One key fact is the centrality of the American financial system to the world economy – something that in turn rests on the importance of US-based banks and the role of the dollar as the pre-eminent global reserve currency. The US has standing in the Fifa cases because allegedly corrupt transactions were made through banks based in America.
.. Could this change? Possibly. But it would probably require the Chinese currency to become a global reserve currency to rival the dollar. That is why the IMF’s decision later this year about whether to include China in the basket of currencies from which it makes up its Special Drawing Rights will be keenly watched. Such a move would be a visible step along the road to turning the renminbi into a global reserve currency. That, in turn, might ultimately threaten the dollar’s unique position in the global system – and the power that it confers on the US.
.. But if the US Department of Justice says there is a serious case to answer, it still carries global credibility. The same benefit of the doubt would not be extended to a prosecutor in Moscow or Beijing.
China is certainly closing the wealth gap with America, just as Asia is closing the gap with the west. But the reputation of American institutions for integrity remains a vital intangible asset. It is that reputation that allowed the US to tackle Fifa.
Alabama Football Follies
Dr. Ray Watts, the president of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, announced that after a strategic review, the school had decided to stop fielding a football team. The main reason for Watts’s decision was financial: two-thirds of the athletic department’s $30 million budget came from a combination of university funds and student fees. When a consultant concluded that the subsidy would have to more than double over the next five years for the football team to be competitive, Watts said, Enough. “We could not justify subsidizing football if it meant taking away from other priorities,” he told me at the time.
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.”
Statcast: A new tracking system could revolutionise understanding of baseball
It constantly logs the position of the ball and of every player on the field. It calculates the speed and curvature of a pitch, how rapidly the ball spins and around what axis, and how much faster or slower than reality that pitch appears to be to the hitter, based on the length of the pitcher’s stride. When the ball is hit, the system measures how quickly it leaves the bat and how its path is affected by atmospheric conditions. It then tracks how long fielders take to react before moving, and the efficiency of their routes to the ball’s eventual landing spot. And it takes just 15 seconds to crunch these numbers and integrate them with video recordings.