CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

An Ex-Pat Anti-Capitalist Watches the World Cup

Ancient ball court of Monte Alban, in the Oaxaca region of Mexico. Photo by Bobak Ha’Eri. Wikimedia Commons.

There are reasons to love and reasons to hate the current World Cup, the six-week, quadrennial football match organized by FIFA, Fédération Internationale de Football Association. I’ll start with one of the second:  corruption of a Trumpian scale. Atop the ticket-price gouging, fleecing of host cities, and migrant labor exploitation, (more on these below), Trump added his own je ne sais quoi  by making FIFA capo Gianni Infantino an offer he couldn’t refuse: rescind the red-card suspension of American star Folarin Balogun so he could play the critical, round-of-sixteen match against Belgium — or else. The threats included mid-match lawsuits, bogus claims of match fixing, and possible Justice Department investigations. Infantino, who previously awarded the bellicose president a “FIFA Peace Prize,” didn’t have to be asked twice. He required his Disciplinary Committee to delay the ban for one year, implicitly accepting the legitimacy of the red card while delaying the sanction until it was more convenient.

Belgium delivered rough justice by trouncing the Americans 4 to 1. Afterwards, they celebrated in their locker room by performing the “Trump Dance” to the tune of YMCA — a better mockery than Democratic Party consultants been able to muster in a decade of trying. There’s little question that “Trump’s Foul,” as it shall forever be known, severely disadvantaged the U.S. side and motivated the Belgian. Balogun himself, it’s only fair to add, accepted the original suspension with grace. He and his coach, Mauricio Pochettino however, should have refused the pardon and rallied his team by video streaming a meal of frites and mayonnaise served in paper cones.

East Rutherford and “the beautiful game”

The final match of the World Cup will be played on Sunday, July 19 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey (pop. 10,522). MetLife, the insurance company after which the arena is named, is notable for its deceptive practices and the $21 million annual compensation package of its CEO, Michale Khalaf. The average salary of East Rutherford residents, few of whom, it’s safe to say, have ever seen much less played a soccer game, is $48,000. That also happens to be the official price of four of the best tickets to the World Cup Final.

The borough of East Rutherford, New Jersey is otherwise notable only for being adjacent to Rutherford, New Jersey, birthplace of the great, imagist poet William Carlos Williams, who wrote “The Crowd at the Ballgame” (1923) which includes the lines:

The crowd at the ball game is moved uniformly by a spirit of uselessness which delights them— all the exciting detail of the chase and the escape, the error the flash of genius— all to no end save beauty the eternal…

The crowd at the ball game is moved uniformly by a spirit of uselessness which delights them— all the exciting detail of the chase and the escape, the error the flash of genius— all to no end save beauty the eternal…

Williams’ ballgame (he had baseball in mind) has “no end save beauty.” The Brazilian footballer Pelé, perhaps the greatest of all time, called football “The beautiful game.” As far as FIFA’s concerned, the end of football is money. The expected revenue from the current World Cup – ticket sales, broadcast rights, corporate sponsorships and licensing fees – is about $13 billion. Because FIFA is a Swiss-registered non-profit, it must spend all that money, except a one billion cash buffer. This it does, doling huge........

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