![]() A small amount of funding from FIFA will go much further in a tiny island territory than in a superpower. Among those indicted was Jeffrey Webb, president of the football association of the Cayman Islands (population: 58,435).īut bribes aren’t the only thing that might influence those smaller nations. In the indictments Wednesday, the Justice Department alleged, among other charges, that voters took bribes in both the selection of the 2010 men’s World Cup and the 2011 FIFA presidential election. That makes the nations’ votes - votes that occur in secret FIFA ballots - more vulnerable to corruption from bribery. Soccer power in smaller nations concentrates itself in fewer officials and stakeholders. This isn’t only a theoretical problem of inequity. states, there are more than 250,000 times the number of people living in China as in Montserrat. While California has 66 times the population of the smallest U.S. In practice, this is one unequal form of democracy. “Please note that the ‘one member one vote’ system was established since the foundation of FIFA and it relates to a democratic principle,” a FIFA spokesperson said by email in response to my inquiry. Senate intended in giving the smallest state the same number of senators as the biggest one. The “one member, one vote” principle could, in theory, be a way for FIFA to protect its smallest members, much as the creators of the U.S. Multiplying the number of voters by nearly 10 should diminish the impact of any one corrupt vote. In future host selections, each member-association will get one vote. (On Wednesday, Switzerland’s attorney general’s office said it had opened criminal proceedings around the selection of the 20 World Cup hosts.) ![]() ![]() That meant just 22 people participated in a controversial balloting that, astonishingly, awarded the 2022 tournament to Qatar, a nation with scant soccer history that doesn’t have soccer-suitable summer weather, bans same-sex sexual activity and has a poor record of worker safety and rights. In 2010, the FIFA executive committee voted to select which countries would host the 20 men’s World Cup tournaments. 165, women’s team unranked) - will get equal say in choosing hosts of future World Cups. And each one - from Brazil (five men’s World Cup wins, one of the world’s best women’s teams) to, well, let’s stick to Montserrat (men’s team never ranked higher than No. That means each one gets to cast a vote in the FIFA presidential election scheduled for this Friday in Zurich. Every member, from China ( population: 1.36 billion) to tiny Montserrat ( population: 5,215), gets one vote in the FIFA Congress. FIFA disproportionately favors its smaller states, leaving the most corruptible members with outsize control over the organization.įIFA has 209 member-nations, and each one’s soccer association is equally powerful in the sport’s governing body. ![]() A comprehensive investigation might find that the sport’s structure itself makes soccer vulnerable to corruption. Justice Department says the indictments it handed down Wednesday against soccer officials and sports-marketing executives are just the beginning of its efforts to root out corruption in the sport.
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