Obama’s FBI vs. Blatter’s FIFA: 1 – 0

What the United States is investigating is not just a sports system, but a political system that lets the union of authoritarianism and money invent its own legitimacy.

This week saw the opposition of a certain idea of the law and a certain idea of power in Zurich. Soccer, the world’s sport, started a worldwide controversy: What is permitted, who makes the rules, and according to what morality and whose interests? All these questions come together in Sepp Blatter. As the king of soccer, he is in the position of kings when the regime is shaken — the opposition wants his head; his court defends him. The Swiss, who lost 1,000 men aiding Louis XVI at Tuileries in 1792, refrained this time from getting into formation at his side.

Elected president of FIFA in 1998, until Thursday, Sepp Blatter was the oldest of the acting directors of international organizations. With his 17 years as secretary-general under João Havelange, he has been working the FIFA levers for a total of 34 years. This is a record but not an exception in this organization, which was presided over for 33 years by the French Jules Rimet (1920–1954) and 24 by the Brazilian Havelange (1974–1998).

Between 1981 and 2015, Sepp Blatter has seen three popes, four U.N. secretaries-general, five American presidents, four French presidents, four German chancellors, four Russian presidents, and two kings of Spain. Only the queen of England beats him in longevity. He was there for the last crisis of the Cold War, the dismantling of the USSR, and the transformation of China into a capitalist power. During his reign, 42 new states became members of the United Nations, most with the ambition of having the right to participate in world soccer. He has observed the progressive dilution of Western hegemony and the parallel rise of the demand for legitimacy from countries that were formerly dominated or marginalized. He saw the establishment of anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism as a political resource in a number of regions in the world, and with them the questioning of a law applicable to everyone. He saw oligarchies and their friends, heads of state, take hold of power and spread propaganda, notably through the media and sports, in a growing portion of the world.

The young Sepp, hired by Havelange, became Blatter thanks to all these changes, from which he extracted for both FIFA and himself the maximum number of opportunities. Profiting from the blurry world order and the pusillanimity of its leaders, he conquered the soccer world with an army of servants supported by formidable financial and media logistics.

FIFA is a federation of national teams represented by the “one country, one voice” principle. In this way, the club spirit, which is of a private character, mixes with national interest, which is of a political character. This interferes with the organization’s most important decisions, such as the assignment of the World Cup’s venue. Aside from the sports competition, there is an added competition between states for access to all the reputational and business benefits that come with the privilege of hosting it.

Blatter wanted to be the president of a FIFA that was going to extend access to the great table of soccer to countries with underdeveloped sports sectors. This was logical of him; he would have been criticized for confining this sport to those who already practice it on a massive scale. But on what terms did he do this? The response is of the greatest interest to the losing candidates in the competition to host upcoming World Cups. It does not interest the winners at all. It opposes accusations of corruption, alleged by the former, for whom bribes are punishable with accusations of imperialism or racism, advanced by the latter, for whom bribes are like a way to get one’s place in the sun in a world unfairly dominated by the United States and Europe.

Cronyism is nothing new to the world; the Cold War powers used plenty of it. During Blatter’s 34 years, however, it lost its ideological dimension — liberalism against communism — to take a nationalist, clanist turn — the prestige of the flag and its protectors. Better football stimulated national and ideological passions, and it has lent itself marvelously to the national ambitions of the marginalized that FIFA promised to promote. The Qatar World Cup was a promotion that went too far.

Without a doubt, as Simon Kuper of The Financial Times writes, Blatter correctly interpreted the new power of the emirate, even before the Arab revolts and the role he would play in them. Without a doubt, he believed himself able to take the protests of the Western candidates as hypocritical and as the views of the minority. Without a doubt, with Russia on his side, gratified with the 2018 World Cup, he was able to think as he looked about him that the union of authoritarianism and money would, from now on, preside over the world order.

This was without taking into account American power, never so extensively deployed as when its norms and values are trampled. Is it a loser’s revenge? Of course — but with the legal weapons that all those who lose to authoritarianism and corruption always call to their aid.

It takes time to identify the abusive powers. Kuper had noted this in 2010 because the candidate countries believed FIFA thought like they did: The Americans and the English, capitalists by instinct, hoped to win because they had the greatest market for soccer; the Spanish and Portuguese because they had friends within FIFA; the Australians because they were paying lobbies to find them some; the Belgians and the Dutch because they had the most environmentally friendly record. In reality, FIFA was thinking like Qatar — who had the money? Five years later, the awakened Holy Alliance of the States of Law is pouncing on them.