I thought I’d write a quick few paragraphs on the unfolding arrests in Switzerland of 14 high-rankings members of FIFA. My initial reaction was “about damn time”. It’s encouraging to see the US lead the fight against the world’s most patently corrupt sporting organization (though there are always challengers to the throne in terms of the IOC, the NFL, and others). And it’s equally encouraging to see that Switzerland, long adept at looking the other way while financial chicanery occurred, is also taking a stand. This is a great start, make no doubt about it, and a fairly unprecedented move (at least in sport—think of it like the US taking on Al Capone and the mafia back in the 1920s). But until we can strike at the black heart of the organization—and I’m looking squarely at you, Sepp Blatter—the problem will persist.

Sepp Blatter closest analog is probably Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars trilogies.[1] He’s the evil epicenter of a tarantualan organization with its hands in numerous pots. FIFA takes money from its tournaments, its kit (read: jersey) sales, and its member nations. It bestows upon host nation the right to host tournaments for billions of dollars but does not pay a single penny to build stadiums or shore up infrastructure—the principal costs of a World Cup. The false economic promise of large sporting events has been revealed by numerous economists (check out the book Soccernomics for an in-depth look at past World Cups), and John Oliver did an epic take-down of FIFA before the 2016 tournament in Brazil. However, these macro-level statistics don’t get at the true pernicious nature of FIFA and their despicable, anti-poor, money-grubbing tactics.

It’s understandable that an organization would want to protect its brand and profit from its events. What makes FIFA odious is that they claim to be a development-friendly organization while blatantly screwing the poor and disenfranchised in every developing country that hosts their events. Not only are key dollars diverted from better uses (in Brazil, the amount of public money used for the World Cup equaled the 2013 spending on Bolsa Familia—the country’s signature conditional cash transfer program that has helped reduce poverty for millions[2]), but FIFA actively prevents local businesses from cashing in. In South Africa, local merchants were banned from a one-mile radius of the stadiums. They were also forbidden from using the term FIFA” or “2010 World Cup” anywhere on their products—hence the creation of the beautifully seditious “FICK FUFA” t-shirts that sprung up on the streets of Capetown and other host cities. There is also an unsettling political element to this dynamic. Before and during the World Cup in Brazil, pro-poor protestors were beaten by the police and prevented from coming anywhere near the stadiums. When I was walking to the stadium in Natal before the USA’s opening match against Ghana, I saw riot troops in full gear lined up ready to beat the crap out of would-be protestors.

All this hand-wringing and accusation begs the question of what can or should we do. Should Sepp Blatter be arrested? Yes, if the evidence is there, unequivocally yes. But I sincerely doubt that the new-age “Teflon president” will ever face charges or even be unseated in the upcoming election for FIFA’s presidency (scheduled, in a lovely piece of not-so-coincidental timing by US and Swiss authorities, in two days’ time). Should national soccer federations secede from FIFA to form their own independent union that could be restarted, free (at least initially) from the endemic corruption that now infests soccer’s governing body? Yes, but this also seems unlikely given that these bodies also profit from FIFA’s events and are often in cahoots with them. What you and I can and probably should do is limit our support of FIFA-sponsored events. We should avoid buying “officially-licensed products”, write sponsors to tell them of our disapproval of their support, and speak out against human rights abuses committed in the name of FIFA events.[3]

The last and most effective things we could do—and this is the hard one—would be to boycott FIFA events. This would hit them where it really hurt. If no country wanted to bid for the World Cup because it was a financial loser, now that would be a game-changer. The problem is that it’s just so damn hard. Despite the fact that I loathe FIFA to its core, I love the World Cup so very much. I gave FIFA my hard earned money in Germany in 2006, in South Africa in 2010, and in Brazil in 2014.  One of my best memories is being in the stadium in Pretoria with my brother when Landon Donovan scored the shot heard round the States.  We all love the product but hate the delivery mechanism. I should absolutely boycott Russia 2018 (if not for FIFA, then for the appalling human rights and foreign policy record of Putin and the Russian government in and of itself). But I still don’t know if I will. I love the beautiful game and still love the World Cup. My political consciousness clashes with my love of sport, and I don’t know if I can bring myself to do so. I want to. And hope to. Just as I hope FIFA will purge itself of its pervasive corruption. I just don’t see it happening. And I worry that my efforts at reform will fall just as flat. Here’s hoping that these arrests and the fallout it causes brings about a turning point. But I’m not holding my breath.

[1] I’m pretty sure the comparison has been made before—possibly by John Oliver.

[2] http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28881952

[3] Such as the numerous indignities currently being visited upon guest workers in Qatar as they build that country’s stadiums in preparation for the 2022 World Cup—don’t even get me started on that front