Benefield: FIFA arrests highlight beautiful game’s black mark

The beautiful game suddenly looks ugly.

Soccer, played by thousands across Sonoma County, is allegedly being run at the international level by overlords with cash in their pockets and blood on their hands.

For soccer watchers on the North Coast and around the globe, reaction to Wednesday’s indictments of several top officials of FIFA, the sport’s governing body, ranged from relief to dismay that the crackdown did not extend all the way to association’s embattled president, Sepp Blatter.

FIFA has long been the black mark on the world’s most popular sport for the many who love it.

“It’s about time,” said Benjamin Ziemer, a scout for U.S. Soccer and executive director of NorCal Premier League.

Ziemer sees the indictments as a sign, perhaps, that FIFA will no longer be viewed as not only the most powerful sports organization in the world but also the most crooked.

“This has just been FIFA,” Ziemer said, of the body long rocked by accusations of bribery and corruption. “People just sort of laugh, but the game goes on,” he said.

Though the game will undoubtedly endure, it’s unclear how this week’s upheaval will affect the Women’s World Cup, a hugely popular showcase set to begin June 6 in Canada and last roughly a month.

The crackdown started early Wednesday as Justice Department officials, in coordination with Swiss law enforcement, descended on the top-shelf Baur Au Lac hotel in Zurich and arrested seven FIFA officials. The oddly orderly scene featured one high-roller toting his FIFA-emblazoned luggage behind him on his way to the paddy wagon, just two days before the all-powerful soccer organization’s presidential election.

The 47-page indictment features serious charges including racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch likened FIFA to “a criminal enterprise.”

Ziemer said Wednesday’s crackdown didn’t go far enough.

“The shame is that it didn’t get the guy at the top,” he said.

The guy at the top is Blatter, a 79-year-old Swiss national who has ruled FIFA for 17 years. He is up for re-election Friday in yet another contest that is largely considered a formality. Top soccer league officials in Europe have called for the postponement of the election that no one, before Wednesday, expected Blatter to lose.

Regardless of whether he is charged in the early days of this investigation, Blatter is largely seen as the face of corruption in the soccer world. He’s the wart on the face of the beautiful game.

“Everyone in soccer has known about this for a long time,” Ziemer said. “It’s almost like politics, everyone just sort of accepts it.”

Why should the average non-soccer fan care?

Because the arrests have real ramifications, and we are not just talking about games anymore.

FIFA’s headquarters were raided as part of an investigation into the awarding of World Cups in 2018 and 2022 to Russia and Qatar, respectively.

The choice of Qatar, in particular, over, say, the United States or any of the other strong candidates, seems strange, given the tiny, oil-rich nation has zero infrastructure and summer temperatures that are slightly cooler than the inside of a pizza oven.

The geniuses behind the decision came to the realization of, “Hey, it’s hot there in the summer,” only after the bid was awarded. So for the first time in the World Cup’s long and colorful history, games will be played not in the summer, but in November and December - right in the middle of league play for every top soccer league on the planet, barring Major League Soccer.

And the mysterious Qatar decision has proved to have a dreadful impact beyond heat and stink of dirty politics.

A Guardian newspaper investigation into human rights concerns in the host country last year calculated that 964 workers have died while building soccer stadiums in what have been described as slave-like conditions in 2012 and 2013.

A report by the International Trade Union Confederation calculated a higher number: 1,200.

The entire Qatar decision is a mess that, if patterns of behavior outlined by the U.S. justice officials are to be believed, was crafted to line the pockets of decision-makers.

That’s when the dirtiness of an organization can spill over onto the field of play.

When Brazil hosted the World Cup last summer, mass protests were held by Brazilians who complained their basic infrastructure needs were ignored in favor of the construction of massive stadiums sprinkled across the countryside. Many of the same stadiums are little-used today.

The world paid attention to the Brazilians but continued to tune into World Cup games and flock into World Cup stadiums. We cared - to a point.

But this week’s events may prove a tipping point for soccer.

Will be people be unwilling to attend matches, unwilling to tune in?

If that point comes, it will show that even the greatest game in the world can be fouled by dirty business.

You can reach staff columnist ?Kerry Benefield at 526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com, on Twitter @benefield and on Instagram at kerry.benefield.