4 ms·

This looks like it's slowly improving though.

mschuster91 5y ago
Are you serious? Infantino is trying to introduce a two-year schedule for the World Cup, solely to make more money. Not to mention that Infantino and two Swiss judicial officials are under active investigation in a corruption scandal [1]. FIFA is a bunch of corrupt crooks, and while some individuals have been shown the door when the amount of corruption became too large, the institution itself has done nothing to prevent corruption. [1]: https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/medienmitteilungen.msg-id-79942.html https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/medienmittei...
- pndy 5y ago
  > a two-year schedule for the World Cup, solely to make more money That was reported here with "Everyone will profit from this (decision)" Infantino quote in some headlines. It's like FIFA is run by the Ferengi... /s
- ramblerman 5y ago
  > Infantino is trying to introduce a two-year schedule for the World Cup, solely to make more money. While I also don’t love that idea there is a BIG difference between making more money for the organization FIFA and profiting from it vs direct corruption. Ie taking bribes from Qatar
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    They are intimately connected, aren't they? Twice as many WCs, twice as many chances to sell your vote. FIFA the org doesn't need more money, any extra they get will get pocketed with intra-org admin, where the jobs are also doled out as favours.
    - afavour 5y ago
      Not necessarily. Twice as many World Cups is a massive money making opportunity irrespective of sold votes. Unless you argue the pursuit of more money is inherently corrupt (…which I don’t know I’d entirely disagree with!)
      - eru 5y ago
        Pursuit of money for your organisation is not corrupt at all, yes. You might not like it, but it's an entirely separate thing. (Just like it's silly to call everyone you disagree with politically either a fascist or a communist. They are other bad things, too!)
      - Bud 5y ago
        It's not automatically a massive opportunity. It's reasonably likely that it dilutes the specialness of the product, makes it less attractive, and then it makes less money per iteration.
- m4tthumphrey 5y ago
  Unfortunately it does seem like this is the direction football is taking. A World Cup every 2 years, some sort of exclusive Super League, etc etc. Football is a trillion dollar market with no cap in site. The fans are slowly being left behind whilst the "new money" of the Middle East and co are doing their best to takeover. They still don't seem to realise however, that football is 0 without fans.
  - Thlom 5y ago
    New money in Middle East and Asia is exactly the reason for the proposed "Super League". Why should Manchester City play Watford on a regular Tuesday and Wolverhampton on Sunday. No one cares except fans from Manchester (and some smaller countries in Europe). If they instead could play against Barcelona, Juventus and Bayern every weekend there would be a wave of money coming from the Middle East and Asia where the fans don't know or care about football culture or history or the importance of the home league and cup. No disrespect to those fans at all, I'm just pointing out that it is a wholly commercial endeavor. Top tier football is business and I'm just glad I don't follow any of the big clubs in Europe. Give it a few years and they will start playing Super League (or whatever) matches in Singapore and Abu Dhabi. Fans at home left behind, but they don't care as the new fanbase in ME and Asia pumps a lot more money into the business.
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      I do hope that the European Union and the UK government step up should the situation ever get so dystopian. The fact that there was quick and brutal condemnation for the "Super League" plans from politics, the UEFA and the national leagues was a good sign. Especially given the current de-globalization and nationalist sentiments in politics and the importance of football for politics as "panem et circenses", I expect anti-trust and even confiscation-scale action against oil sheik and Russian mob owners, should they attempt such a radical transformation of how football is played.
    - eru 5y ago
      > Give it a few years and they will start playing Super League (or whatever) matches in Singapore and Abu Dhabi. At least there would be less corruption in the match played in Singapore..
- sofixa 5y ago
  > Infantino is trying to introduce a two-year schedule for the World Cup, solely to make more money You can't deny that there are serious advantages of a World cup every two years (currently even the best players with long careers can't hope to play more than 4 World Cups - even 17 year old debutants like Bellingham and Pedri, so their chances of winning one are slim; there are many good teams that deserve to win, so giving more options can result in more winners, etc.), and it isn't unprecedented, the AFC and Copa America are already on such a schedule.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    The problem is, how are the European players supposed to keep up that schedule? At least here in Germany, calendars are already stretched to the maximum particularly for the elite clubs that employ the most national team players: Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal, Supercup on the national side, European League, Champions League, Club World Cup internationally, and on top of that the load from the national team games with friendlies, trainings and every two years either UEFA European Championship or FIFA World Championship. And on top of that come PR appointments from sponsors and actual training. With all that load, players rarely have the time to recover from games, that plus the ever rising speed and run distance leads to more injuries, which again the players can't naturally recover from. It's a rat race to the bottom, and the players get ground down only so that advertisers can get more exposure for ads and random dictatorships can whitewash their crimes. And it's not just the players that can't keep up any more, the fans can't either. Traveling is expensive and annoying, particularly for games during the week (attending a "Montagsspiel" means two days worth of vacation), international travel for the cups means plane tickets and hotel stays and that eats up money really quick.
    - alisonkisk 5y ago
      The teams that are good enough get sponsord and can afford travel. The others don't need to go.
    - eru 5y ago
      Well, to be a bit cynical: a hardcore fan might attend a World Cup every four years now. If he (and it's mostly likely 'he') stick to that schedule even if more World Cups are held, his expenses won't go up.
- eru 5y ago
  > Infantino is trying to introduce a two-year schedule for the World Cup, solely to make more money. That might be greedy, but it's not a sign of corruption in itself. There's plenty of real corruption in FIFA to choose from.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > That might be greedy, but it's not a sign of corruption in itself. Every world cup assignment of the last decades was loaded with corruption charges - including, to my shame as German, the 2006 World Cup. More World Cups, more opportunities for grift and corruption. Not to mention that there aren't many stable democracies left willing to host World Cups, there's a reason why Qatar and Russia ended up hosting 2018/2022.
    - eru 5y ago
      > Not to mention that there aren't many stable democracies left willing to host World Cups, there's a reason why Qatar and Russia ended up hosting 2018/2022. Nah, stable places are totally willing to host, if it was offered to them. They are just not willing to bid as high as Qatar and Russia were. (Where bidding is informal, basically how much bribery you were willing to do.) > Every world cup assignment of the last decades was loaded with corruption charges - including, to my shame as German, the 2006 World Cup. I can believe that. But the amount of money in bribes is still relatively trivial compared to the total amount they make from the World Cup. (In general, what's so infuriating about bribes and corruption is how low the stakes are. If someone is willing to sell out their country for a few billion Euros, I wouldn't be mad. But have a look at eg the paltry sums that changed hands in the CDU-Spendenaffäre. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDU-Spendenaff%C3%A4re https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDU-Spendenaff%C3%A4re They are talking about mere millions. Compare also https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in-almonds/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in... )
newsclues 5y ago
How can you differentiate a corrupt organization cleaning house and replacing corrupt officials with honest ones, and a corrupt organization appearing to clean house and replacing known corrupt officials with ones that have yet to be proven to be corrupt yet?

Are you serious? Infantino is trying to introduce a two-year schedule for the World Cup, solely to make more money. Not to mention that Infantino and two Swiss judicial officials are under active investigation in a corruption scandal [1]. FIFA is a bunch of corrupt crooks, and while some individuals have been shown the door when the amount of corruption became too large, the institution itself has done nothing to prevent corruption. [1]: https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/medienmitteilungen.msg-id-79942.html https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/medienmittei...

pndy 5y ago
> a two-year schedule for the World Cup, solely to make more money That was reported here with "Everyone will profit from this (decision)" Infantino quote in some headlines. It's like FIFA is run by the Ferengi... /s
ramblerman 5y ago
> Infantino is trying to introduce a two-year schedule for the World Cup, solely to make more money. While I also don’t love that idea there is a BIG difference between making more money for the organization FIFA and profiting from it vs direct corruption. Ie taking bribes from Qatar
- lordnacho 5y ago
  They are intimately connected, aren't they? Twice as many WCs, twice as many chances to sell your vote. FIFA the org doesn't need more money, any extra they get will get pocketed with intra-org admin, where the jobs are also doled out as favours.
  - afavour 5y ago
    Not necessarily. Twice as many World Cups is a massive money making opportunity irrespective of sold votes. Unless you argue the pursuit of more money is inherently corrupt (…which I don’t know I’d entirely disagree with!)
    - eru 5y ago
      Pursuit of money for your organisation is not corrupt at all, yes. You might not like it, but it's an entirely separate thing. (Just like it's silly to call everyone you disagree with politically either a fascist or a communist. They are other bad things, too!)
    - Bud 5y ago
      It's not automatically a massive opportunity. It's reasonably likely that it dilutes the specialness of the product, makes it less attractive, and then it makes less money per iteration.
m4tthumphrey 5y ago
Unfortunately it does seem like this is the direction football is taking. A World Cup every 2 years, some sort of exclusive Super League, etc etc. Football is a trillion dollar market with no cap in site. The fans are slowly being left behind whilst the "new money" of the Middle East and co are doing their best to takeover. They still don't seem to realise however, that football is 0 without fans.
- Thlom 5y ago
  New money in Middle East and Asia is exactly the reason for the proposed "Super League". Why should Manchester City play Watford on a regular Tuesday and Wolverhampton on Sunday. No one cares except fans from Manchester (and some smaller countries in Europe). If they instead could play against Barcelona, Juventus and Bayern every weekend there would be a wave of money coming from the Middle East and Asia where the fans don't know or care about football culture or history or the importance of the home league and cup. No disrespect to those fans at all, I'm just pointing out that it is a wholly commercial endeavor. Top tier football is business and I'm just glad I don't follow any of the big clubs in Europe. Give it a few years and they will start playing Super League (or whatever) matches in Singapore and Abu Dhabi. Fans at home left behind, but they don't care as the new fanbase in ME and Asia pumps a lot more money into the business.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    I do hope that the European Union and the UK government step up should the situation ever get so dystopian. The fact that there was quick and brutal condemnation for the "Super League" plans from politics, the UEFA and the national leagues was a good sign. Especially given the current de-globalization and nationalist sentiments in politics and the importance of football for politics as "panem et circenses", I expect anti-trust and even confiscation-scale action against oil sheik and Russian mob owners, should they attempt such a radical transformation of how football is played.
  - eru 5y ago
    > Give it a few years and they will start playing Super League (or whatever) matches in Singapore and Abu Dhabi. At least there would be less corruption in the match played in Singapore..
sofixa 5y ago
> Infantino is trying to introduce a two-year schedule for the World Cup, solely to make more money You can't deny that there are serious advantages of a World cup every two years (currently even the best players with long careers can't hope to play more than 4 World Cups - even 17 year old debutants like Bellingham and Pedri, so their chances of winning one are slim; there are many good teams that deserve to win, so giving more options can result in more winners, etc.), and it isn't unprecedented, the AFC and Copa America are already on such a schedule.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  The problem is, how are the European players supposed to keep up that schedule? At least here in Germany, calendars are already stretched to the maximum particularly for the elite clubs that employ the most national team players: Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal, Supercup on the national side, European League, Champions League, Club World Cup internationally, and on top of that the load from the national team games with friendlies, trainings and every two years either UEFA European Championship or FIFA World Championship. And on top of that come PR appointments from sponsors and actual training. With all that load, players rarely have the time to recover from games, that plus the ever rising speed and run distance leads to more injuries, which again the players can't naturally recover from. It's a rat race to the bottom, and the players get ground down only so that advertisers can get more exposure for ads and random dictatorships can whitewash their crimes. And it's not just the players that can't keep up any more, the fans can't either. Traveling is expensive and annoying, particularly for games during the week (attending a "Montagsspiel" means two days worth of vacation), international travel for the cups means plane tickets and hotel stays and that eats up money really quick.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    The teams that are good enough get sponsord and can afford travel. The others don't need to go.
  - eru 5y ago
    Well, to be a bit cynical: a hardcore fan might attend a World Cup every four years now. If he (and it's mostly likely 'he') stick to that schedule even if more World Cups are held, his expenses won't go up.
eru 5y ago
> Infantino is trying to introduce a two-year schedule for the World Cup, solely to make more money. That might be greedy, but it's not a sign of corruption in itself. There's plenty of real corruption in FIFA to choose from.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > That might be greedy, but it's not a sign of corruption in itself. Every world cup assignment of the last decades was loaded with corruption charges - including, to my shame as German, the 2006 World Cup. More World Cups, more opportunities for grift and corruption. Not to mention that there aren't many stable democracies left willing to host World Cups, there's a reason why Qatar and Russia ended up hosting 2018/2022.
  - eru 5y ago
    > Not to mention that there aren't many stable democracies left willing to host World Cups, there's a reason why Qatar and Russia ended up hosting 2018/2022. Nah, stable places are totally willing to host, if it was offered to them. They are just not willing to bid as high as Qatar and Russia were. (Where bidding is informal, basically how much bribery you were willing to do.) > Every world cup assignment of the last decades was loaded with corruption charges - including, to my shame as German, the 2006 World Cup. I can believe that. But the amount of money in bribes is still relatively trivial compared to the total amount they make from the World Cup. (In general, what's so infuriating about bribes and corruption is how low the stakes are. If someone is willing to sell out their country for a few billion Euros, I wouldn't be mad. But have a look at eg the paltry sums that changed hands in the CDU-Spendenaffäre. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDU-Spendenaff%C3%A4re https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDU-Spendenaff%C3%A4re They are talking about mere millions. Compare also https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in-almonds/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in... )

newsclues 5y ago

How can you differentiate a corrupt organization cleaning house and replacing corrupt officials with honest ones, and a corrupt organization appearing to clean house and replacing known corrupt officials with ones that have yet to be proven to be corrupt yet?