FIFA - Can't countries establish a replacement?

[Sailorlite]

Evidently something like 90% of FIFA's big time members get only 10% of the total vote! Why don't the bigs just start their own world cup and see who's interested? Is FIFA so necessary to the future of soccer?

[Glenn Reed]

That is the same question that big time college athletic powerhouses are wondering about the NCAA!

 

As far as FIFA goes, they are firmly entrenched in every soccer playing country, including providing development funds. This is a big deal in poor countries, and part of why they keep voting for Sepp Blatter. He is seen as the person who keeps sending them checks, and they keep him in office.

 

FIFA also does a lot more than just put on the World Cup every four years, they provide the framework and structure for the vast majority of soccer around the world. I've seen people try to replace just the organization that runs their state soccer infrastructure, and that's a huge task. Trying to replicate what FIFA does would be very difficult to say the least.

 

Of course, that's part of the problem. When you have an entrenched organization, it's very difficult to replace it, so the people in power can abuse that power at a much lower risk of losing it.

[Guest Kakugo]

If you scratch a little below the surface, you'll find any sport authority is the uglier cousin of a government bureaucracy.

 

When I was little, my father was in a sport authority (not soccer and far far smaller).

Put it this way: 90% of the time this sport authority was dealing with "internal" issues, meaning how to run itself. A huge amount of time was spent bickering about who got to be president, who got to be secretary, who got to be treasurer, who got to go at that fancy event held in a classy Paris hotel, who got make uniforms for the national team (big business, which in soccer is huge business) and so on.

The remaining 10% was devoted to dealing with foreign authorities about international tournaments and the like, funding and organizing training programs for young players and so on.

In short the organization could have shedded 9/10 of its members and nobody would have felt the difference.

 

If these sport authorities were private firms, they would have been driven out of business long ago by their own incompetence or most of the higherups would have found themselves guests of the local government's prison service.

But they aren't. In Europe and Asia they gobble up huge sums of public money because, let's not mince words here, sport is a religion. There have been timid attempts at weaning these bloodsuckers from tax revenues (like allowing them to fund themselves through direct sales of TV rights) but it's an uphill battle.

When people think of soccer, they think of huge teams such Bayern Munchen, Juventus and Barcelona. These teams are owned by billionaires with no problems spending enormous amounts of money and get a lot of cash from TV rights, merchandise sales and the like.

But the bulk of soccer teams, even in the top divisions, are always flirting with insolvency (sport teams never go bankrupt in Europe). They need more than an assist to stay afloat. Which they always, always get.