Top 100 momentsNo. 82
FIFA in handcuffs
Swiss police arrest soccer officials at a Zurich hotel on a U.S. indictment. The sport’s government is no longer a private club with a bad reputation. It is a case file.
Dawn in Zurich, May 2015. Officials who ran FIFA’s world are walked out of the Baur au Lac. The U.S. Department of Justice has been building a bribery case around World Cup votes and marketing rights. Sepp Blatter’s era starts to end in public.
Soccer’s governance had been a punchline. Handcuffs make it a crime story. Later reforms are partial. Later hosts are still political. The idea that FIFA sits above law looks expensive.
The World Cup is too big to be a gentleman’s agreement. 2015 is the morning the agreement got a perp walk.