Qatar 2022

claim something far more precious. The big wooden boxes they reach for are sometimes a light beige color, other times they're painted a bright red. They all have the same words stamped on the side, human remains. We've got coffins coming home every day more than a worker day on average, is dying. It's a senior see repeated in airports across Asia and Africa. FIFA's alleged tradition of bribery is taking

a real human toll. Ever since the tiny oil rich nation of Qatar was awarded the World Cup in that sham election back in two thousand and ten, millions of migrant workers have fled the soul crushing poverty of Nepal, Kenya, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the Philippines in countless other countries for jobs building Qatar's World Cup stadiums, new roads and tourist hotels. But opportunity

has come with a deadly price. In the last decade, thousands, yes thousands, of these temporary workers have died, their families left to scuffle with tourists to retrieve their remains. The Guardian found that over six thousand, five hundred migrant workers have died in Qatar since the country was awarded the contract for the two World Cup. More than six thousand, five hundred people, just regular people trying to make a

better life, killed while working in Qatar. It's hard to wrap your head around a death toll that large, and if you can believe it, that staggering number might even be larger. The exact number of workers killed in support of the World Cup isn't truly known because Qatar, FIFA's World Cup partner, refuses to release the information. The Guardian newspaper, which initially compiled the list of deaths, only had death records from five countries India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Many other countries in Africa and Asia refused or are unable to provide the data, so it's almost certain the total is higher. But the scale of the death should be world shaking news on its own, and I guess the average soccer fan hasn't even heard about it. I'm Connor Powell. This is episode twelve Qatar. By listening to this series, you now understand FIFA's dark history. It's racist origins, it's misogyny, it's coziness with authoritarian regimes, it's singular pursuit

of profit, it's systemic corruption. And you've heard how Qatar won the rights to host the biggest sporting event in the world, and how that sketchy vote led to the indictments of dozens of soccer officials in two thousand and fifteen. But with the first match of the World Cup just months away, I want to explain to you in detail that two thousand ten selection of Qatar is doing to

some of the poorest people in the world. And why a desert country smaller than the state of Connecticut, with scorching hot temperatures and no modern FIFA quality soccer stadiums whatsoever, has turned out to be an awful dare I say im moral choice to host the World Cup and how FIFA's decision to award the tournament to Guitar shows FIFA hasn't learned its lessons, as the organization continues to exhibit an almost total disregard for human rights and basic decency.

It's a clever commercial. It plays on every emotion a sports fan has. Weaving in and out in between the legs of dozens of grown adults. A young boy in jane shorts with ratty white sneakers skillfully maneuvers a tattered soccer ball across the bone dry dirt floor of a public market. He encounters a conveniently placed set of mirrors.

He leans in to steal a glimpse of his own reflection, but instead of seeing himself, the young soccer player sees the beaming smile of the Argentine superstar Lionel Messi looking right back at him. Sat get any I guess in The essence and allure of this television commercial is pretty obvious. No matter what language you speak or where you come from, you could be the next Messi. This slick commercial just one of many that ran across Africa in the last decade.

Was produced and paid for by Qatar's Aspire Academy. The Aspire Zone is a world class destination for sports excellence and has some of the world's finest sporting state dames and venues, where we offer unparalleled opportunities for athlete development, education and the making of champions. With its distinctive sloping sapphire blue roof, Qatar's massive, thirteen story tall Aspired Dome

Stadium can be seen from miles away. At nearly one point three million square feet, that's more than twice the area covered by the Superdome in New Orleans. Aspire is a state of the art sports training complex created to produce the next generation of world class soccer players. This place is astounding. I mean even the top clubs in the world like Manchester United environed men off and go

train there and they're astounded by the facilities. That's journal of Sebastian Abbott, author of The Away Game, the epic search for Soccer's Next Superstars, which is all about sport and Qatar. The Aspire Academy, he said, is not only the largest end or sporting complex in the world, it also reflects in embodies tiny Qatar's global ambitions. There's a joke that Katar is really just a family business with a seat at the United Nations because it's basically the

family wealth of the royal family. Qatar, or more specifically, its royal family, led by the Emir Shaik Tamim bin Hammad Alfani, is determined to use its seemingly infinite wealth to establish the Gulf nation as a major player on the world stage. While its neighbors Dubai and Abu Dhabi have tapped their vast resources to become commercial and financial hubs, Qatar has tried to transform its oil and gas fortune

into political and athletic power. They've used that cash in all sorts of ways to try and, you know, increase their standing on the world stage. You can sort of understand it from their perspective, because is if you're a tiny little country like they are, how else are you

going to throw your weight around. Long before Qatar was awarded the World Cup, the Emir's brother, shake Jessum, a massive soccer fan who built a lush, regulation size soccer field at his palace in Doha, set out to accomplish what seemed an impossible task to elevate Qatar's national soccer team into the upper echelons of the sport. Qatar's national soccer team is anything but a powerhouse. It's never come close to qualifying for a World Cup, and it's consistently

ranked in the bottom half of FIFA's international tables. With a native population of just three hundred thousand or so citizens, Qatar doesn't have the depth to field a native team that can compete in its own regional soccer tournaments, let alone the World Cup. What it lacks in players, however, it more than makes up for in financial resources. After spending a reported billion dollars constructing the Aspire Academy complex, Qatar launched a massive worldwide search for young soccer players.

They started at home in Qatar and found few quality prospects. So Qatar set its sights on Africa, home to a billion people. I hate to say it's so crassly, but in Africa, Qatar found people passionate about soccer who were

too poor to pass up the opportunity. Beginning in two thousand and seven, backed by slick TV commercials featuring messy and armed with free Nike gear to pass out to hopeful stars in the making, Aspire Academy scouts began combing through the dusty and dirt soccer pitches of Morocco, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa. In the last decade alone, more than five billion young boys have tried out for Qatar's

Aspire Academy. Here's Sebastian habit. There's such a small nation that, yeah, how else are they going to compete on the world stage unless they can tap players from other countries. They were scouting thirteen year old boys. So I would find these young kids, bring them to Katar, have them live in Doha at Aspire Academy, train them and eventually give them passports and have them play for the Katar national team. To succeed in athletics, Qatar has long recruited outside talent.

Qatar does have a long history of basically paying foreigners to become Katari nationals and compete for Qatar in sports, in the Olympics and otherwise. I mean, they've donated everything from weightlifting to ping pong to chess, and they've done it in soccer as well. In two thousand and three, the Kenyan steeplechase runner Stephen Sharno accepted Qatari citizenship in

exchange for one thousand dollars a month. A few years later, Qatar offered three Brazilian soccer players a million dollars each to become Qatari citizens and hopes they had helped the tiny peninsula nation to qualify for the World Cup. The plan didn't work. Now Qatar isn't alone. It is a fairly common practice to recruit outside talent. It's done by many countries, including the United States. But recruiting children, some as young as thirteen, it's not only uncommon, it's downright sketchy.

You hadn't ever really in history had a country go and conduct a massive talent search like this across a place like Africa, searching for players for its national team, and so it's sort of unprecedented, even though by all accounts the Aspire Academy is a top notch training program

with state of the art medical and educational facilities. The practice of recruiting young athletes off alarm bells not only with European sports columnists and human rights groups, but also within FIFA, which we know, you know, historically they don't seem overly concerned with human rights. They got a lot of criticism from folks internationally that they basically kind of like harvesting Africa's best young players to nationalize them, which

didn't go over well with a lot of folks. Not long after Qatar launched the aspired program, FIFA change that's eligibility rules, making it harder for young players to switch nationalities. They never sort of openly admitted that that was definitely their plan, although at the beginning they said we were open to these kids becoming country players, but they eventually changed their tune and say no, these players will play

for their own national teams. It definitely continued to be controversial because a lot of people continued to suspect that even though Katar was saying these kids wouldn't represent Qatar, that somehow Katar would find a way to have them do that. For many years, FIFA's presidents at Bladder was critical of Qatar's player harvesting. Qatar is stealing the best players from Africa meant the home teams weren't as strong,

and the Confederation of African Football they didn't like that. Remember, Bladder, like his predecessors y'all havlange South Africa as his base of support. Both of them want a lot of FIFA elections, keeping the legal and the illegal money flowing to African countries. Then in two thousand and eight, Bladder visited Qatar and the trip, says Sebastian Abbott, let him to have a change of heart, platter, changes tune and became very supportive

of football dreams and aspire. And on that trip in two thousand and eight reportedly said to the Amir of Qatar, We're going to bring the World Cup to Katar, and two years later FIFA did just that. From a distance, Dohas Abdullaphin Jessam Street just seems to disappear and becomes a stunning turquoise blue body of water. No, it's not

a desert mirage caused by Qatar's legendary summer heat. Instead, several hundreds of the busy downtown road was painted blue in two thousand and nineteen in an experiment to reflect the sun's rays and reduce the city's overall temperature, known to reach highs of one hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit, cracking car dashboards and melting plastic trim. To state the obvious, Qatar is a climate that makes plain soccer outside in

the summer impossible, even with the streets painted blue. Summer temperatures and cutsar can reach some fifty degrees celsius, a difficult environment to hold a professional sporting than outdoors. The idea of staging the World's Cup in the desert has been tentious since its announcements. FIFA's own inspection team, after visiting Qatar in two thousand and ten, called the oppressive

heat a potential health risk. A country that is a hundred and five degrees in the summer, a country that had virtually no infrastructure at all as far as soccer stadiums, this just made absolutely no sense for them to win the bid. We now know Qatar bribed a lot of people to win the two thousand twenty two World Cup, but the wealthy Gulf nation also made a lot of promises the FIFA before that two thousand and ten vote,

and now they've got to be reconciled. The lack of modern FIFA style stadiums, event infrastructure, and Qatar's searing heat we're all seen back in two thousand and ten as significant challenges that would prevent FIFA from awarding a summer tournament to Qatar. Qatar acknowledged its potential shortcomings and promised to quote novel approach to the summer event and pointed to the Aspire Academy as proof it could design massive

sporting facilities in the desert. It promised mitigations, money will be thrown at the problems and the hate will be overcome by technology for the countries and promising cobbon neutral and cooled stadiums, training facilities and fan areas. Energy will be supplied by Solo Park, with money seemingly not an issue.

The CEO of Qatar's World Cup bid, Hassan al Thawati, promised to build twelve new state of the art temperature controlled stadiums and to avoid the mistakes of previous World Cup hosts like Brazil, who built stadiums that languished and blood communities dry when the tournament ended. Here shake Hassan al Thawatti making his case, the government has guaranteed four billion dollars to cover the costs of our twelve stunning

football specific, state of the art stadiums. After two we will this mantle the modular elements of our stadiums and reconfigure a total of a hundred and seventy thousand seats to create up to twenty two new stadiums in developing nations. But four years after FIFA awarded Guitar the two thousand twenty two World Cup, the wealthy golf Kingdom began backtracking

as the logistics of a summer tournament became untenable. First ago the number of stadiums they promised, which was cut from twelve down to eight, and then they radically altered the traditional summer schedule of the tournament. After much debate and deliberation, FIFA confirmed a Winter World Call for cutter In, which will run from November to December. The temperatures will still be uncomfortable in the winter, but doable with air

kindishteing if it all works. However, moving the tournament to avoid the worst of Qatar's heat also puts players safety at risk, and reek's havoc on soccer's lucrative professional leagues like Italy's Loliga, Germany's Bundesliga, the UK's Premier League, and even America's own MLS. They all will be forced to shut down mid season for about six weeks. The tournament schedule is different this time, as there will be four games every day during the group stage, a first in

World Cup history. To try to accommodate the many professional leagues that will be impacted by this unusual winter World Cup, Viva has had to reduce the number of days in the tournament. Normally, thirty two team World Cup we played over the course of thirty two days. During the two thousand and eighteen Russia World Cup, players had about four to five days off between games, but with quitars shortened schedule, the games will be played over a compressed twenty eight days.

Most teams will get three days off between games, but in the knockout state some will only get two days of recovery. This will be the shortest tournament since nine when they're only sixteen teams competing, meaning the very best players in the world are being forced to play with reduced recovery times between matches. Many players will then immediately return to their domestic leagues, jumping right back into the

rigors of professional soccer with little chance to rest. Oh and the COVID nineteen pandemic has completely rearranged the qualifying part of the two thousand twenty two World Cup, making things even more difficult. Sure these athletes are all professionals who make a ton of money, traveled by private jets and stay in five star hotels. But FIFA, which let's remember is supposedly all about the good of the game, is forcing the world's best players to put an unprecedented

strain on their bodies. It's conceivable Qatar's World Cup will be one of the most injury riddled tournaments. Ever, However, as problematic and dangerous as the Qatar World Cup will be for players, it's nothing, and I mean it is nothing compared to the horrors FIFA and Qatar have unleashed on the people building the World Cup infrastructure. It was late March two th Norway's best players nervously looked at each other as they walked out under the nights lights

and onto the green soccer pitch. Please rise, Oh no Way, with slight nods of their head and sly glances of support. One by one, they peeled off their red warm up jackets. Wrapping their arms around each other's shoulders, they unveiled their message as their anthem played. All eleven starters of Norway's national soccer team before their tooth thousand, twenty two World Cup qualifying match against tribalter were the same white cotton

t shirt. Emblazoned across their chest was the phrase human rights. On and off the pitch. Norway's statement of protests was only the first. The next night, Germany's national side took the pitch with the phrase human rights spelled out in large white block letters on their black shirts. Then Denmark made a plea their target Qatar, specifically it's abysmal human rights record and brutal treatment of migrant workers. For the last decade, FIFA has ignored calls to strip the World

Cup from Qatar. Here's FIFA presidents at bladder in two thousand thirteen, who did everything in his power to avoid even talking about the corrupt two thousand ten vote and the growing concerns human rights groups had expressed about the rush to build a tournament in the desert. The decision taken by Executive Committee in October that there is not one single doubt that the World Cup twenty twenty two will be organized in Qatar, decision taken by the Executive

Committee on the second of December and not diversible. Today, FIFA is led by longtime soccer executive Gianni Infantino, who were placed the bladder after the godfather of soccer was booted out of office in two thousand fifteen. After Norway and the other team's voiced their protests in the spring of two thousand and one, FIFA under Infantino issued a statement saying the players would not be punished and that FIFA believed in freedom of speech and the power of

soccer to be a force for good. Whether the sport under FIFA's watch is a force for good is still very much up for debate. That soccer and the World Cup are a force of that, there is no doubt. One only has to look at Qatar's ever transforming landscape, with its endless tangle of new roads and metro tracks, glistening skyscrapers, and massive steel stadiums, all built at an

unimaginable cost. Work is progressing on Kata's World Cup venues, but Amnesty International says improvements to migrant worker rights are not progressing fast enough. Long before European soccer players began protesting Qatar's treatment of migrant workers, groups like Amnesty International and the International Trade Union Confederation we're pushing for new

laws and worker protections. Qatar has made improvements, but the conservative Arab Kingdom and FIFA have rejected accusations that the thousands of workers who died were building World Cup infrastructure. The headline that came out of The Guardian was inherently misleading. That's Hassan Alpha Watti, the CEO of Qatar's World Cup organizing committee. He insists the reports of thousands of deaths lack contexts. Six workers did not die on workup World

Cup stadiums. If we're looking at specifically World Cup stadiums, we have had, unfortunately, three work related deaths and thirty five non work related debts. Frankly, it's Alpha Watti's argument that lacks context. He doesn't explain how the other six thousand, five hundred workers died, and he doesn't even address the thousands of bodies leaving Qatar and arrive in in African

and Asian airports. You see, Qatar and FIFA only want to count the fatalities directly related to construction of new stadiums and training facilities, but those are only a small part of the building going on to support the World Cup. The construction and Qatar is booming dozens of projects, including seven stadiums, Rhodes hotels, and even a new air report

have been completed or are underway. It is these projects, say human rights groups like Amnesty International and the Guardian newspaper, that have killed thousands since got won the right to host the World Cup back in all this development construction expansion is because of the World Cup. That's Mustafa Cadri, executive director of Equitum Research, which advocates for the labor rights of migrant workers. He's done reporting for Amnesty International

about Qatar and the World Cup. He says, the Qatari World Cup Organizing Committee and FIFA have overlooked all of the construction projects built to support the World Cup when releasing their official death count. It's all related. They're building this massive railway system, new hotels are being built, new public spaces, shopping malls. It's really obvious that all of this is connected. So this idea that you can somehow isolate what happens within the World Cup from everything outside

it is simply just nonsensical. Qatar intentionally keeps the death records of migrant workers vague, issuing death certificates with ambiguous descriptions like natural causes or cardiac failure. Many death certificates simply say the cause of death is unknown. Remember, these

are mostly young and healthy man that Qatar imports to work. Statistically, this isn't an age group that should be dying of natural causes or cardiac failure, unless, of course, they're forced to work in unsafe environments like the insanely hot temperatures and Qatar. And really, why isn't Qatar doing more to investigate these deaths. Sharon Burrow, the International Trade Union Confederations General Secretary, didn't hold back when asked about Qatar's brutal

working conditions. Qatar is a slave state in the twenty one century. Even when the construction projects don't kill the worker, they're still forced to live under barbaric conditions, and for most of the last decade, FIFA couldn't have cared less. Doha's glass and steel Altbita Tower is famous for its vertical, twisting design. It's long symbolized guitars march to a more modern future. Even today, as it's been joined by dozens of other newer structures, the iconic building sticks out on

Doha's skyline. When the two thousand twenty two World Cup Organizing Committee was looking for office space about a decade ago, the Albita Tower was the obvious choice. From its thirty eighth and thirty ninth floors, Qatar soccer bosses developed the early blueprints for the first ever tournament in the Middle East. As much of a beacon for development as the Albita Towers for qataris. It also represents the callousness in inhumane system that underpins Guitars March of Progress and then two

thousand twenty two World Cup. Some of the men who built these offices have become victims of serious labor exploitation. You see, back in two thousand twelve, just as planning for the World Cup was ramping up, it came out that many of the migrant workers who built the sleek new Albita Tower we're basically living as modern slaves. They went some paid for over a year. They were abandoned by their employer and left to live in squala. That's

from a Guardian newspaper report. Qatar's government, including its Prime Minister, knew of the situation and for months did nothing. In fact, the treatment of Albida's workers it's hardly unique. Many migrant workers in Qatar live in horrible conditions. After all our work d This is the sort of home they returned to, overcrowded compounds, often twelve men to a room, and minimal

bathroom facilities. Here, again, as Mustafa Kadji, who spent years investigating labor practices in the Middle East, the only way to describe them is appalling. You're talking about often is completely broken down, sort of Soviet era looking, very concrete apartment blocks with unwashed walls, of very dirty walls with no one coming to clean. The ground is very filthy, often with toilets which might have cubicles with no doors, with broken sinks with terrible smells, kitchens which are really

infested with insects. When you go to these sites, the first thing that really comes to mind is it feels like a prison. You've got these gated areas, the security have to check in when you go to work accommodations. There's often bars around their windows. They're very clear sort of boundaries, and it's also that the sense of physical enclosure is really really strong. This life of squalor and

indentured servitude isn't unique to Qatar. It's the norm across the entire Middle East from migrant workers and has been so for decades cut her. Another Arab Gulf states developed a system called kafala, meaning sponsorship, to bring in workers from around the world. Businesses like I don't know, say, a firm building World Cup infrastructure, uses third party agents to lure workers from poor countries and then the construction firm sponsors the workers employment in a country like Qatar.

On the surface, it seems like oh when when these workers get hooked on this belief, this idea that their life can be better, the firms get healthy young workers and desperate families get a shot at a better life. You're eighteen years old, so there's increasing pressure from your family to get married, to have children like your elder brother or your realty is that are older than you, and you don't really see many opportunities in your home country.

And they'll really win them over with these stories of these amazing opportunities and that over a short period of time you'll be sending over so much money that you'll eventually have enough money for a dowry or to have a wedding and have children, all that sort of thing. But they have to go far away and they have to pay really large sums of money, but it's worth it.

It's almost like getting a mortgage on a house. You know, when you're young, you sort of wonder how on earth will you pay off that mortgage, But you kind of feel eventually you'll pay off that loan, and what you'll have at the end of it is as an asset. In their case, the asset is a job, is money they can send home and a better prospect of life.

So that's how they get hooked in. What recruiters don't mention, or the feces, smeared bathrooms, the twelve hour days under the heart golf sun, or the fact that workers residency rates are tied to the job. This is Mickey Warden of Human Rates Watch and Jeremy Shap of ESPN. If your employer is abusive or forces you to work long hours, forces you to live in squalid conditions, there's really nothing you can do about it. A migrant worker can't leave

the country without an exit visa. That visa has to be approved by his employer, no matter how callous, in humane, or just playing awful the company is. This inability to switch jobs leaves workers vulnerable to exploitation. The winner to organize the two twenty two FIFA vote Cup is Ka. Long before set Bladder announced Qatar as the two thousand and twenty two World Cup host, the follows systems in

moral hazards were well documented. Here's Qatari saik Mohammed bin Hammad Alfouni admitting as much back in two thousand and thirteen. I said previously, this workers welfare issue has come about long before we were awarded the hosting rights. We've had a tremendous amount of workers in for the past fifteen

to twenty years. FIFA executives knew way before two thousand and ten that a World Cup and Qatar would require a massive infrastructure program, one the likes of the soccer world had never seen before, and that meant a huge number of workers would be sent to Qatar to work under deplorable conditions. Knowing this, FIFA and Sepp Bladder did what they always do, look the other way. As far as FIFA is concerned, the onus is on the companies

that employ the labors. Last year, FIFA's president said workers are the responsibility of the companies who hire them, not of FIFA. From the beginning, FIFA sloughed off any responsibility. Here is set Bladder in two thousand and fifteen when asked about worker treatment, I know many people hold me ultimately responsible for the actions and reputation of the noble the football community. We all, I cannot monitor everyone all

of the time. FIFA keeps insisting there isn't much you can do about the treatment of migrant workers and their deaths. FIFA benefits from these environments where scrutiny is highly limited, and yet publicly, when there is some scrutiny and there's exposureable the bad things that is made public, will say, well, we don't have control. Well, it can't both be right, of course, with things FIFA really cares about, no organization is more aggressive or demanding. Remember Brazil and it's ban

on alcohol. In two thousand three, the Brazilian government banned alcohol from stadiums because of the enormously high death rate amongst fans. Before the two thousand fourteen World Cup, FIFA drew a line in the sand and demanded Brazil change its laws to permit beer sales and stadiums. I'm sorry to say, and maybe I look a bit arrogance, but that's something will not negotiate her. I mean, there will be and there must be as part of the of the law, the fact that we are the right to

sell beer. FIFA has forced government after government after government to bend to its will and change tax laws to ensure FIFA rakes in every single shiny penny it can. It is FIFA and it's FIFA subsidiaries that are fully exempt from any tax whatsoever levied at whatever level, state level, the municipality level, all sorts of Texas consumption, texas income, texas, you name it. It's all except when it comes to human rights. FIFA claims it's powerless, but FIFA has pushed

for changes when it comes to money. Cadre says, we know when it comes to other things like sponsorship rights, when it comes to the requirements for the tournament stadiums, when it comes to all those things around the financial, corporate, the professional side for FIFA, then in fact you see that Gutta has bent over backwards to accommodate them. FIFA's position on Qutars migrant workers has come at a cost, an avalanche, now a volcano of bad press. The tournament

built moreover on the blood of foreign construction workers. The other great FIFA scandal, the ugly game. For years, major sponsors have watched the cut our World Cup descend into accusations of corruption and appalling labor conditions, as the deaths of construction workers pile up, with endless scrutiny from human

rights groups and SEP ladders departure. In two thousand and fifteen, FIFA's new president, Gianni Infantino has and I'll give them a little bit of credit here, has called for improved worker conditions. We pulled it as a condition in our bidding process is rule our competitions, and wherever we go around the world, we are of course highlighting the need

for protecting human rights. When it comes to the situation in in Qatar in particular, I think we need to be fair there as well and admit that a lot of progress has happened and all the progress in the conditions of the workers in recent years. With a very soft nudge from FIFA, Qatar past legislation revamping its employment system. In theory, workers can now switch jobs without leaving the country.

A new minimum monthly salary is guaranteed and must be paid electronically, and employers must provide suitable food and accommodations or pay extra if they don't. But here's the rub. Enforcement of all these new laws is haphazarded best. Even with these changes, the mistreatment of workers continues in Qatar. Thousands of migrant workers are still being exploited, and too

many are dying. There's no denying The two thousand, twenty two World Cup will be the most technologically advanced World Cup ever, with its estimated three billion dollars of futuristic stadiums and transportation infrastructure. It will be a modern marvel. At the same time, it's a modern human tragedy. FIFA can do better. FIFA has to do better. This is a PostScript. The red blood on the brick wall is fake,

but the bullet holes are very much real. The six by ten ft section of the Lincoln Park garage where seven Irish bootleggers were murdered by al Capone's South Side Chicago gang on Valentine's Day nineteen, just one of the some two thousand rare artifacts and exhibits in the Las Vegas Mob Museum. The wall, like many other exhibits, helps tell the story of the world's most notorious gangsters and

organized crime syndicates. You know, the jewel thieves, the cyber hackers, the Irish and Italian mobsters, the Mexican drug cartels, and the international soccer executives. This may not fit the perfect picture of organized crime, but it looks like it. It feels like it, you know, it tastes like it. That's right. Among the many criminals and crooks profiled and enshrined in the Las Vegas Mob Museum, there's a little corner reserve

for the Federation International the Football Association FIFA. Jeff Schumacher, the vice president of exhibits at the museum, says, FIFA takes all the boxes for a continuing criminal enterprise. From our standpoint, twenty years is a pretty good run for

a criminal enterprise. I think some people who came into the museum may have been surprised to come across our FIFA exhibit, But once they absorbed the contents of the exhibit, once they read about what had transpired, and they saw how the European press in particular had covered the FIFA scandal, I think they understood why it was a logical fit

for the museum. As you've heard in this series, FIFA's sometimes criminal and moral and horrendous behavior isn't just centered around one person or the two thousand and fifteen corruption case. FIFA started as a racist organization under its European colonial minded founders, and then became a full fledged criminal enterprise under its boss Johavalang in the nineteen seventies. It's criminality only grew and expanded under the mild mannered Sep Bladder

in the last fifty years. The men who have run FIFA have old right wing military junta's, turned a blind eye to gross human rights abuses, encourage rampants, sexism and vulgar misogyny, and oversaw a global system of money laundering, bribery and financial misdeeds. Today, FIFA would like you to believe the corruption, the sexism, the racism, the canoodling with authoritarian regimes, it's all a thing of the past, historical

legacy of those other Let's not talk about them. They're gone now FIFA leaders, but the US Justice Department and Swiss prosecutors continue to issue indictments against FIFA and World Soccer executives in Among those indicted were two former senior sports executives from twenty first Century Fox and in November two thousand one, as you heard, step Ladder and former Way for President Michelle Platini were indicted in Switzerland, though

a Swiss judge has since thrown the indictment out. Today, Gianni Infantine, current FIFA president, is under investigation by European authorities. So while the names have changed, FIFA really hasn't. Billions of people, including myself, will watch the World Cup in Many of us will think about the time we played the game as children. We'll put ourselves in the cleats of our favorite player. We'll be kids again on that grass pitch, that patch of dirt, just kicking the ball around.

We will not think about those men in their finely tailored suits grabbing envelopes of cash and exchange for a crooked vote. But imagine if FIFA did what it said it should. Imagine if it used the power and passion for the beautiful game to make a better world. Maybe this podcast will be a small part of a much

larger effort to bring about some meaningful reforms. As Mustafa Kadre told me, if sport is meant to be a public good, if it's meant to be a community activity, if it's meant to be ours, then we have to democratize it. It has to represent us. It has to represent our values. It can't just be a vehicle for making money. I believe there's hope. The indictments, the success of women's soccer, the growing voice of players speaking out

against human rights violations. There's hope as long as a child somewhere, anywhere in the world kicks a ball and starts to play The Beautiful Game. The Lords of Soccer Al FIFA Stole the Beautiful Game is an Inside Voices Media production in conjunction with I Heart Radio. The series was written and executive produced by Gary Scott and me Connor Powell, Logan he Tell, and Katie mcmurran provided the sound design, with assistance from j C. Swaddick and Jake

blue Note. Alec Cowen is our associate producer and Jeffrey Katz was our story editor. Our fact checker is Alexa O'Brien and thanks to Miles Gray, who produced the series for I Heart Radio. If you have any comments or questions, please reach out. You can find us on Twitter. I'm at Connor m. Powell and Gary is at Gary Robert Scott and if you have any stories about FIFA, let us know. If you like what you hear, please give us a shout out at the hashtag lords of soccer,