The Real Winner of the World Cup? FIFA

[00:00:00]The World Cup, it's been bringing us so much joy. But as we've shown throughout this series, there's always something more sinister going on. And so to only lean into that joy the World Cup has been giving us means to ignore the mistreatment of the Iranian team, forced to fly back and forth between Mexico and the US without proper preparation or recovery time between matches. It means to ignore the fact that the US Secretary of Homeland Security said he might have danced a happy dance when Iran were eventually eliminated from the tournament. It means to ignore other visa restrictions by the US government on fans, officials, journalists, and referees. And it means to ignore Donald Trump's meddling in this tournament, pressuring FIFA President Giani Infantino to review US star Flo Balagan's suspension from the host nations match with Belgium. I'm Miy Hassan and this is the dark side of the World Cup, a three-part series from Zateo where we've been showing you how authoritarian leaders have used the tournament to sanitize their image and whitewash their crimes for close to a century. This is episode 3, where we'll look more closely at their biggest partner in crime, FIFA.

[00:01:17]Believe it or not, FIFA, the multi-billion dollar entity that serves as football's governing body, is actually classified as a nonprofit organization. But if you go back to its quaint beginnings, it makes a little bit more sense. FIFA was formed in 1904 in Paris by seven European nations to oversee international competition for association football, which at the time was barely 40 years old. And it wasn't until 1930 that a World Cup, the global festival that FIFA is so known for, first took place. But it was nothing like the extravaganza we have going on right now. Only 13 countries took part.

[00:01:54]The United States, surprisingly, was one of them. My home country, England, somehow wasn't. That's right. The country that codified the game, wasn't actually a member of FIFA at the time and didn't even play in a World Cup until 1950. Imagine if we'd played some of those early smaller tournaments.

[00:02:11]Maybe we would have won three World Cups by now. But I digress. The point is FIFA wasn't then what we know it as today. It wasn't a multi-billion dollar behemoth and everyone wasn't dying to play in a World Cup. So, how did it evolve over time?

[00:02:26]>> You can track FIFA over the course of the 20th century similarly to the way you can track say the the evolution of global politics. That's Ishan Terur, a longtime global affairs writer of a time in the Washington Post who now writes for the New Yorker.

[00:02:40]>> It becomes more diverse. It becomes less euroentric. It becomes uh more animated by the concerns of uh or at least the interests of players outside of the west. Um and it reflects the kind of globalizing world uh uh in good and bad ways.

[00:02:59]>> Jules Rome was a figure who believed in the good. You may know the name because the World Cup, the actual trophy used to be named after him. But the man himself was the FIFA president at the time of the first World Cup tournament. And as his grandson once told the Independent, Reine was a humanist and an idealist who believed that sport could unite the world. And look, in many ways it does.

[00:03:21]We've talked in this series about how the World Cup is a carnival of sorts. It can bring people together. But we've also talked about the darker side. It's the name of this series after all. And that all starts with a decision Ray made in 1932.

[00:03:36]>> In 1932, Jules Rome and FIFA handed the 1934 World Cup to Bonito Mussolini and Italy. Rese's dogged clutching to the idea of neutrality made it seem like that really wasn't that big of a deal because politics was not supposed to enter his beloved World Cup. Little did he know what Mussolini was capable of doing with a tournament like the World Cup.

[00:04:01]>> That's another Jules Boyoff. You may remember him from episode one. He's the author of the recent book Red Card, the 2026 World Cup, Sports Washing, and the FIFA greed machine. And as he says, the 1934 World Cup was the first instance of an authoritarian leader using a World Cup tournament to sanitize their crimes and misdeeds. As we've discussed earlier, Mussolini really took advantage of it. But when looking at it in terms of FIFA and REM and their roles in that tournament 1934, it's clear they were complicit in giving Mussolini that platform. And given RE's belief that football could be used as a mechanism for unity, that makes him either hypocritical or naive. According to Jules Boyoff, it was the latter. Jules Rome is known by many historians of football as the most successful, maybe even best president of the organization.

[00:04:57]Now, that's a low bar to be absolutely clear, but by all accounts, he was a decent man. He was a very religious man.

[00:05:05]The problem is that Jules Ray's brand of theoretical neutrality is actually to the advantage of aggressors like Bonito Mussolini. Jules Ray is a good example of how theoretical commitment to neutrality can in practice mean implicitly siding with the aggressor, implicitly siding with the oppressor, and in this case implicitly siding with Bonito Mussolini, an authoritarian bent on spreading fascism far and wide.

[00:05:36]>> Liking this video? Then don't just watch, hit like, share, and subscribe, and tap the bell so you never miss a video or live show. But if you want early access to exclusive content, then you have to head to zateo.com and subscribe now. You'll be supporting fearless independent journalism. As you'll realize by the end of this episode, to be seen as the best FIFA president really is to clear a very low bar. And Ray's missteps didn't necessarily end with Mussolini.

[00:06:03]According to the acclaimed football writer Simon Cooper, Re and the FIFA delegation went to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany despite calls for a boycott from the French media. Two years later, France hosted the 1938 World Cup just months after Germany's annexation of Austria. And yet remain not only allowed Germany to play, the German team also did Nazi salutes on the pitch before their games. Not long after, Nazi Germany was invading France during World War II. But when it comes to the 1934 World Cup in Italy, Reine eventually seemed to realize his naive on some level, saying, "I have the impression that it was not FIFA that really organized the World Cup, but Mussolini."

[00:06:46]But all of this naive came with costs, both serious and absurd costs that were major embarrassments for Re. Here's Isan Toor again. the fascist government tries to attach itself to the tournament, tries to make Italy's own success in it a kind of outgrowth of the mass popularity of fascist rule. Uh and when Italy eventually does win, uh the tiny Je trophy that that is reserved for the winners is not enough. So Mussolini has a gigantic illduchce trophy made that's many times larger than the actual World Cup trophy and that's also presented. So it kind of in the most uh on then way hammers home not just the fact that this tournament is been a wonderful showcase for Italy but it's been a wonderful showcase for the the preeminence and proess of its fascist regime. The World Cup becoming a showcase for fascism is something we've seen repeatedly, as we saw with Argentina in 1978.

[00:07:45]But beyond the way the World Cup helped the Argentinian military hunter with its image, the 1978 tournament is also important in the history of FIFA for another key reason. It marked the true commercialization of the game that has also led to such largecale corruption.

[00:08:02]Before we get back to 1978 though, it's important to understand the politics of FIFA and how officials within the organization began using their power to exploit those reliant on them to grow football in developing countries. As the World Cups become bigger business, as FIFA grows larger in terms of its membership, uh, of course, the officials within FIFA become more powerful and influential, wield clout in more pronounced ways. Uh and you see uh uh from the middle of the 20th century onwards, the heads of FIFA uh developing very sophisticated and lucrative networks of patronage uh through the kind of soccer pyramid uh through from officials in at the center of FIFA to regional officials and the heads of confederations in other countries and it becomes a bit of a a mafia type operation. I use that term carefully. I don't mean to say it's necessarily always corrupt or criminal, but there is a very clear web of patronage that emerges through the the governing structures in FIFA and dictate how the organization operates.

[00:09:14]>> And the person who really took this system to another level was Joel Havalange, a former Olympian from Brazil. Havalange was the first non-European president of FIFA. and he positioned himself as a figure to represent and give developing countries more of a voice in the football world.

[00:09:30]Avalanche supercharges FIFA's development from being this slightly modest parochial institution of Europe and South America that presides over the World Cups to being a kind of super supercharged global entity that's much more commercialized that's much more representative or at least pays more lip service to representation of the whole world and in particular Avalanche courted uh Africa uh in the early '7s uh often also championing anti-apartid politics as a challenge to the west where of course you had governments that were supportive or tolerant of South Africa's apartheid regime and Havalange uh used a certain kind of postcolonial anti-colonial feeling to to drive his own campaign uh and that that won him uh the FIFA presidency in 1974. In that 1974 campaign, Havalange traveled to more than 80 countries to secure votes.

[00:10:29]And what's important to understand is how much of a departure this was from what had come before it. Havalange's predecessor, an Englishman named Stanley Rouse, was not only supportive of apartheite South Africa, but had refused to make the World Cup truly global.

[00:10:42]Under Ralph, World Cups were still limited to 16 teams with just one spot reserved for the entirety of Africa, Asia, and Oceanana to fight over.

[00:10:51]Compare that to the 48 teams in the current World Cup. African teams actually boycotted the qualifying tournament for the 1966 World Cup because of this Ralph policy. Yeah, the World Cup we're always going on about in England, the 66 one. Turns out it wasn't really that global. But everything changed under Haval by 1982. You have an expanded World Cup with more teams. In 82 we expand it to 24. Of course now in 2026 we'll have double that size. But that process began under Havalange. That sense of using FIFA as an institution that can better represent the world, better reflect the world as it is, not as it once was, uh was very much the kind of Avalanche effect.

[00:11:34]>> Part of Haval's reign was also about leveraging something that had always been in FIFA statutes. The democratic principle of one member, one vote. As FIFA had grown beyond the old boys club of a few European and Latin American nations, Avalanche built a voting block of African and Asian football federations that consolidated his power and overturned the status quo. But all of this championing of the global south, all of this inclusivity is just what was at the surface. And that's all Haval wanted people to see because underneath that surface was a darker underbelly.

[00:12:07]Remember that system of patronage is too talked about? While Havland supported these regions with World Cup slots and development funding, it came with strings attached. They were expected to remain fiercely loyal to him.

[00:12:20]>> Federations around the world were given funds and given money that they previously could only dream of. But the string attached with that was you'll you'll vote for me when I want to run for president again.

[00:12:30]>> That's Bonita Merciades. She's the former head of corporate and public affairs for the Football Federation of Australia, who was involved in their bid to host the 2022 World Cup. And she knows as well as anyone the corruption that this FIFA system of patronage led to. After leaving the FFA, Bonita became a whistleblower, alleging the Australian Federation made suspicious payments to key FIFA figures during the bidding process. As we know, Australia didn't even win hosting rights for that World Cup. Qatar did, and they of course were docked by similar allegations. That was all under the reign of the next FIFA president, Seth Blatter. But before we get into all of that, it's important to understand how the Haval years set all of that in motion by the way they commercialized the game. Because Havalange knew that in order to maintain his system of funding developing countries in exchange for votes, he needed to generate cash. And that's where the 1978 World Cup in Argentina became a turning point. Ahead of that tournament, Avalanche and FIFA struck a multi-million dollar deal with Coca-Cola for global football development as well as other lucrative deals with broadcasters.

[00:13:35]>> Havalanche certainly saw the potential for him to stay in charge by giving out funds and money for development purposes. But of course, he then had to get the money in. He didn't personally sort of broker those arrangements. Um but he did get people on board who knew what to do and who developed the whole arrangement of Coca-Cola getting involved, Adidas eventually getting involved. Um so the major sponsors that we still have today, they've been with the game since all of that time and they have helped along with broadcast deals which have grown and grown and grown, they have helped drive the game forward over decades to what the game is today.

[00:14:13]what the game is today. Something so many of us know and love for the joy it brings. But something that has also become a hyper capitalist dictator coddling enterprise with a criminal history. And the first time FIFA really ventured into systemic corporate criminality was related to ISL, international sports and leisure. A company started in the early 1980s by Horse Dler, the son of the founder of Adidas. The company institutionalized the corporate model Havalanche created in the 1970s. And because Havalange was close to Dassler, he made sure ISL got all the big contracts, broadcasting and marketing contracts worth millions, if not billions of dollars. But that system eventually led to Avalanche's downfall.

[00:14:56]In 2012, he was revealed to have taken at least a million and a half Swiss Franks in bribes from ISL. His son-in-law, the former head of the Brazilian Football Confederation, meanwhile, pocketed at least 12.4 million. By the time of these findings, Havalange had long since given way to Blatter as FIFA president. But he was forced to step down from his ceremonial role of honorary FIFA president. Money, greed, corruption. These three things often go together when it comes to the World Cup. But remember what we've been especially talking about throughout this series, FIFA getting into bed with authoritarian leaders. In many ways, that's how Havalange revealed just how much he was driven by money. His willingness to prioritize commercial growth over human rights in Argentina during the 1978 World Cup set a precedent that's been followed time and time again.

[00:15:46]>> That set the scene for everything the man was about in a sense because what was happening in Argentina in 1978, which is where the World Cup was hosted, um was something that we, you know, there was enormous human rights abuses.

[00:16:00]it was being run by a military hunter.

[00:16:02]Uh, and yet, um, all that mattered was the commercialism of the game and getting the most money, the most bang for the buck for the game back then.

[00:16:11]>> The FIFA ethics report that led to Haval's downfall called his behavior morally and ethically reproachable.

[00:16:18]Ironic given some of what was to come or was already happening under his successor Blatter. Seth Blat's FIFA would soon become the focus of what is widely considered to be the biggest corruption scandal in the history of sport. And during his reign, he cultivated strong relationships with the likes of Vladimir Putin and the president of Equatorial Guinea, who is the world's longest serving dictator.

[00:16:40]But let's put aside corruption and close ties to dictators for a moment. just in terms of foot and mouth moments alone.

[00:16:46]When we talk about set blatter, we're talking about a man who once interrupted a minute of silence for Nelson Mandela after just 10 seconds. But more seriously, he also said women footballers should wear tighter shorts to generate more interest in their games. He said gay fans concerned about their safety during the World Cup should just refrain from sexual activities. If we go back to looking at FIFA's patronage politics and all the corruption that came with it, Bonita says Bladder just picked up where Havalange left off.

[00:17:14]>> Everything that Seth Bladder learned, he learned from Avalanche and how to uh get power and how to keep power. He did that by currying favor with what is now 211 member associations, seeing where the power was, what votes he could get. I mean, a typical political campaigner.

[00:17:33]Um, at the end of the day, the people who run FIFA, they're politicians.

[00:17:36]They're just politicians who are involved in football, not politicians involved in running a country. So, Blatter was a master politician. And he managed to stay in power for many years by using development funds, um, by giving people positions, by uh, ensuring that the people that he wanted to be in certain positions were there. And all of that led to the corruption Bonita says she saw during the 2018 and 2022 bidding processes.

[00:18:06]>> It was sort of obvious from the very beginning of that bidding process that it wasn't going to go well when you've got two tournaments at once being considered.

[00:18:16]um a a three basically a three-year bidding process and countries and I certainly know our country was and and so were other countries throwing money at individuals at individual member associations and at confederations um in order to to get their vote and that was always going to happen because of the way FIFA set that up. FIFA set it up to fail in a sense um or FIFA set it up to be the corrupt process that it was uh because of what they put in place.

[00:18:50]>> And what they put in place led to what most consider to be that massive corruption scandal I mentioned earlier.

[00:18:56]One revealed by a US Department of Justice investigation that uncovered bribes in excess of $150 million and charges against more than 50 individuals or corporate entities. We are here to announce the unsealing of charges and the arrests of individuals as part of our long-running investigation into bribery and corruption in the world of organized soccer. They were expected to uphold the rules that keep soccer honest and to protect the integrity of the game. Instead, they corrupted the business of worldwide soccer to serve their interests and to enrich themselves. Though Blatter somehow avoided charges himself in the DOJ case, he did end up resigning in disgrace in 2015 itself and is banned by FIFA from all football related activities until 2028. But there were some other shadowy figures worth mentioning here as well.

[00:19:46]Namely, Jack Warner and Chuck Blazer. I mean, they kind of just sound like characters from a mafia movie, don't they? Well, they kind of were. Here's Jack Warner shoving former BBC journalist Andrew Jennings and then threatening to spit on him.

[00:20:01]>> Man, leave me alone. Can I Can I ask you how much?

[00:20:04]>> Please don't do that. Can I ask you how much money?

[00:20:07]>> Leave me alone.

[00:20:09]>> Oh, this this is only a very polite inquiry. Mr. Warner, >> if I could have spit on you, I would have spat on you.

[00:20:15]>> Why would you spit on me?

[00:20:17]>> Because you're garbage. Blazer, meanwhile, was a larger than-l life New Yorker, leading a lavish lifestyle, traveling the world with a parrot on his shoulder, hobnobbing with world leaders and reportedly spending $24,000 a month on two apartments in Trump Tower, one for himself and one for his pet cats.

[00:20:37]Warner and Blazer were key figures in Blatters FIFA, members of its powerful executive committee known as XCO. They both represented Conac, FIFA's governing body for football in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean. And together, they allegedly embezzled tens of millions of dollars from that very organization. Money mostly meant to develop football in that region. In one case, Warner allegedly diverted funds meant for Haiti earthquake relief into his own bank accounts. Blazer and Warner also allegedly took huge sums of money as bribes for World Cup bids. And to be clear, when it comes to Blazer, both the embezzlement and the bribes aren't even alleged. He plead guilty to both. When he became an informant for US prosecutors, and his cooperation played a big role in the charges that eventually got slapped on his old pal Warner, charges such as raketeering, wire fraud, money laundering, and bribery.

[00:21:29]>> And in Trinidad and Tubago, former FIFA vice president Jack Warner turned himself into authorities and spent the night in a maximum security prison.

[00:21:38]Warner is accused of soliciting $10 million in bribes from the South African government for hosting the 2010 Football World Cup.

[00:21:45]>> Though US authorities seem to have a pretty damning paper trail of evidence against Warner, he's only spent that one night in prison and has avoided extradition from his native Trinidad and Tobago all these years. The country's high court actually permanently stayed extradition proceedings last year. But even though Warner is still free, his awful legacy is clear for all to see.

[00:22:06]Bonita had a lens into how he operated during Australia's failed 2022 bid.

[00:22:10]>> Jack Warner, who was then the president of Conquer, uh asked Australia for an amount of money to upgrade a stadium in Trinidad and Tobago. Now, first of all, why is he asking Australia and that's because Australia wanted his vote? But second of all, there was no checks and balances on what happened to that money. So that particular amount of money went around the world from Sydney to London to New York to Port of Spain and Trinidad and Tobago and lo and behold the world found out um what was bleedingly obvious that that money ended up in Jack Warner's personal bank account. Now that's just one small example of the type of thing that would happen and we know a lot about what happened in Conquer Cafe with Chuck Blazer and Jack Warner. You then multiply that around different confederations, different member associations, and look at you look at who is in power, how they stay in power.

[00:23:06]Um, that's what happens. No checks and balances, and you do you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours. Simple as that.

[00:23:13]>> When Chuck Blazer plead guilty to the fence, he said that like Warner, he made money off of voting for South Africa 2010, a tournament he got to see happen.

[00:23:23]One place he never got to see it come back to though was his beloved United States. You see, Blazer had been a key part of the World Cup coming here to the US in 1994 and was fiercely lobbying for it to happen again. But he died in 2017, one year before the US was awarded co-hosting rights for this year's tournament. With the kind of lifestyle he lived, though, it's easy to imagine he would have cozied up to his former landlord, Donald Trump, ahead of the tournament. Instead, as we discussed in episode 1, that role has been left entirely to Giani Infantino, Blatter's successor as FIFA president, who just the other week ahead of this tournament kicking off, had a criminal complaint filed against him by his former boss at UEFA, the French football legend, Michelle Platini, who alleges a conspiracy of false accusation and influence pedaling to block him, Platini, from becoming FIFA president in 2015. And though Platini has his own skin in the game with that complaint, Bonita says that in general, Infantino just hasn't done much to change FIFA's trajectory after the scandals and corruption that plagued the Avalanche and Blatter eras.

[00:24:29]>> I think Infantino's just taken it to the next level actually. Um I one thing that about Seth Blatter is he did genuinely like football. I'm not convinced about that with Infantino. Not that that matters. I guess if he's running the organization well, but what he's done is he's looked at what came out of 2015 and then when he was first elected in 2016, he had to introduce some reforms and he had that sort of somewhat uh reform process which came up with a bunch of sort of fairly standard type of governance reforms, but they're slowly been unpicked or they haven't been implemented at all. We also have him pres presenting a peace prize to the US president. Um, and we're supposed to sort of think that's a good thing. Um, we see that his closest friends include people like Vladimir Putin, um, Donald Trump. I mean, some people around the world, I hate to say this to you, America, but some people around the world at the moment think America is a bit of a pariah state.

[00:25:34]>> Don't worry, Bonita. Even some of us here in the US know it. And we've looked on with embarrassment to see Iranian officials and team staff denied visas while the team had to commute from Mexico for each of their games because they weren't welcome to stay here for longer periods of time. We looked on with embarrassment when an iconic Congolese fan and a Somali referee, the African Football Federation's best referee, were denied entry into the country. We looked on with embarrassment when we learned that the mother of Voyena, Cape Verde's heroic goalkeeper, originally couldn't enter the country because the US government requires fans from that country and many others to put down a deposit of up to $15,000 to get a visa, a policy that rights groups have called discriminatory.

[00:26:18]And we looked on with embarrassment when an Iraqi player was detained for almost 7 hours upon arrival in Chicago. But optics be damned. Learning from history, be damned. Infantino hasn't pushed back on any of this beyond calling it unfortunate and telling people to chill and relax. Instead, he took Trump's call about Flo Balagan's ban from the US Belgium game because of a red card against Bosnia Herzgavina. And a few days later, Balagan was suddenly allowed to play. All I did, I asked for a review cuz I didn't think it was a foul. And you know, again, I'm good at this stuff.

[00:26:53]I think they made a really brilliant decision. And I think the referee's call was horrible. Now, Infantino insisted he didn't make the decision and that it was made independently and autonomously by FIFA's disciplinary committee instead.

[00:27:05]And that may be true, but the problem is, Giani, the optics don't look good because for the past year and a half, it seemed like your primary aim has been to coddle dictator Dawn. Here's Jules Boyoff, the former footballer and political scientist we heard from in episode one. The relationship between FIFA's Giani Infantino and US President Donald Trump is key to understanding this World Cup, why it's happening, and why it continues to happen despite everything that the Trump administration has done in terms of its international attacks on other countries, its domestic attacks on people who live in this country. President Trump and Infantino, they just seem to kind of get along well. They both have a penchant for political spectacle. They both have bloated egos. Infantino is pretty much everywhere that Trump is. I mean, he was at Charal Shake, Egypt, where Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement. He went to the opening of the Melania film.

[00:28:09]He's in the White House so much that honestly they could start charging him rent there. And in fact, Infantino and FIFA are paying rent to Trump because they're renting at Trump Towers in New York City. Hopefully, Infantino is not paying as much as Chuck Blazer did. But if he is, he can probably afford to because surprise surprise, his relationship with Trump is also about money. And the blind pursuit of it that was set in motion by Avalanche just keeps on growing. From Infantino's perspective, he just wants to keep that money spigot open. He's been talking about FIFA getting some 11 billion from this tournament alone. That makes it the most from any sporting event in the history of sporting events. I mean 11 billion is more than the GDP of some 60 countries out there including two of them that are participating in this World Cup. Kurasa and Cape Verde. And so Infantino is very much trying to make some serious money. And in fact, he himself is making a lot of money from the enterprise. He just got a raise.

[00:29:13]He's now making $6 million at FIFA. And it also sets an opportunity up for the Trump family and Trump himself to make money. Because let's not forget that the World Cup is an opportunity for a privileged sliver of the global 1% to come together, meet in the luxury boxes, and cut deals with each other. That's what the World Cup can often be about.

[00:29:36]Not just the game on the field, but the game up in the luxury boxes.

[00:29:40]>> And while VIPs in those luxury boxes make money, fans of course have been losing it. Lots of it. Because we all know the astronomical amounts people have had to spend to attend this World Cup to buy tickets. The 9mm journey from New York's Penn Station to the Metife Stadium in New Jersey usually costs just under $13.

[00:30:00]Ticket to get there during the World Cup will now cost more than 11 times that amount. Organizer FIFA is under fire for stratospheric ticket prices.

[00:30:09]>> All right, Carve, there's one ticket which is causing a huge fuss today. This is it. Oh, nearly 11.5 million pounds.

[00:30:18]Who's going to press add to carts? All of this even led to FIFA being issued subpoenas in New York and New Jersey over its ticketing practices just two weeks before the tournament began. I mean, who would have thought it? marry FIFA's corporate greed with good old American capitalism and regular people get ripped off. But even if you knew that was going to happen, it still reached a level that's taken many by surprise. When the United States was selected as one of the countries to host this 2026 World Cup, everybody expected that it was going to be a money-drenched spectacle. But I don't think too many of us expected it to turn into the full throttle capitalist hellscape that it's become. I mean, the amount of ticket touting is off the charts and we absolutely need to point a finger at FIFA. The FIFA greed machine is in full effect here at the 2026 World Cup.

[00:31:14]>> The FIFA greed machine is indeed in full effect. It has been for decades.

[00:31:19]Something I hope has been made clear to you throughout this series. But another thing I hope I've made clear is how conflicted this all makes me feel. They call it the beautiful game for a reason, and I'm still watching. It's so hard not to. Even though some of these var calls and these so-called hydration breaks are killing me. Sorry, this is the last thing I need to get into here because as many have pointed out, these breaks just seem like a guise to get more advertising in a guys to Americanize the game and god forbid actually turn matches into four quarters rather than two halves. Incredibly, this is something the great Diego Maradona predicted the US would do with this World Cup with FIFA's approval all the way back in 2018.

[00:32:16]But I promise you, I'm really not trying to ruin the World Cup for you by pointing all these things out. I just think that as you watch, as we all watch, it's important not to just limit your gaze to the surface of the pitch.

[00:32:29]We all need to look deeper into history and the present day so that at the very least we don't get manipulated by propaganda. As we've shown you in this series, whether the World Cup has been held in Europe, the United States, South America, the Middle East, it's been plagued by scandal, controversy, corruption. You can enjoy the games and back your teams. I know I am. But also recognize that there are people in power using the beautiful game to do very ugly things. And that is the dark side of the World Cup.

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