Monday memo #3: World Football
Each day The Browser recommends five or six of the best pieces of writing that we can find anywhere online. The more diverse the better.
The Monday Memo reverses that approach. It brings together four pieces of outstanding writing with a common theme.
Today: World Football
If there is a particular theme that you would like us to address in a coming Memo, please reply to this email.
Coming soon: Brexit
In A League Of His Own (http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-sepp-blatter-fifa)
Tariq Panja et al | Bloomberg Businessweek | 30th April 2015
Sepp Blatter runs for a fifth term as president of FIFA despite an almost comical array of scandals in his previous four. But who cares? FIFA is awash with money, which Blatter parcels out to member countries, which duly re-elect Blatter. His challengers are reduced to promising even bigger hand-outs. "If the best his opponents can do is promise to out-Sepp Sepp, perhaps he’s precisely the man soccer deserves" (5,500 words)
The Last World Cup (http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/06/last-world-cup-after-brazil-2014-tournament-finished)
Jason Cowley | New Statesman | 12th June 2014
Enjoy the World Cup while you still can. The clubs are fed up with Fifa, and so are the sponsors. "It feels like the end of an era. After Brazil 2014, unless there is urgent and fundamental reform of a kind that would seem unlikely, the tournament is finished. In Vladimir Putin and the secretive autocrats of Qatar, Fifa has the partners it deserves – and the world should turn away in disgust" (3,350 words)
Corruption, Murder, And The Beautiful Game (http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6861161/corruption-murder-beautiful-game)
Brian Phillips | Grantland | 14th August 2011
No holds-barred attack on corruption at FIFA, governing body of world football. João Havelange, elected in 1974, was first to exploit commercial potential. "I'm a happy president," beams the egregious Sepp Blatter today
Throw FIFA Out Of The Game (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/opinion/sunday/throw-fifa-out-of-the-game.html?ref=opinion&_r=0)
Dave Zirin | New York Times | 6th June 2014
Abolish FIFA. Replace it with two bodies: One to promote soccer, the other to keep the game and the industry clean. Having one body in charge of everything is a recipe for corruption and megalomania. The scandals in Brazil and Qatar expose FIFA as "a battering ram for world leaders who want to use the majesty of the World Cup to push through their development agendas at great human cost" (1,050 words)
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Duncan Brown, Publisher