FIFA: Exposure - Trailer (Netflix)
The World Cup in Mexico in 1970 opened wide the door to the realization of the vision of the "global village", a term coined by the philosopher Marshall McLaughlin a little more than a decade before.
Although World Cup games have been televised since the tournament in Switzerland in 1954, this tournament was the first to bring soccer broadcasts to international audiences, including here with Dan Shilon behind the microphone.
The whole world has become a small village, just like McLaughlin's vision.
A culture of envelopes.
Sepp Blatter (Photo: GettyImages, Philipp Schmidli)
FIFA, the world football federation, was already then an old organization that did what it does today - geopolitical connections based on football, and who like Israel, a problematic country like it, experienced this firsthand in the transition between confederations. The difference between the organization that operated before 1970 and this one What has continued since then lies in two main words: broadcast rights. Suddenly the big money started flowing, and where there is big money there is also corruption. Joao Havlanz, an all-powerful Brazilian businessman, won the presidency of FIFA in 1974 and opened the cash tap and the envelope procedure.
The money flowed non-stop and created a river of shame and disgust that cast a heavy shadow on one of the most powerful bodies in the world, if not the most powerful.
"FIFA: Exposure", a four-episode docu that sheds a spotlight on FIFA corruption during Sepp Blatter's term as president, appeared on Netflix in recent days at a very unsurprising time - a little more than a week before the opening kick of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
He presents the developments from the time of Havlenze through his successor Sepp Blatter and also hints that the organization is not very clean, to say the least, in the days of the current president Gianni Infantino.
The series was directed by the British Daniel Gordon, who specializes in docu-films about the dark side of sports and North Korea, so there was reason to believe that he would present us with a poignant document.
And so he did.
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FIFA President Gianni Infantino with the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani (Photo: Reuters)
Most of us are people who devote ourselves to the banal cycle of life - get up in the morning for work, come home, play and shower the children, go to bed, get a paycheck once a month and God forbid.
Therefore, it is difficult for a person from the settlement to understand the scope of the corruption of the high-ranking officials in FIFA until they see it with their own eyes. Millions of dollars were transferred with a wave of the hand and without any fear as if there were no arms of the law. A country in itself. The change in FIFA on the public and the law was not carried out From the bouncer, she was made from a tower.
It's both infuriating, amazing and fascinating.
The documentary begins with the early days of Havlenge and the decision to hold the 1978 World Cup in Jorge Vidal's dictatorial Argentina, a tournament that still resonates with many today, 44 years after its existence.
Havlenge, an imposing and imposing figure, positioned himself more like the king of the world and not the president of a football organization.
He pretends to be strong in the dome and opened the door to corruption with dubious and exclusive agreements on broadcast rights and sponsorships.
The one who entered this mess with genius was Secretary General Sepp Blatter, who performed a political exercise and ousted Havlenge in 1998. The flow of cash envelopes became a tsunami.
The magnitude of corruption cannot be described.
Jack Warner (Photo: GettyImages, Joe Raedle)
At the center of the docu are three FIFA executives - CONCACAF (North American Football Confederation) president Jack Warner, American businessman Chuck Blazer and of course Blatter himself, who was careful to define FIFA as a "family".
And it was indeed a family, of the style reminiscent of the crime families that ruled New York until the 80s, a mafia for all intents and purposes.
Dark deals, money transfers to tax havens, extortion, threats, envelopes with cash were the lot of many in this organization.
Not only was no one ashamed, everyone was parachuted into the role and immediately understood the norms in the organization.
These deals caused, among other things, that
the upcoming World Cup will be played in Qatar,
on the backs of over 6,500 victims, foreign workers (as of February 2021, the number has surely increased since then) who died during the construction of the stadiums.
By the way, almost 38 thousand were injured in various degrees of severity.
One of the interviewees in the film is Blatter himself.
The interview with him took place shortly after he was cleared of suspicion of corruption.
Beyond the fact that the questions aimed at him were too soft (probably as a condition for him to be interviewed), the fact that the only flaw that stuck to the former president is a moral one, not a criminal one, is amazing.
And yet, there is no beating for sin - Blatter continues to present himself as a victim of circumstances, he didn't know and didn't hear, he was fine, it was those under him who stank.
One of the sentences he says towards the end is simply amazing: "I never asked for anything, I never asked FIFA for money - they gave it to me." And when he says "money" it seems that he is not talking about a paycheck.
Shame you didn't specialize.
World Cup final in Argentina, 1978 (Photo: GettyImages, Allsport)
"FIFA: Exposure" is a poignant document not only for football fans. In fact, their importance here is secondary, because the series is not about the game itself, it analyzes the human nature of the intoxication of power, greed and corruption that have spread through an entire organization like a cancer with metastases. This series is recommended for anyone who wanted to know why the opening ball will be kicked next Sunday, of all places in the world, precisely in Doha, for those who already knew about the circumstances and wanted to dive even deeper, and especially for those who are mesmerized by sophisticated corruption mechanisms, which exist, in varying degrees, even today. who needed proof that sometimes crime does pay.
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