51吃瓜

One could be forgiven for assuming FIFA president had committed some diabolical atrocity, like abolishing women鈥檚 football. The ferocity of the condemnation directed at him suggests that he鈥檇 pushed football across an inviolable moral boundary. Yet this latest controversy is unlikely to be remembered for long. Football scandals have a remarkably short lifespan. Before one outrage has been fully digested, another usually arrives. That鈥檚 the thing about football: Its moral misadventures are not occasional interruptions to the sport鈥檚 history, but integral parts of it.

A successful dirty business

Association football is the sport in history. It has more participants, more spectators and a greater global reach than any other game. Conventional wisdom suggests that this popularity exists despite football鈥檚 widespread and longlasting corruption, dishonesty and scandals. But there鈥檚 another way to look at it: Football鈥檚 extraordinary cultural power owes an awful lot to the fact that it lurches from one controversy to the next. Controversies help sustain it.

Football is not merely a sport. It鈥檚 a global spectacle: Part showbiz, part psychodrama, part tribal ritual and part morality play. It offers moments of extraordinary beauty and athletic brilliance, but also churns out endless dramas of greed, betrayal, hypocrisy and transgression. Football gives audiences something few other institutions can provide: a constant supply of heroes and villains but no clear way of telling which is which. 

Dishonesty and fraudulence at the very top of football鈥檚 hierarchy is not a recent development. Corruption has accompanied the sport鈥檚 global expansion for decades and may well have lubricated the sport鈥檚 ascent.

Since the 1960s, FIFA has grown from a relatively modest sporting organization into one of the most powerful and certainly richest institutions in world sport. It sits on billions in , commands the world鈥檚 most valuable sporting event and controls a global commercial empire built around the World Cup. Ostensibly, it is a nonprofit governing body. In practice, it possesses the financial clout, political influence and global influence of a multinational corporation.

Allegations of bribery, patronage and financial impropriety have repeatedly accompanied FIFA鈥檚 rise since its inception in 1904. Under (1974鈥�1998) and later (1998鈥�2015), FIFA became synonymous in many minds with opaque decision-making and questionable commercial practices. World Cup bidding processes, marketing contracts and executive relationships became subjects of investigation rather than admiration.

The remarkable fact is not that football has survived these scandals. It鈥檚 that football has flourished through them. FIFA鈥檚 crowning competition the World Cup grew in stature, particularly after the rise of television in the 1950s, and the quadrennial tournament now vies with the summer Olympic Games as the world鈥檚 premier sports event.

Paradoxically, every notorious episode reinforces the game鈥檚 importance. Governments compete to host World Cups. Corporations like Coca-Cola and Unilever spend associating themselves with football. Fans who denounce corruption continue to watch. The institution may lose credibility, but the sport itself gains attention.

Other sports have their undersides. Boxing has a long association with . Cricket has endured controversies. Basketball has experienced scandals. Tennis has faced . Money contaminates professional sport if only because the filthy lucre inevitably attracts those willing to bend rules to get more of it.

But football operates on its own scale 鈥� its corruption is not just confined to one area of activity. It reaches governing bodies, clubs, agents, owners, players and supporters. The sport鈥檚 commercial success has created a gargantuan, plenteous ecosystem in which temptation and opportunity are abundant and irresistible.

Racism, violence and child abuse

Football鈥檚 moral problems extend far beyond financial corruption. The sport has long struggled with racism. In England, racist abuse became a major public issue from the late 1970s onwards, but it never remained a purely English problem. Across Europe and elsewhere, black 鈥� and sometimes Asian 鈥� players have endured abuse from supporters, opponents and, occasionally, institutions that officially claimed to oppose discrimination.

Football regularly presents itself as the world鈥檚 most inclusive game and, technically, it probably is. Campaigns against are widespread and, we presume, sincere. Taking the knee before games was a regular ritual for years. Yet the persistence of racist abuse exposes a contradiction at the heart of football culture. A sport can celebrate diversity while simultaneously providing a platform for prejudice.

has also been part of football鈥檚 history from its earliest days. In 19th-century England, clubs often represented local identities, religious affiliations and social divisions. Rivalries created powerful forms of belonging, but they could also produce hostility. In the 1960s and 1970s, the media gave a shape and name to the violence and hooliganism became football鈥檚 defining problem of the period.

Large-scale football violence diminished in England during the same period that followed the disaster, the Taylor Report and the transformation of stadiums into all-seater environments. In parts of Europe and South America, ultra groups continue to combine intense loyalty with intimidation, political extremism and physical confrontation.

Then there is the most disturbing issue of all: . Repeated investigations into football have revealed cases in which young players were exploited by trusted adults and institutions failed to protect them. Each discovery raises unsettling questions about what remained hidden for years and, even more unsettling, whether it still continues.

Criminologists and other social scientists understand that discovered crimes tell us that wrongdoing occurred; they can鈥檛 reveal its full extent. Institutions with powerful reputations often have the greatest capacity to conceal uncomfortable truths. Football鈥檚 history suggests that abuse, like corruption, flourishes when loyalty and reputation are valued above scrutiny.

Carnivalesque

Why, then, does all this fail to damage football鈥檚 popularity? Perhaps because football has become the ultimate modern carnival. The Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin used the idea of the to describe spaces where normal rules are temporarily suspended; hierarchies are inverted, excess is celebrated and the strange becomes fascinating. Football fits this description perfectly.

It鈥檚 a world where ordinary expectations are continually overturned. Billionaires behave like monarchs. Players become venerated icons one day and vilified outcasts the next. Managers and coaches are worshipped like messiahs then dismissed within weeks. Supporters create deep tribal identities based on affiliations that are sometimes as arbitrary as picking from a color chart. The carnival does not merely tolerate disorder; it requires periodic disruption. Without villains, controversies and transgressions, the spectacle loses some of its piquancy. A single refereeing decision can produce pandemonium across continents. As can a US President鈥檚 (though, in that case, understandably).

Do fans actually enjoy corruption, racism, violence or abuse? Probably not. But they can鈥檛 ignore them. And football, like any other form of entertainment, thrives on attention. This makes the hysterical outpouring over Infantino鈥檚 divisive proposal more intelligible. The attempt to sell a minority stake in the World Cup and other major tournaments to private equity investors whipped up headlines about 鈥渟elling 鈥� and speculation that Infantino was 鈥渙n the .鈥� This wasn鈥檛 a disruption of an otherwise smooth-running football culture, but a valuable addition.

Football combines the sublime with the pointless, childish, harebrained and downright idiotic. Breathtaking athletic skill shares space with comedic cheating. Passionate loyalty and vicious hostility balance one another. The sport cultivates authentic community but allows blatant money-grubbing. Remove all the wrongdoing and football would still be a popular sport. But would it still dominate global attention? Perhaps not.

Football鈥檚 near-magical allure lies not only in the beauty of what happens on the pitch but also in the moral and legal turbulence that surrounds it. Its many improprieties source everyday conversations. And even just talking about others鈥� miscreant behavior can be rewarding. Football is the world鈥檚 most popular sport not in spite of its dirtiness, but in large part because of it. That鈥檚 football鈥檚 filthy appeal.

[Ellis Cashmore is co-author of .]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author鈥檚 own and do not necessarily reflect 51吃瓜鈥檚 editorial policy.