A major new report from FairSquare, published today, identifies serious structural flaws within FIFA, football’s global governing body, that have resulted in the organisation contributing to a wide range of social harms, not least very serious and systematic human rights abuses, and that preclude it from fulfilling one of its core stated objectives of developing the game.
Substitute: The case for the external reform of FIFA, a 174-page report based on extensive research, addresses FIFA’s governance practices and assesses the impact of its operations both before and after a set of critical governance reforms implemented in 2016. It concludes that there has been little to no improvement since these reforms, and that in some key elements of FIFA’s operations there has been obvious regression. The report argues that FIFA is not capable of self-regulation and that in the absence of external reform it will continue to cause or exacerbate human rights abuses and other social harms.
Isn’t FIFA widely regarded as one of the most corrupt organizations on the planet? I mean, the article isn’t wrong, but that ship sailed a long time ago, it’s a bit late to be acting like this is bombshell news.
The news certainly isn’t new, but there’s a difference between knowing something that is 99% likely to be true and having hard, factual evidence, and just having a formal report on it.
We all know that Epstein didn’t kill himself. It was the most blatant political murder of the century. But there’s a difference between knowing Epstein didn’t kill himself, and a major investigatory body releasing a report that analyses all available information and confirms accurately and without bias, that Epstein didn’t kill himself.