Good for them. Not that it's bad to talk about it, and we have the BBC, The Guardian, and other investigative journalists to thank for bringing this out into the light for the past decade, but the time for action was actually a decade ago when the stories were breaking,[1] when it became clear that migrant workers were dying from heat stroke. There are probably other insidious practices, but funny thing is the public was not talking about it. When did football as an establishment grow a conscience? Has it really? When did it become fashionable to talk about FIFA's corruption? Are we prepared to actually dissolve that organization in a vat of acid and start from scratch?

But really, what the hell took us so long to get fired up about this situation? Does it really take beer sales to get people invested in human rights abuses? It feels like the controversy is just another batch of rotating clickbait that will get flushed down the memory hole in a few weeks, and the systemic rot will remain.

For me, the entire sport lost a lot of its glamour when the amount of money involved came to the fore. Most clubs vying for the Champion's League trophy are too big to fail now, and with it comes all the problems of economic institutions. The advertising, the scandals, the enormous egos of players and coaches alike. It's gross. In France, the national team's coach was asked why the team flew in private jets from Paris to another city in France when the high-speed trains would have sufficed. It could've been a good PR opportunity for the country since these athletes -- no, people -- are revered. The coach scoffed and joked they would row to the next tournament abroad. These people are detached from reality, and it is because society elevated these personalities to demigod status. Football has become simply one more utopian refuge of escape.

I remember the sport in a purer form from 20 years ago. Maybe that is nostalgia, and maybe I'm foolish for remembering the innocent form of the sport. Sure, the biggest European clubs were already approaching billion dollar values, but now it feels filthy and sick. Clubs are like mercenary squads, and the sport feels like a convenient advertising and money-laundering vehicle for oligarchs and authoritarians.

1- https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/oct/07/s...