Who Is the Face of American Soccer?
The indictment alleges that at least a hundred and fifty million dollars in bribes changed hands—and that number is just a starting point. It doesn’t even really get to Qatar’s now notorious bid for the 2022 tournament. There are now criminal investigations or serious questions about every men’s World Cup from the past two decades.
.. The division between soccer’s ideals and its realities is perhaps best exemplified by the surface on which the women will be playing in this month’s supposed world-class event: artificial turf, rather than grass. That would be unheard of in men’s games at anything approaching this level. Turf increases the likelihood of injuries, including career-ending ones. It makes dives and tackles inadvisable. It renders play choppy and poorly paced, by increasing the number of times that the ball bounces out of play.
.. on Friday, Die Zeit reported that Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder allegedly approved an arms sale to Saudi Arabia as part of the price for buying the kingdom’s vote to give Germany the 2006 tournament)
.. A few years ago, Blatter suggested that the way to encourage the sport’s development would be to have the women wear tight shorts.
.. To keep players from keeling over from the heat, the 2022 World Cup will be held in November and December, which will wreak havoc with the players’ professional schedules. Even at that time of year, temperatures are in the eighties, and so the plan is for the games to be played in air-conditioned stadiums that are currently being built in the desert by migrant workers who have few rights and who labor under conditions that are, as the BBC put it, “appalling.”