I see that UEFA and FIFA are threatening to ban the 12 teams who announced they would form a 'Super League.' And to ban their players. Even from international tournaments. I read their statements that football is a public good and we need to stand together in solidarity and rescue the game for the people.
The hypocrisy is staggering.
Let me ask the heads of these governing bodies some questions, because I don't think they have served the public interest or the game:
- Should the head of a body governing a sector producing 'public goods' earn over $1.5 million a year (the head of the WHO earns less than $300 thousand)?
- Should bodies that are meant to 'govern' clubs in the public interest also have commercial deals with organizations that own these clubs (or have other interests in these clubs) like UEFA and FIFA do?
- Should governing bodies actively regulate agents and clubs more than you do?
- Should you do something when corrupt deals are revealed in your sector (and organization) - like the decision to allocate the World Cup to Qatar?
- Could you have reallocated more than 5% of your revenue to solidarity payments designed to help those at the bottom of the football pyramid (in 2018/19 UEFA gave Euro 218 out of Euro 3857 to solidarity payments to tens of thousands of players while its internal wage bill--for between 500 and 600 employees--was Euro 100 million)?
I do not think UEFA and FIFA have been public-minded entities at any time. They have been masquerading as governing bodies but actually playing the role of commercial, profit-making event organizers.
I don't think we would be here if governing bodies like UEFA and FIFA had actually governed the sector to control its relentless shift from a localized sporting model to a global business. The big corporations that have emerged in the low regulation generation of world football are now cutting the 'event organizing' entities passing as governing bodies out of the action.
As said in a prior blog post: I'm not a fan of the super league decision, but UEFA and FIFA are at least as big a part of the problem as any of the clubs joining that league. They should have no voice in whatever comes next.
(A long paper on this topic is here).