Football ,”Beautiful game, dirty business”

(borkena) The Economist published what seem to be a passionate account,entitled “Beautiful game, dirty business”, of football, soccer as it is known in this part of the world, as a game with tremendous conquering power to globalize the world ;”Football, more than any other sport, has thrived on globalisation. ” Yet, at one point it seem to have a regret that “The game has failed to conquer the world’s three biggest countries: China, India and America.”

The Economist is apparently asserting that football can even be mightier had it not been for “dirty business” in FIFA. FIFA and the president Sepp Blatter are butchered for alleged scandal in the selection of World Cup host.

Match fixing is also mentioned, rightly, as one of the problems the world of football. And the idea to come up with technological innovation to resolve issues like match fixing ( if it can fix it all) is good too.

What is ugly from the story is that the The Economist tend to attach, the way I understood it, instrumentality and economic rational to this otherwise undoubtedly one of the most entertaining game. It tends to inject what seem to be neoliberal economic principle to the extent of suggesting, among other things, winners of the contest to host world cup to auction it to the “highest bidder” which sounds like an idea in the realm of deep privatization.

How acceptable,to people in the rest of the world, is the view that football has to serve the purpose of globalization and consequently be subject to economic rationale in the name of fighting scandal in FIFA?

Anyways you may click here to read the narrative by The Economist which is actually cover story.