A Bad Stretch for the Beautiful Game

For the soccer players, fans, and officials alike, the World Cup can't start soon enough. And that's not just because they're giddy with anticipation.

Over the past several weeks, the soccer world has been hit by an avalanche of bad news. It started a few weeks ago with a detailed investigation by the New York Times into widespread match fixing in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Just days later, the U.K. Sunday Times ran a story alleging that a former executive of FIFA, soccer's governing body, paid out nearly $200,000 to current FIFA delegates to persuade them to vote for Qatar as the site of the 2022 World Cup. The selection of Qatar, a tiny desert nation where temperatures are well over 100 degrees in the summer, has always raised eyebrows, and allegations that the country is essentially using slave labor to build stadiums haven't helped. In May, FIFA president Sepp Blatter even admitted that choosing Qatar as host was a mistake. "Yes, it was a mistake of course, but one makes lots of mistakes in life," Blatter told Swiss broadcaster RTS.

Soccer in America hasn't been exempt from all of this bad PR. Just read Buzzfeed's fascinating story on Bill Blazer, the man who simultaneously put U.S. Soccer on the world map while bilking it of millions of dollars. Blazer happens to be a good friend of Jack Warner, a man who's no stranger to FIFA scandals.

And if that weren't enough, the host of this year's World Cup, the country that might love soccer more than any nation on earth, doesn't seem all that happy about hosting the event. "We are like the Romans — we spend everything on wine and sport,"a Brazilian woman told USA Today. Between pissed off transit workers and citizens who are simply disgusted by the $11 billion dollars being spent on the event, Brazilians seem more interested in protesting the games then watching them.

How did it come to this for the beautiful game? Perhaps because off the field, it's pretty ugly business. There have long been corruption scandals in international soccer. A line from the Times' investigation on match fixing may provide a clue as to why:

"Many National Soccer federations with teams competing in Brazil are just as vulnerable to match fixing as South Africa's was: They are financially shaky, in administrative disarray and politically divided."

International Soccer is a huge business, and any time business collides with national interest, large-scale construction projects, and personal greed, there's bound to be corruption.

On Thursday, however, the games will start, the hearts of soccer fans from Algeria to Uruguay will swell with national pride, and some of these scandals will be forgotten (at least by Americans, who once the Cup is over, will go back to not caring about soccer). One of the great things about the World Cup, like the Olympics, is that it can unite people through a shared love of sport and the thrill of watching world-class athletes compete. As hokey and naive as that may sound, I believe on some levels that it's true. But perhaps this World Cup, and the issues it's bringing to light, can also force us to rethink these "mega events."

The problems highlighted by the 2014 World Cup go beyond soccer. Brazilians are not just unhappy about money being spent on soccer stadiums being built in the Amazon. They're also unhappy about the billions being spent on venues for the 2016 Olympics, many of which will become obsolete the moment those games end. They're unhappy because that money could be used to address crime, poverty, and infrastructure. The economics of hosting major international sporting events may have made sense at one point, but not anymore. Just ask the people in Socci or Athens. Paying billions of dollars for a few weeks of tourism and publicity doesn't seem to have much lasting economic value, unless I'm unaware of the endless earning potential of velodromes and speed skating venues.

Maybe these events have simply become too big, too expensive for their own good. Maybe we should think about picking a handful of cities that could host World Cups and Olympic games on a rotating basis. That might deny some countries their turn in the international spotlight, but it might mean less corruption and fewer wasted dollars. Because, in the end, we tune into these events for the competition and the human spectacle, and the setting means little. At least it does for me.