FIFA and the Women's World Cup, Part II: Incompetence, Arrogance, and Sexism

Another image we'd like to remember.

So, we scratched the surface of FIFA’s colossal array of sexism, incompetence, venality, hubris, and all-purpose criminality yesterday, concluding with the observation that the monumental prize money disparity between the men’s and women’s World Cups is actually well down the list of FIFA’s crimes against the sport, against women, and against any reasonable conception of either law or ethics.

So what’s higher on the list? Well, for one thing, more garden-variety corruption. As Jeff Kassouf explains, FIFA cheerfully stacked the deck for what it perversely calls “sporting reasons.” First, it put the Canadian and American sides in the biggest venues in the biggest cities, ensuring not merely larger crowds (which could be considered a pragmatically good and ethically neutral endeavor), but also bigger partisan crowds, giving even more home-pitch advantage to the two North American sides.

Secondly, FIFA arranged the seeds in such a way that—oh, so coincidentally, of course—the only two seeds who, assuming they won through, wouldn’t have to face another seeded team until the semis were (who’da thunk it?) Canada and the USA. FIFA says this was unintentional.  I believe them.  I also believe in the tooth fairy. Of course, Canada was seeded only because they were the host nation, and they were derailed by England (who, ironically, would—or at least should have been seeded had the top six teams in fact been the seeds) in the quarterfinals. Meanwhile, two of the three top teams in the world—Germany and France—met each other in the quarters. And the winner got the other Top 3 team, the US, in the semis. That is, the world’s #1 team would need to beat #3 and then #2 to even make it to the finals, whereas world #4 Japan wouldn’t need to play anyone ranked above #6 to get there. (Overall #5 Sweden wasn’t seeded because FIFA whimsically thought it would be kind of cool to seed #7 Brazil instead.)

There are two fair ways of working out the seeds. You can power-rank: have the top two seeds play the two advancers who were second in their group, with #3 against #6, and #4 against #5. Or you can do what the men do, and randomize the process, so that every team has an equal chance of playing against a particularly strong opponent… or against a relatively weak one.  FIFA, of course, chose neither of these strategies.

As it happened, #1 Germany advanced to the semis on penalty kicks over France, and French star Camille Abily made her feelings known: “At some point FIFA has to stop taking women for idiots. I’m sorry but if they did a real draw maybe we would not have played Germany or the United States after. Inevitably, it’s frustrating even if we knew this from the start.” FIFA, of course, unabashedly admitted its perfidy: “[Teams] are seeded and allocated into specific groups for ticketing and promotion reasons…. The allocation of teams to venues, the ticketing and promotion plan and the ticket price strategy are among the key factors for the overall success of the event.” That’s asshole-speak for “of course, we created an unfair event. We’re FIFA. We can’t help ourselves.”

Sydney Leroux released this photo of what her legs look like

after playing on artificial turf.

Then there are the venues. FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association decided it would be just a peachy idea to have all the games played on artificial turf. This was widely and accurately regarded as a sexist decision: as Abby Wambach argued, “the reality is, the men would never play (the World Cup) on field turf, so for me, it’s a women's rights issue, it’s an equality issue.” Here’s USA striker Sydney Leroux on the subject:

Between men and women… this is not equal. For us to be playing the biggest tournament for women’s soccer on artificial grass is unacceptable. The game is completely different. It’s fake. So you don’t know how it’s gonna bounce. You don’t know how the ball is gonna run. It’s terrible for your body. The constant pounding. You’re running pretty much on cement. … We’re the guinea pigs.

FIFA knows all that, of course. They just don’t give a shit. They’re FIFA, and in their feeble and deluded minds, they rule the universe. A coalition of at least 18 players, many of them stars, from eleven or more countries sued FIFA and the CSA to have the World Cup played, as it should be, on natural grass. The suit’s argument is that:

CSA and FIFA’s decision to hold the tournament on artificial turf is inherently discriminatory and injures an elite group of female athletes in three significant ways: (1) by forcing them to compete on a surface that fundamentally alters the way the game is played, (2) by subjecting them to unique and serious risks of injury, and (3) by devaluing their dignity, state of mind and self-respect as a result of requiring them to play on a second-class surface before tens of thousands of stadium spectators and a global broadcast audience.

Characteristically, FIFA didn’t care. FIFA deputy director of women’s competition Tatjana Haenni said “there’s no plan B” and that the World Cup would be played on artificial turf. Why? Because FIFA said so.

Eventually, when it became clear that FIFA was going to do whatever it damned pleased regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit (the players had made it clear they weren’t going to boycott), and it became clear that some of the players were being threatened with reprisals, the suit was withdrawn. FIFA responded, as might be expected, by lying: “we are totally committed to providing the best possible surface to enable everyone to enjoy a great footballing spectacle.” That was FIFA Secretary General Valcke, by the way. One way you can tell he was lying is that his statement so obviously flies in the face of the fact that literally no one thinks an artificial surface is the “best possible surface” for soccer. The other way is recognizing that he works for FIFA and that his lips were moving.

A more accurate assessment comes from Hampton Dellinger, one of the players’ attorneys: “The players are doing what FIFA and CSA have proven incapable of: putting the sport of soccer first.” And the players did achieve something—apart from calling (further) attention to what a repulsive gaggle of goons comprise the FIFA leadership. Goal-line technology was introduced, apparently as a direct result of the players’ suit, and the turf at BC Place in Vancouver, the site of the final, was indeed replaced by something a little less horrible.

But yeah… about that finals site… it didn’t require the former goalie in Curmie to notice that at the beginning of the final match, one end of the pitch was in shade, whereas at the other end, the goalkeeper would not only be staring into the sun, but shots might start in light, disappear (in relative terms) into shade, then re-appear in bright sunshine. Seriously, did no one at FIFA or CSA even check out the site for the final… like, you know, what it would look like in late afternoon in early July? This is the level of incompetence that would be unacceptable for a high school regional tournament, let alone a World Cup final.

Even the Fox announcers proclaimed that it was a huge advantage to be heading in one direction (right to left on our TV screens) in the first half. Carli Lloyd’s hat trick was scored in that direction. There were seven goals in the game. One came after shade covered the entire field. In five of the other six, the goaltender was looking into the sun. And seeing goalkeepers of the caliber of Solo (on Japan’s second goal) and Japan’s Ayumi Kaihori (on Lloyd’s midfield bomb) look so flat-footed: was that a coincidence, the product of their being human, after all, or did they literally have trouble seeing the ball? The point is that we’ll never know, and the idea that unequal playing conditions even might influence the outcome of the most important match in the entirety of a sport for four years—well, that doubt ought never enter our minds.

And finally, there was that medal ceremony. Sepp Blatter may not have been there in person, but the guy whose solution to making the women’s game more popular was to have them wear tighter shorts (really!) was certainly there in spirit. The medals and trophies were brought ought by a phalanx of young women in slinky black dresses. Curmie can’t improve on this description by Rachel Bertsche, so he’ll just repeat it:

When models in skimpy tight dresses walked onto the field dressed like Robert Palmer girls, fans on social media let out a collective groan. “Sepp Blatter’s last middle finger to women’s soccer is medal-bearing, black-dress-wearing models from Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted to Love’ video,” sportswriter Tom Reed tweeted about the president of FIFA.

Don’t get me wrong. Curmie likes seeing attractive young women in sexy outfits as much as the next guy, but let’s not be ridiculous.

Curmie talks in his theatre history classes about the evolving meaning of the ancient Greek word hamartía. In the archaic age, it meant missing the mark, as, say, in archery. By the time of Aristotle, the word suggested more of an error in judgment, a mistake. A few centuries later, it became the word for “sin” in the Greek New Testament. The medal ceremony didn’t just miss the mark. It wasn’t merely a mistake in judgment. It was a sin.

None of this changes the magnificent effort put forth by so many of the athletes from all over the world, or the joy that we Americans take in a well-deserved victory by “our team.” FIFA did their level best to destroy their own sport, and they failed. Just as the demagogues and charlatans who gravitate towards political office in this country do not represent the spirit of the nation, neither do the petty despots of FIFA represent soccer (men’s or women’s), its players, or its fans. Despite all the chicanery, all the incompetence, all the arrogance of FIFA, our memories will be of this:

  

And that is how it should be.

FIFA and the Women's World Cup, Part I: Money, Fans, and Ethics

This is the way we’d like to remember the Women’s World Cup:

celebrating with Carli Lloyd.

[It turns out that even beginning to talk about the corruption, incompetence, and sexism of FIFA with respect to the Women’s World Cup takes a lot of space.  This is, then, a two-part essay.  More tomorrow.]

Like a lot of other folks, Curmie watched the finals of the Women’s World Cup a week or so ago. Unlike many of the others tuned into that match, however, Curmie also watched both semi-finals, and would have watched many of the preliminary games had he not been pretty much cut off from television access at the time.

The fact is, the women’s game is simply more fun to watch than the men’s, and not merely for the jingoistic reason that the US women are perennial contenders for whatever title they seek, whereas the men (to put it politely) are not. The women’s game is more team-oriented, more reliant on passing and positioning, more (dare I say it?) intellectual without being any less athletic. It’s a cleaner game, too, with fewer fouls—not just fewer fouls called, but fewer fouls, and if a female player goes down and doesn’t get up immediately, it means she’s really hurt, not faking paroxysms of agony to try to influence the referee. The respect for the game, for the opponent, for tradition, and for teammates is all considerably higher.

Witness the fact that Carli Lloyd, the very deserving Golden Ball recipient whose hat trick 15 minutes into the final was nothing short of incredible, handed over the captain’s armband to fading star (but still team leader) Abby Wambach when the latter entered the game with the victory no longer in doubt. And who actually hoisted the trophy after the award presentation? Lloyd? Nope. Golden Glove winner Hope Solo? Nope. Wambach and 40-year-old Christie Rampone, the only active member of the 1999 team that won the Cup in such dramatic fashion: Wambach and Rampone are the links to heritage, the veteran leaders; the best players on the team right now will, one hopes, have another opportunity. (Wambach also passed the captain’s armband on to Rampone, who was apparently selected to raise the trophy by herself, but insisted that Wambach join her.) Respect, tradition, team. Not to mention the utter casualness with which everyone associated with the team regards the fact that Wambach and fellow veteran Megan Rapinoe have both been out of the closet for years. Ah, if only all sports were like that.

Except…

Alas, there is a darker side to the feel-good stories. There’s the fact that the US’s star goalie Hope Solo is alleged to be a violent criminal, yet has not been subject to the same backlash as, say the NFL’s Adrian Peterson or Ray Rice. (Curmie’s netpal Jack Marshall does his usual excellent analysis here and here.) Because she’s white? female? Because her variation on domestic violence isn’t perceived as being symptomatic of a larger problem? If Solo were black and/or male, or a little less accomplished (or even a little less beautiful), would she be trotted out as one of the faces of the team, or even allowed to stay on it? All over America, little girls are hoping to grow up to be Hope Solo, and their parents (not to mention their sisters and nephews) are hoping they… uh… don’t.

There’s also the frankly rather sketchy officiating. (Yahoo’s Graham Watson agrees.) There were a total four penalty kicks awarded in the two semi-final games. You could make a pretty good case that none of them were merited. And apparently (I missed this game) the third-place game between England and Germany was an officiating disaster. Part of this is the fault of the referees themselves, of course, but part is also on FIFA (the Fédération Internationale de Football) for not insisting on replay for calls that have the potential to change the direction of a match in a heartbeat.

Ah, yes. FIFA. The perfect blend of corruption, arrogance, incompetence, sexism, and boorishness. Needless to say, the world’s governing body for soccer/football had been making the headlines for all the wrong reasons coming into the Women’s World Cup. There was the corruption scandal involving many of the organization’s most powerful officials. There’s the mounting evidence that not only was the awarding of the 2022 (men’s) World Cup to Qatar almost certainly the product of bribery, but that the facilities for that tournament are being constructed in hazardous, often deadly, conditions by what amounts to slave labor. Please note, Gentle Reader, that this is an entirely different set of allegations from those that led to multi-count indictments (and three convictions already) against over a dozen current and former FIFA officials, sports marketing mavens, and a broadcaster. Self-styled “Godfather of Women’s Football” Sepp Blatter (yes, that is indeed a name worthy of a James Bond villain), who was re-elected in May because of despite being one of the most contemptible creatures ever to trod the planet, resigned in the wake of that scandal, but who is still in charge until a successor is named several months hence, didn’t make the trip to Vancouver amid speculation that his absence—and that of his minion, Secretary General Jerome Valcke—was under the advice of his lawyer.

So what FIFA really needed was a well-attended, effectively administered, competitive, Women’s World Cup with good TV ratings—something to take the edge off, at least, until at least some of the brouhaha died down. They got it, at least to hear them tell it. The reality was a little different. This year’s version set total attendance records, but there are two problems: first, the comparison is between a 16-team, 32-game tournament in 1999 (the previous record-holder) and a 24-team, 52-game tournament in 2015. So, in 1999, attendance averaged over 37,000 fans per game to reach a total of about 1.2 million, compared to over 1.35 million this time around. But whereas 2015 version drew more fans, total, it averaged over 10,000 fewer fans per game. 

If this is a sell-out crowd,
a lot of people came disguised as empty seats.

And—problem #2—that’s after massaging the numbers. Early round games were sold as double-headers, and FIFA, ever the paragons of dubious virtue, double-dipped. Fans who bought a single ticket to see two games were counted twice, whether they saw both games or not. For example, some 32,716 people—a sell-out(!)—bought tickets to the Australia-Nigeria and USA-Sweden double bill. The latter game was in fact pretty close to full. The earlier game was half empty. FIFA consulted its magic pixie dust and declared that all 32K+ folks had attended both games: total attendance, therefore: 65,432.

The television numbers, which FIFA couldn’t control, were at least honest, and were certainly encouraging, at least in North America. The final, for example, was watched by some 26.7 million viewers in the US, eclipsing the old record of 26.5 million Americans who tuned in to the Germany-Argentina final in the men’s World Cup last year. But how many of those viewers would have watched had the US not reached the final (or even if it had not been a re-match of the 2011 final, a heart-breaking loss for the American side), and how many more would have watched the US men’s team had they advanced to games of real significance?

Still, as the New York Times article linked above points out, it is unquestionably significant that viewership for the USA-Japan final outdrew Game 7 of last year’s World Series and the clinching Game 6 of the NBA playoffs. There’s certainly interest. Here. As might be expected, countries whose teams didn’t fare as well didn’t stay tuned as much after their side had departed the competition. Still, the television numbers were generally pretty good all over. I can’t find final world-wide figures for the final, but the semis averaged over 12 million viewers world-wide, with about 2/3 of those viewers coming from the US. Assuming that same ratio for the final (global TV ratings haven’t been released, or at least I can’t find them), then we’re talking about a total television viewership of perhaps 40 million or so. That’s a lot of folks… until you compare it to the estimated 1 billion (yes, “billion” with a “b”) who watched last year’s men’s final. More importantly, whereas the women’s final this year probably attracted a few million viewers from countries other than the two participants, last year’s men’s final attracted a few hundred million audience members from elsewhere than Germany and Argentina.

And that’s an important statistic. Because whereas there is no doubt that FIFA is run by a cadre of sexist assholes, there is at least some economic sense to the disparity in payouts to the sides. Is there an outrageous disparity between the $2 million the US women won this year and the $35 million the German men brought home last year? Well, duh. But what ought that ratio be, and by what basis should we arrive at it? Is absolute parity the way to go? Could be. That’s what Wimbledon is doing, for example.

But a purely performance-based system also has a claim to being the fairest model. No one seriously suggests that the US women would fare well in a head-to-head contest even with the American men (who, by the way, brought home $8 million for getting knocked out in group play last year), let alone with a first-rate international squad. The women are at least as technically skilled, but high-end male athletes are bigger, faster and stronger than their female counterparts: that’s why there are separate teams for men and women (and there are few sports—wrestling, boxing, crew, weightlifting—in which smaller men get to compete only against each other, not against the big guys). If we’re really talking about some variation on equal pay for equal results, then shouldn’t a pedestrian men’s team make as much or more as a good women’s team they could still beat?

Or we could adopt entertainment value as our central criterion. Players who generate more income should be compensated according. That’s fair, too? Well, now we’re talking pure economics, and the more colorful (or sexy) players who attract a bigger crowd ought to get a bigger piece of the pie… regardless of outcome. And if we’re dealing with a strictly capitalistic model, then the fact that the men’s final generated a couple dozen times as many viewers as the women’s, both in the stands and in the worldwide television audience, suggests that they ought to be paid commensurately.

You know what?  Not really.  But at least there’s some rationale behind the disparity in prize money, which, it turns out, isn’t FIFA’s greatest crime. What is? That’s in part II of this post.  Watch this space.