‘FIFA Uncovered’ review: Netflix documentary explores FIFA’s power struggle and what it took to host the World Cup

The Netflix series uncovers Blatter’s role in turning FIFA from a non-profit organization into a million-dollar family, the corrupt alliances that secure FIFA World Cup bids, and how football is run on an ethical touchstone

netflix series Exposes Blatter’s role in transforming FIFA from a non-profit organization into a multimillion-dollar family, the corrupt alliance that secures FIFA World Cup bids, and how football runs a moral criterion

The Rise and Rise of Sepp Blatter

Within 15 minutes of the first episode, you feel a certain kind of numbness as you trace the history of FIFA.

But when Sepp Blatter comes in and claims that former FIFA president Joao Havelange has literally handed him the job of FIFA’s number two, it’s interesting. It sounded like a cliched poor-boy-hits-the-jackpot-in-a-big-city story. how did this happen?

The series reels us in from here. this is the first statement from fifa open How FIFA Works; No one invites you to a secret garden and a tea party… unless you can attract people to pay a lot of money. It’s a rule of the club, and you should never talk about it outside.

Sepp Blatter did just that. He was the person behind FIFA’s first commercial deals with giants such as Coca-Cola, Adidas, and International Sport & Leisure to sponsor FIFA’s efforts. And then, the corruption and bribery began.

Not that FIFA was honest and law-abiding before Blatter. FIFA busted The World Cup highlights FIFA’s pattern in delegating hosting rights: a host cleans up the game (using the game to improve a reputation tainted by wrongdoing) to a low-key host, and then repeats.

The highlights of FIFA granting Germany the hosting rights of the 1938 World Cup when Adolf Hitler was in power helped drive the point home. The four-episode Netflix series also reveals that Havelange awarded the 1978 Argentine dictatorship the World Cup, and then 1982’s post-Francoist Spain, a state eager to show itself as clean as a whistle. Sepp Blatter on the bench waiting for his time to play the game.

Blatter is depicted as a cunning visionary who, on the occasion of discovering the corrupt nature of his boss, develops into a gradual negotiator who takes advantage of the power of knowledge that would put his boss out of business. To do is on Havelange. The first episode ends with the members of the executive committee suddenly turning on him and against each other after an elaborate courtship by Blatter to vote for his presidency in 1998.

At the end of the series an aged Sepp Blatter states that he is “innocent until proven guilty,” repeating this phrase so many times during the series that it incriminates him.

World Cup of Cheating

FIFA busted explains how FIFA is a political organization as a force of good, and how each committee member is alone; A political world on steroids.

While it is corruption that secures the rights to host the World Cup, it often brings much-needed recognition to countries regarding ‘legacy’ and job opportunities. But the chain also shows that the money securing these hosting rights is almost always verbal and untraceable.

South Africa’s hosting in 2010 was won by a bribe at the bottom of the table; A cool $10 million that South Africa denied. It also sees Vladimir Putin using the 2018 World Cup to wash away his future crimes… Not that he wants a clean ledger.

The documentary pays a lot of attention to the timeline, but the viewing experience demands curiosity because being a well-researched story is a double-edged sword. It is not accessible to a common football fan, seeing as how it exposes the rotten nature of large sports organizations mired in selfish motives.

A translator’s account shows how money was offered to Cameroon’s federation chief by the Qatar side to vote for the Qatar World Cup hosting rights bid by the AFC president, indicating that the FIFA Executive Committee had How the members form an alliance, only to forsake each other at the first sign of trouble.

This is followed by important geopolitical deals that advance international relations between Qatar, Thailand, France and everyone involved. So not by any stretch of the imagination, fifa open Would you question whether all international business is ever out of murky waters.

Moral tightrope keeps on FIFA

fifa open Also shows the eventual fall of FIFA and Sepp Blatter. After intense investigations by the FBI, the US Department of Justice and media around the world, FIFA was forced to appoint an ethics committee responsible for the suspension of Sepp Blatter from the football regime.

While it gets a little cheesy to admit that Sepp Blatter keeps winning every FIFA presidential election, and laments that, “we must rebuild trust,” the episode sees how his hunger for power teeters on the edge of delusion. Went.

In the end, we see how the FBI exposes FIFA’s wrongdoings, and even after Blatter’s resignation, an undertone hints that Gianni Infantino, the new FIFA president, is very much cut from the same cloth.

FIFA Uncovered is currently streaming on Netflix