The FIFA football world cup in Qatar is in the crucial knock-out phases, with the quarter finals on the weekend. Shock exits have come from Germany, Belgium and Spain.
But the game itself is overshadowed by corruption surrounding governing body FIFA.
A Netflix expose series FIFA Uncovered tackles how football, sponsorship, politics, money and power all came to be in the same squad, and asks: how did Qatar get hosting rights (was it the fighter jet or the gas deal?)
FIFA Uncovered writer and producer Miles Coleman has exposed FIFA's unseemly moments, having been granted full access by FIFA to its archives and securing a very candid interview with controversial FIFA past president Sepp Blatter.
A fork in the road for FIFA came in 1974, Coleman tells Nine to Noon.
“That's the moment when a Brazilian by the name João de Havelange, an industrialist son of an arms dealer, challenges a British football administrator by the name of Stanley Rouse for the presidency.”
Up to that point the matter of the FIFA presidency was a somewhat amateurish affair, he says, rotated among European national presidents.
Havelange challenged that Euro-centric status quo, Coleman says.
“What Havelange says is he's sick and tired of the Europeans running the game as if it was theirs. And he tries to band together countries in the global south to take FIFA down a different direction.
“And one of the things he says is not only should countries in the global south get more prominence, but also, he believes that more money should be coming into the game, that programs should be financed and paid for to develop football around the world.”
So far so good, Coleman says, but Havelange changed the nature of the game.
“He opens a sort of Pandora's Box of money and politics coming into football, and that's really to use a torturous football metaphor, that's the starting whistle for our documentary and where FIFA goes down a very different path.”
That path ushered in an era of incredible power and influence, he says.
“FIFA presidents were basically the only people in the world that I can think of that could walk off any runway of any private jet in the world into an audience with any head of state they wanted.
“Why? Because football is an immensely powerful tool for governments and for regimes, both liberal and illiberal, to spread their message to get goodwill.”
FIFA’s power and dark manoeuvring was supercharged in 1998 with the arrival of Sepp Blatter as president, he says.
“Blatter inherited an organisation in 1998 that is in the ascendancy, both financially and politically. He also inherits an organisation that's opening up new territories; in 1994 the US has the world cup for the first time, the number of teams participating in the World Cup is expanding.
“And really what we see is that football as a global game starts having an enormous amount of money pumped into it.”
Blatter starts to sell the rights to tournaments and billions of dollars start to pour in, Coleman says.
“And for the first part it goes relatively well, there are some setbacks, there are some stumbles, but basically Blatter in his early tenure begins to get the sense that he can do no wrong that he's King Midas, everything he’s touching turns gold, which might explain in some ways, the psychology behind him over overlooking certain details and certainly being turning a blind eye to people in his organisation who aren't doing so well.”
A FIFA executive committee decided which country was to host the world cup, he says.
“Up until 2016 it was an executive committee of all men, 24 men, including Sepp Blatter as president and it was one man one vote.
“And for very many years, Sepp Blatter kept his executive committee on a very tight rein, ensuring that they would give the world cup to the country he wanted it to go to.”
Blatter wanted Russia to get the world cup but not Qatar, says Coleman.
“He wanted it to go to Russia and the US, he thought that just on a sort of superficial image building level this would make him eligible for a Nobel Peace Prize as the man who - I mean this is really true, this is what he thought - would thaw the Cold War once and for all and unite these two enemies.
“He was playing this incredibly delicate political balancing act, where he had to appease these 24 very power-hungry men, men who were often at the executive committee level, not because they've been lovely sports administrators, but because they've known how to cut a deal or two in their time. And Blatter’s job was to compete all those balancing interests and make sure that Blatter’s interests came out on top of the end. And he probably failed in doing that at the most important moment.”
When Qatar secured the world cup it was met with widespread astonishment, Coleman says.
“When Russia won it made people a bit uncomfortable, but they thought, there's a reason for it to go there. Blatter certainly wanted to go there.
“When Blatter read out Qatar, the entire footballing press just collectively had a jaw drop moment, there was a stunned silence, broken only by the cheers of the Qataris.”
Qatar had deep and complex reasons for wanting hosting rights, he says.
“I think the general popular assumption is that Qatar wants to be loved. And that's why they, and many other countries sports wash, they just want to have a sort of a positive feeling of goodwill towards them internationally. And I think that's a part of it. But it's no more than 10 percent.
“The reason Qatar wanted to host the World Cup is nothing short of an issue of national security.”
Qatar is a small, resource-rich nation surrounded by much bigger often unfriendly nations; Saudi Arabia, UAE and Iran across the water, says Coleman.
“These are three countries that made their money on oil, which is running out, looking at Qatar with their natural gas, and wondering if they might ever get a piece of that.
“Qatar is now of course the wealthiest country in the world per capita. So, if you're the Emir of Qatar, and you can't compete with these three mega powers in terms of military, you'll never have more soldiers than them.
"You look across the water at a country like Kuwait which was of course was invaded by Saddam, and then the US stepped in to repel the attack, you start asking yourself, how can I ensure that my country cannot be invaded, and my ruling family cannot be toppled?”
Making its sovereignty plain to the whole world is part of the strategy, he says.
“Qatar transformed with that opening of an envelope from being a country that no one had heard about to a country that everyone on the planet has heard of.
“Qatar’s sovereignty is beyond question at this point. It's one of the finest markers of a defined nation state to host a sporting tournament.”
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