When something disrupts the world’s most popular sport, the impact goes way beyond supporters being left bored twice a week. Coronavirus stopped football in its tracks, jeopardising the eco-system that nurtures the livelihoods of thousands of people, both inside the footballing world and its periphery businesses.
Christopher O’Neil breaks down the problems in Scottish access and advocates for revolution in outreach programmes and strategy, something he belives the Clydeside Project is leading.
Surely most of the figures complicit in the corruption behind Qatar’s bid are gone from the sport. What’s the point in raging over closed cases, especially when the Qatari World Cup is so close? One may query. Well, I would answer, FIFA is a very seedy operation and you aren’t thinking big enough.
It seems utterly unconscionable for FIFA to shamelessly tolerate the degradation of human life in exchange profit and status, but I have little doubt that they will do and with a smile – as long as the games go smoothly, their pockets are lined and their investors happy.
To date, more than two dozen people and entities have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering in the ongoing investigation. As such, the past twenty years of footballing bureaucracy – and the football that has emerged from it – has an excoriating asterisk next to it in the record books.
Part 1 of a mini series sharing the songs that have been keeping us going through this peculiar time.
The central, most essential idea surrounding ‘toxic masculinity’ is that of the ‘alpha-male’, who seeks to dominate, belittle, and ‘beat’ those weaker than him. While it’s unlikely that the executives of the UFC are purposefully propagating the characteristics of potentially destructive forms of manhood, the harm done by damaged men to themselves and their communities is one of the great problems of our time.