it might not be wise to put a World Cup in the desert in the summer. Instead, Platini suggested, Qatar should move the event to January, when the weather would be better. “Also, the neighboring emirates must be included so that the World Cup is staged throughout the entire region,” Platini added.

  In early September 2013, Blatter conceded it “may well be that we made a mistake” in awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, and he began to talk about moving the tournament to cooler months. He had to know this move would disrupt the September-to-May club schedule, the backbone of the sport in Europe and also the economic support for players from all over the world who work in Europe.

  It was hard to know when Blatter was serious. He was famous for asinine statements, like urging female players to wear tighter uniforms to appeal to male fans and proposing to hold a World Cup every two years. When FIFA belatedly opened its executive board to three female officials, Blatter said, “We now have three ladies on the board. Say something, ladies! You are always speaking at home. Say something now!”

  Now he began to address the Qatar issue. Sepp the Burgher from Zurich was morphing into Sepp the Revolutionary, a regular Che Guevara. “If we maintain, rigidly, the status quo, then a FIFA World Cup can never be played in countries that are south of the equator or indeed near the equator,” Blatter said. “We automatically discriminate against countries that have different seasons than we do in Europe. I think it is high time that Europe starts to understand that we do not rule the world any more, and that some former European imperial powers can no longer impress their will on to others in far away places.”

  It was highly unlikely that FIFA would come up with direct evidence about payoffs or trade-offs for the 2022 World Cup back in 2010. For obvious geopolitical reasons, FIFA did not want to displace Qatar, not in a world already inflamed by regional and religious tensions.

  Now that Blatter had identified a problem, he was in a rush to move Qatar to a late autumn date in 2022. He wanted to make the decision at a board meeting in October 2013 but ran into criticism from an unusual source—the United States.

  Sunil Gulati, the unpaid president of the U.S. federation, was elected a member of FIFA’s twenty-five-person executive committee in 2013, replacing Chuck Blazer, who had left in disgrace. Born in 1959, Gulati had relative youth and international credentials that could make him a positive force within FIFA. He had expressed disillusionment at the revelations about Blazer, his longtime ally and fellow New Yorker, and spoke in favor of openness, including financial details. Now he went further, questioning the need to move quickly on moving the dates of the 2022 World Cup.

  “I don’t see at this stage, frankly, how I or any member of FIFA’s executive committee could make a sensible decision,” Gulati told the New York Times. “We don’t have enough information, and there are too many questions. I don’t see how anybody in a position of responsibility can take a position without some answers.” Gulati was well aware that American-based television networks and sponsors had based their bid for the 2022 World Cup on a summer date, not during the American football season. “If the position I’m taking—which is that we need a lot more information—is rocking the boat,” Gulati said, “then I’m going to be rocking the boat.” He continued to rock the boat by saying that FIFA needed to clarify the bidding process and rely on technical evaluation of national bids. “Otherwise, it’s an unnecessary expenditure of funds and time,” he said.

  This was the strongest public stand the U.S. federation had ever taken within FIFA. And when FIFA’s committee met in Zurich in October, it faced the greatest scrutiny in its history, with papers like the Guardian and the New York Times writing about FIFA as if it were a rogue parliament or congress that bore considerable watching. Qatar was under siege after reports that many foreign laborers had already died, and more could be injured, by building stadiums in the desert heat. Qatari officials insisted that they could construct modern cooled stadiums for a summer World Cup without endangering migrant labor. FIFA, faced with complaints from European leagues and major television networks, seemed hesitant to disrupt the traditional schedule, although Blatter remained firm that the 2022 World Cup would take place in Qatar. After the public reservations from Gulati and others, Blatter postponed a decision until after the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

  At no point did the United States call for the 2022 World Cup to be moved, taking the high road like nations that have lost elections they thought they should have won—Greece for the 1996 Olympics, South Africa for the 2006 World Cup. The reward for tact and patience could turn out to be a North American World Cup in 2026, with host cities ranging from Toronto to Mexico City, assuming that nations still believe hosting a World Cup is worth the trouble.

  * * *

  The biggest crowds in Brazil are usually for celebrations, moving to the samba beat. Carnival every year. Winning the World Cup five times.

  In 2013, Brazilians were protesting as far as the television cameras could go, in dozens of cities. It started with a mundane incident; unrest often does. The despair of a fruit vendor in Tunisia. Anger in Egypt and Libya and Syria. Plans to remodel a park in Istanbul. The raising of bus fares in Brazil.

  As millions of people took to the streets in Brazil in 2013, they made a leap in logic that had never quite been made before. The demonstrators linked the corruption in their daily lives to their patrimony, their sport, jogo bonito, the beautiful game, the World Cup, the biggest sports event on the planet.

  Suddenly, with the zeal of citoyens in France in the time of the revolution, crowds were asking if they really needed to turn their country into a giant television studio and resort so billions of people could watch a soccer tournament, with the bills arriving later. The crowds focused their anger on Sepp Blatter as the epitome of Brazil’s colonization.

  “I can understand that people are unhappy,” Blatter said in a speech in Rio de Janeiro. “But football is here to unite people. Football is here to build bridges, to generate excitement, to bring hope.”

  The crowd booed Blatter; Brazilians also criticized Pelé, the greatest symbol of talent and joy the sport has ever produced, for urging people to “forget the protests.” Soccer had been very, very good to Pelé. Now he was seen as a shill for the power brokers who run the sport.

  Could the inequities of the world be approached without taking a look at the world’s biggest sports event? In 2013, people were asking this question as perhaps never before.

  Blatter, who had long said he would retire after his fourth term ended in 2015, was now talking of running for a fifth term. In January 2014, Jérôme Champagne of France, a former official of FIFA, said he planned to run against Blatter, and Pelé immediately endorsed Champagne. The impracticality of Qatar was hanging over FIFA. The organization had reached to New York for a lawyer and to Munich for a judge to assess the scandals. One key word in Judge Eckert’s findings seemed likely to stick with Sepp Blatter for a long time: clumsy.

  19

  THE AGE OF KLINSMANN

  CONCACAF REGION, 2013

  In 2003, a fleet blond striker registered for a fast Southern California league under the name Jay Göppingen. The man had moves—and a German accent—and scored five goals in eight games for Orange County Blue Star.

  Pretty soon everybody figured out he was really Jürgen Klinsmann, the retired German star (born in Göppingen, Germany), who lived with his family in the area. Nobody seemed to mind the assumed name—that was charming—but Jay Göppingen could not make all the matches because he was often away on business trips, coaching the German national team, ultimately to third place in the 2006 World Cup.

  When would the United States produce its own Klinsmann? For that matter, was the expe
rience of Klinsmann transferrable to American players? Sunil Gulati, the president of the national federation, believed it was time to do something different. He courted Klinsmann after the 2006 World Cup but could not convince him to sign on, so the job went to Bob Bradley, who deserved it, and did fine. But was it enough for the United States to be among the seven nations to have qualified for all six World Cups starting in 1990? The sour look on Gulati’s face in Johannesburg seemed to speak for ambitious American fans: they wanted the Yanks to do better in Brazil in 2014.

  After a few mediocre matches following the 2010 World Cup, Gulati went back after Klinsmann, offering him a base pay of $2.5 million per year through 2014, as opposed to the base salary of $515,647 received by Bradley in 2010. (Bradley did make another $345,000 for reaching the Confederations Cup in 2009 and the World Cup in 2010, along with other bonuses and compensations.)

  Gulati was no naïf. He knew that German fans believed Klinsmann had depended heavily on Joachim Löw for strategy during the lovely run in 2006. One of the more secure people in coaching, Klinsmann was often the first to credit his friend. But he had also been fired by Bayern Munich during his first season, after poor results and criticism from the front office that he spent too much money and attention on American-style PowerPoint technology and nutrition and training programs for individual players.

  Klinsmann spoke many languages. When he played for Monaco early in his career, he took a French language course; he studied computers. He was one of the better ex-players to coach a national team, and American players would respect his star status.

  Some fans in the States were convinced that a big-time coach from overseas could impart the magic chord, the secret of life that would suddenly elevate the lads to world level. Could Klinsmann transfer the spring in his legs, the experience in his active head, to the American players?