Polluting the Beautiful Game

By Devin Torossian / Winter 2020

Coming from a European/Middle Eastern background, soccer is a big part of life and culture. I first started playing when I was in elementary school and quickly became heavily invested in it. I joined AYSO (American Youth Soccer Organization) with friends, then competitive club soccer, and finally high school soccer. When I was younger, I viewed soccer as the perfect portal to a world where everything was fair and just. However, as I got older I learned that this was not the reality. Soccer is not always fair, and it is not always just, and in this context I am not talking about the sport itself, but rather how it is conducted and organized. The “beautiful sport” truly is beautiful. It brings families, communities, and enemies together all in support of a favorite team, but at the same time it also causes great harm to families, societies, and environments. Unfortunately, we rarely hear of these communities because they do not directly impact us. This is due to our current global ideology of neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism takes away the purity of our beautiful game and fills it with a dirty and polluted business opportunity. The basic idea of neoliberalism is that “greed is good” and that free market competition will bring efficiency to the world. However, the word efficiency can be misleading. While efficiency can mean that everyone is better off, efficiency can also mean that the economy is at a point where the total value of the economy cannot go any higher. In a economic graph, this point represents the point where firms are able to perfectly control ALL prices of ALL products for any given consumer. So yes, this may be economically efficient, but is it fair? Is it just? Is it realistic and sustainable? Looking deeper, as corporations try to attain this, they cast aside all morals to try and achieve this “efficiency”.

As I got older and started to understand how things in the world worked a bit more, and as I got to better understand neoliberalism I realized how big of a problem this really is. The specific moment where I knew that what was going on was not acceptable was during the corruption scandal within FIFA. In 2015, the President of FIFA, Sepp Blatter resigned due to an ongoing corruption scandal. According to an article posted on the History channel website, “On June 2, 2015, Sepp Blatter, president of international soccer’s governing body FIFA, steps down, just a few days after he had been re-elected to a fifth four-year term. His resignation came amid rumors that he would soon be under investigation by the United States and Sweden on charges of fraud and corruption.” At this time, Blatter was not officially charged with any crimes, but resigned anyway. This makes it so obvious that there was some form of corruption taking place. Soccer is a game of fair play, but the fact that the head organization itself engages in unfair, corrupt deals absolutely takes away from the honesty and passion of the sport.

One example of the corruption within FIFA that is mentioned in the same History Channel article, is that “Officials were also accused of accepting bribes and kickbacks, and even of buying and selling their votes for countries like Russia, Qatar and South Africa to host the prestigious World Cup tournament.” Again, we see bribery here, but looking further into these scenarios, we have to think about the cost to the country of hosting such a tournament. The 2022 World Cup is set to be hosted in Qatar, which is purely and obviously due to bribes, but besides that, what about all the stadiums/tourist hubs/hotels that they will need to build to support so many tourists coming in? Thousands upon thousands of laborers are needed to complete these projects, and in the modern, civilized world we live in today, those workers are probably going to have decent working conditions, right? Wrong, migrant workers in Qatar are super vulnerable to the systematic abuse, and to illustrate this point, we can look at an  example posted on the Wikipedia page titled 2022 Fifa World Cup Controversies which states “Workers may not change jobs or even leave the country without their sponsors’ permission” (Wikipedia). This is almost, if not full blown slavery! Workers do not have the free will to decide if they want to do another job or not, they require the sponsorship of their employer, and which employer would sign off on that when they can keep exploiting the workers? On top of that in an article posted by The Guardian reporters state that “Migrant laborer’s are being worked to death in searing temperatures in Qatar, with hundreds estimated to be dying from heat stress every year, a Guardian investigation can reveal.” Previous reports say that even before the World Cup projects began there are deaths in the country due to people being overworked in the very hot weather, and now with so many more workers, and so many more projects going on that need to be completed in a certain timeframe these numbers are skyrocketing! FIFA, the leading body of this tournament is doing nothing about it. Their greedy policies allow them to turn away from all this in turn for a pretty penny. This is an absolute disgrace and quite frankly, the World Cup for 2022 should be canceled or moved. Hundreds of people dying, thousands being abused, and all for just plain old money. Sure, the overall wealth of Qatar might increase due to tourism and what not, but what about the value of lives lost that cannot be quantified? What about basic human rights? What about basic decency and fairness? Even if we assume that Qatar is the worst country in the world and doesn’t care about its people, shouldn’t FIFA, the organization that is in charge of the event do something about it? FIFA is so powerful, so rich, they would have no issue changing things around if they wanted to, but they don’t. They won’t, and it is because of the millions of dollars in bribes they continue to get in order to keep the World Cup there and their mouths shut. This is what is wrong with FIFA, governments, companies and more. As we discussed in class, we are a thing oriented society instead of a people oriented society and unless we change from this, we will, as Martin Luther King feels about this, continue to “lose our soul”. Lives will continue to be unnecessarily lost, people will continue to be unnecessarily abused, and the song will remain the same.

Furthermore, these neoliberalist, selfish ideologies do not only occur at the highest level in soccer, it trickles down all the way into amateur leagues. Think about teams bribing referees, club academies costing so much money, insane ticket prices for games, and much more. These are all driven by money seeking corporations and individuals who define success as getting as much money as they possibly can, despite any repercussions they face or not. All sports, especially during the youth should be about fair play, development, and mainly about having fun. As a child, one may not be aware of this, but as people get older they start to see things how they really are. Countless players are turned away because they do not have enough money, or because other people are paying too much money.

It is not just laborers or athletes facing the repercussions of global greed. Perhaps they face it in a direct, head on manner, but everyone is impacted by this. The crazy thing is, is that FIFA is just one corporation controlling soccer, imagine all the other corporations controlling everything else people do on a daily basis. Think about all the slavery, death, and all the land destroyed from other industries such as the clothing industry, oil, and other consumables. All over the world so much of this is being produced in poorer countries where people essentially do not have rights, and this is exactly what we see in Qatar.

Now that we have examined the unjust occurrences, we need to consider why they occur and why they keep happening. We know that neoliberalism is a key driving factor in this, but we must also consider the concept of economic externalities. Externalities are consequences of industrial/commercial activity that affects other parties without this cost being reflected in the cost to produce the good. We as a society produce too many negative externalities and too few positive externalities. Simply said, we do more of the bad things than we do the good things. Throughout history we as a society do the things that are best for us as individuals, but do not take into account how it can negatively affect other people, a primary example being the situation in Qatar. It has been instilled in us to just take, take, and take. Very rarely do we ever give back, and this makes it difficult to strive for equality for all because people are constantly taking advantage of other people. Another reason why solving this problem is not easy is because taking advantage of people is easy. It is easy to forget about the harm you have caused someone because you are not facing the repercussions for it, especially if you never have to face them, like FIFA does with the workers in Qatar. The people in high positions never have to go to Qatar, see the bodies, see the terrible conditions or any of that. They can just comfortably sit in their mansions completely oblivious to the negative externalities they are imposing on the world.

From an economic standpoint, firms will always seek to maximize profits and be efficient, and if externalities are not accounted for, then they will do too much of the bad such that the Private Benefit is greater than the social cost. When countries and FIFA give the approval to build a stadium, all they see and all that most people see is all the cheering, joy, and fun that will happen in these stadiums. Yet, we don’t see everything that goes into building the stadium. Putting a dollar value on all the cheering, joy, and happiness is easy because we can quantify that by ticket sales and views. However, putting a dollar value on lives lost, traumatic experiences, pollution, and more is hard, so finding the socially efficient outcome where Private Benefit equals social cost is extremely difficult to find and often not feasible. Unfortunately, in a world where acts of selfishness are rewarded monetarily, they may also impose long lasting negative, unrealized effects on society. Even though this is essentially the history of mankind, this is not a default feature, this is taught to us because this is the dominant ideology, but that does not mean it cannot change. We as a society must explore and adapt to a more just and ethical perspective to create a world where efficiency is defined as the point where ALL people are able to pursue their best lives free of obstacles that would prevent otherwise.

For our society to benefit and stay relevant long term, we must move away from this neoliberalist ideology. We must impose heavier regulations on our society. We cannot allow firms to globally exploit workers and their environments. Firms must be responsible for the externalities they impose on society. They must take into account the pollution they are creating, the lives that are lost, the people they are displacing, and the land they are destroying. While FIFA is obviously guilty of doing this, they are by no means the only ones. If we continue to allow corporations and governments to take advantage of the world around them, soon enough there will be nothing left to take advantage of. Neoliberalism is too focused on the “now” and too little on the future. As we are seeing around the globe right now, this is unsustainable. We cannot continue to be so greedy as a society, there has to be positive externalities that are imposed on society instead of purely negative. As a direct result of all these externalities, the planet is literally dying, and if we do not stop soon, it will be too late. We must shift over to a society that invests in the people and looks as profits as a secondary priority. I find it ironic, the concept of neoliberalism tells us that the free market will essentially make everything ok and how it should be, but instead the free market is leading us to an inevitable end.

Though it is currently happening slowly, more people must become aware of what is going on around the world, and we must act together to stop this. The people who are being taken advantage of are the majority, and we can fight back. We can create new laws and regulations that limit the extent to which corporations supply these externalities. Governments can tax firms on their production such that it is more expensive for the firms to produce goods, which will in turn result in a fall of production, and therefore a fall in the negative externalities. I believe as Milton Friedman believes, that realistically we cannot have a society with 0 negative externalities, that “to make an omelet, you need to break some eggs”(Friedman) but we can at least reduce the amount of eggs broken so that the damages to the people and environment is significantly reduced. With regards to FIFA, global governments can closely monitor the selection process for who hosts the World Cup, and closely monitor the labor conditions in these countries leading up to the event. This way, we can ensure a safe and moral buildup to the tournament AND enjoy the beautiful game as it is meant to be, fair and safe. I do not believe that this is something that is necessarily hard to achieve. The world has more than enough resources to make this happen, but it depends on the people to make it happen.

If there is one thing I learned in the 10 weeks of WCWP100, it is that nothing in society is fixed. Just like Omi and Winant’s racial formation theory that states “race is a socially constructed identity, where the content and importance of racial categories are determined by social, economic, and political forces”(Omi and Winant) the same goes for social ideologies. These are all socially constructed entities, and over time these will change. Ideologies will change, standards will change, people will change, and this is no exception. This is not something that will be fixed overnight, it will take many nights, but in the end it will be worth it because it will create a society focused on developing and helping each other, rather than exploiting each other.

Works Cited

“FIFA President Sepp Blatter Announces Resignation amidst Corruption Scandal.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 7 Sept. 2018, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sepp-blatter-announces-resignation-fifa-corruption.

McIntyre, Niamh, et al. “Revealed: Hundreds of Migrant Workers Dying of Heat Stress in Qatar Each Year.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 2 Oct. 2019, www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/oct/02/revealed-hundreds-of-migrant-workers-dying-of-heat-stress-in-qatar-each-year

“2022 FIFA World Cup Controversies.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Feb. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_FIFA_World_Cup_controversies.

“2022 FIFA World Cup Controversies.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Feb. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_FIFA_World_Cup_controversies

Johnson, Jamie and Nick Kurzon, directors. The One Percent. Wise and Good Films, LLC, 2006

Lecture Notes, Day 13