The Journal. - The World Cup Story, Part 1: Soccer and Scandal

Episode Date: June 7, 2026

As the World Cup begins this week, we bring you a two-part Sunday special charting how FIFA built the World Cup into a global phenomenon and how it became marred in scandal and corruption. In Part 1, WSJ soccer experts Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson go back to the World Cup’s origins — how it grew from a small tournament in Uruguay into a massive empire. And how an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice prompted a moment for reckoning for FIFA. Ryan Knutson hosts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The World Cup begins this week. 48 countries will compete in a tournament to determine the world's best soccer team. It's the world's favorite sporting competition. A tournament full of euphoria. Heartbreak. Surprises. With this year's World Cup happening in North America, we're going to be seeing wall-to-wall soccer

for the next several weeks. But for a lot of Americans, soccer isn't their go-to sport. I mean, I'm a basketball guy. So I sat down with the Wall Street Journal's two soccer experts who've been watching the game since they were young lads.

The earliest world-cup memory I have is from the 1990 World Cup. Jonathan Clegg is executive news editor, an England fan. Nine years old, England lost in heartbreaking fashion. in a penalty shootout in the World Cup semifinals. West Germany are through to the final on penalty kicks.

It is my earliest sports memory. And just heartbreak. It was just, you know, perfectly prepared me for the next, you know, 35 years where it was just more of the same. My first real memory of the tournament was USA-94. And that's Joshua Robinson, sports editor. I grew up in England, but I'm also French. So France is my team.

And then the moment that kind of sealed it for me was France winning it in 98. Their winning the World Cup in 1998 launched me on a life of sin and sports journalism. Sin and sports. Also a fitting way to describe FIFA, the organization that runs the World Cup. From humble origins, FIFA has grown to become one of the biggest and most powerful organizations in the world of sports and entertainment. Its main job is to dole out billions of dollars worth of TV broadcasting rights for the world's most watch sport.

But it's also a non-profit based in Switzerland, which means that unlike a public company, for example, it doesn't have shareholders or regulators it has to answer to. So FIFA executives have had a lot of room to do business in their own way. And that way has created some problems. Blatter's rise starts. with the controversy of the 98 vote, and it's sort of tainted by scandal and stench of corruption

right from the very beginning. At every major turn, there have been suspicions and very loud whispers that there were brown paper envelopes full of cash, that there were duffel bags full of cash. Prosecutors started poking around what was going on with this World Cup bid and what FIFA was going on with FIFA generally. Gianni Infantino saw his role as,

as FIFA president as essentially the man to fill FIFA's coffers with as much money as humanly possible. In Fantino loves being close to power. And in Trump, he kind of found a kindred spirit. From the journal, this is our two-part Sunday special on the World Cup. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's June 7th. Coming up, part one, FIFA, a story of soccer and scandal. This episode is presented by SAP. company's ambitions can't be held back by long implementation, surprise costs, or empty AI promises.

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for any size business. SAP.com slash grow. Okay, so the first thing that we need to establish in this conversation is, are we going to call it Soccer or football? So I have a take here. I think the whole football versus soccer debate is the most tedious thing in sports.

Yeah, it's weird. It's the sort of thing that I thought that I cared about until I moved here and started calling it soccer and then I realized. Doesn't matter. The game is beautiful. I don't know what you call it. Exactly.

For the record, we are going to call it soccer. Okay, so now can you tell me the origin story of the World Cup? Where did this tournament begin? The World Cup is sort of born out of this early 20th century Corinthian Olympic movement, where countries have decided that actually the best way to keep peace in the world

is to get all of these rivalries out, you know, on the field of play, where it's athletic competitions. The first major international football competitions are actually at the Olympics, and then an organization known as the Federation International of Football Association. AKA FIFA?

FIFA. Okay. Is founded and decides to set up a tournament that they called the World Cup. This was some, you know, 50 years after the sport had been invented. They decided to host a world championship for the first time. So they settle on Uruguay. And the problem is that in 1930, Uruguay is an incredibly long way away from most of the countries playing soccer in the world.

Yeah, that's an interesting choice, honestly. It's three weeks by boat from Europe. That's a long trip. So a couple of teams, decide that they're going to sail together. And a ship called the Canter Verde set sail and starts picking them up in Genoa, Spain. And I think something like four or five teams end up on this boat. And it was going to be a 14-team event, but Egypt misses the boat.

And so the First World Cup has 13 teams instead. Wow, why did they miss the boat? What were they doing? The same way we might miss the subway. It's just the thing that happens. The boat wasn't waiting for Egypt. Wow. Yep, they missed it. And so who won the first World Cup?

This huge home field advantage at the World Cup. And if you haven't spent three weeks on a boat, then you probably are in better shape. You don't have sea legs going into the game. Exactly. So Uruguay wins the first World Cup in 1930. I think it's fair to say that when Uruguay lifted what was then the Jules Ramey trophy, basically no one in Europe knew it they had even done it. You get a wired dispatch that's picked up by the newspapers and maybe mentioned in passing on the radio.

But that's it. This was not a global event. And really doesn't become one until after World War II. Right. I mean, as with so many of our most popular sports, it's really the advent of television. But what a great sight of the Brazilians that only the cameras would get on to them. That turns it from a small event that people attended by boat and which very few people knew about into the sort of global entertainment. giant that has become today.

And the World Cup is no different. Through the 1950s and 60s, the audience for World Cup games grew. This era marked their arrival of TV, first in black and white, and then in color. And as games started reaching more and more people around the world, there was a superstar player drawing them in,

the Brazilian striker Pele. The first time he plays at it at the tournament is 1958 in Sweden, and he's 17 years old. He's this wiry kid from Brazil who can do incredible things with the ball. This one is lifted in for Pelle. How does he do it? Pele is like the first star of the World Cup.

And at a time when European countries were playing quite a dour version of the game, all based on complex systems, here was a kid who was playing with this individual joy and this virtuosity and flicking the ball over defenders' heads and then picking it up again. Smashing it in from miles out.

He makes that look so simple and I can assure you it's anything but. His legend grew with the tournament. So as the tournament became the biggest thing in sports, Pelle was the star of the tournament and he became the sort of greatest soccer player, the best known soccer player and was considered the best soccer player of his era.

He is this guy who, as John described, brings all this joy and color and excitement. He really crackles when you watch him on screen. It seems like he's almost like a Michael Jordan figure, what Michael Jordan did for basketball. Yeah, or like Muhammad Ali. He's very much of that ilk, the Ali Jordan. By the late 1970s, when Pele retired,

the business of the World Cup had transformed from a primarily live experience for fans and stadiums into a globally televised event. beamed via satellite into bars and living rooms all over the world. While Pele dazzled fans on the field, there was an executive at FIFA who was also making big moves behind the scenes to take the World Cup to the next level. His name was Sepp Blatter.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, fans of football around the world. It's not just Pele. There is another character, and he couldn't be more different. I mean, if Pelle was the embodiment of grace and inventiveness and joy on the soccer field, Sett Blatter is, he's a Swiss watch executive at the beginning, who's real interest line skiing, L'onjin watches, and ice hockey. Yeah. I guess the one thing he shares with Pelle is a taste for the limelight.

Setbladder started his career at FIFA in 1975, first as a technical director, then Secretary General. And then as FIFA's president in 1998, he understands something else that's critical to anyone who's ever been in the sports business. And it's realizing that you're not selling sports, you're not selling what happens on grass, you're selling pure entertainment. And so the money from it doesn't come from the traditional channels of ticket sales or things like that, though they help. But you are really in the business of selling television rights. And that is the key. BBC television brings you the World Cup from Mexico, a festival of football from a...

NBC Sports presents the 1986 World Cup final. Brought to you by Budweiser. And he effectively turns FIFA into soccer's largest broker of television rights and marketing rights. And over the course of the 80s, as he continues to carve that out and carve up the business, so that he can parcel it out to as much of the world. as possible and charge as much money as possible, he develops this obscure nonprofit in Switzerland into one of the world's most powerful sporting organizations. When he joined FIFA was a nonprofit that put on the World Cup and sold the TV rights,

but was not maximizing what it could make from those. So it didn't have a ton of money. By the time he leaves FIFA in 2010s, FIFA is sitting on billions of dollars in cash reserves. More than $1.5 billion, to be exact, And the other thing he understands is that FIFA's a profoundly political organization. How so? Is it like FIFA's like a democracy? So FIFA is a global association made up of the member associations. That's each country.

But the way FIFA is organized, every country gets one vote. So when it comes time to elect a FIFA president, allegedly, he builds his power base not by telling them, I think I'm the best steward of the World Cup, but by promising what's called development money. Development money. FIFA brings money in through the sale of TV broadcasting rights. It goes into a pool and gets distributed to all the member nations. Member nations can then spend that money on building soccer infrastructure for their countries.

Literally to build soccer pitches and build stands for the spectators to stand in and build youth academies and build training facilities in parts of the world where they don't have access to funds to do that sort of thing. So he's giving money to the developing nations that make up FIFA's 211 member base. And I remember in 2015, John and I did a story where we called around dozens and dozens of federations around the world to sort of explain this phenomenon and how Blatter consolidated power. And more than one federation director told us, we don't see Mr. Blatter as a politician. Mr. Blatter is a great humanitarian.

Huh. So he had a great reputation that it sounds like among a lot of the member countries. Among the member associations, he did. If you had to pick a word to describe Sep Blatter and his way of doing business, what would it be? I mean, I think... Humanitarian? I mean, you know, calculating. He's an operator. He's an operator. He's a lot. He's a lot. He's a He's a very canny operator, is probably how I describe him. I mean, I think, you know, it really can't be sort of overstated how sort of revolutionary it was to conceive of a FIFA president whose power would lie in, you know, the African and Asian and Caribbean voting blocks rather than the traditional places where soccer had been played and invented.

And he's not sort of explicitly buying their vote with development funds, but what he is doing is sort of ensuring a lot of goodwill in those countries for future candidacies when he runs as president, especially because FIFA was not very forensic in terms of following how that money is spent. But there was also, for a very, very long time, the vague stench of corruption around him. At every major turn in Blatter's career, there have been suspicions and very loud whispers that there were brown paper envelopes full of cash, that there were duffel bags full of cash. Any receptacle you'd like full of cash, there were rumors that they were being circulated. Well, FIFA's history with boats, as we know.

They had stopped using boats by stuff. Yeah, right then they're using airplanes. They could afford PJs by then. Well, tell me the story of how that vague stench actually, turned into, I don't know what you call it, real evidence. Yeah, I mean, I just, I wonder if we should, I wonder if we should talk a bit, though, about the 1998 thing. That is really what sets Sep up as like.

Yes. So, 1998 is the year that SEPLatter, who has now served as FIFA Secretary General, which is an incredibly powerful and hands-on post within the organization, runs for president. And the moment the votes are counted, there are a. rumors that this was held in Paris that the night before in the hotel, brown envelopes were being passed out with $50,000 in cash to buy votes. This was never substantiated, and Blatter always denied any sort of wrongdoing here, but the

whispers were very loud. And from that moment on, when he wins that election in a landslide, the idea that cash is being paid under the table for everything from securing market. marketing deals, securing TV rights that people are getting sweetheart arrangements for funneling certain bits of the empire towards them is never very far away. This came up two years in a bladder's presidency when countries were bidding for the right to host the 2006 World Cup. The vote for the 2006 tournament, right, Josh, is when there are suggestions that SEP has tried

to rig the vote so that it goes to South Africa. Germany actually wins that tournament. And to announce you the winner. And the winner is Dutchland. And FIFA responds by introducing this idea of World Cup rotation. The idea of continental rotation was that the World Cup would be hosted on a different continent each time, as in Asia gets to host it one year, followed by Europe, then North America, and so on. And by doing this, SEP is hoping to pave the way for South Africa to get the tournament, because the US had hosted in 1994

and Asia had hosted in 2002 and Europe had hosted in 98 and 2006. So it's seen as Africa's turn and Africa gets that tournament. And here's the official welcome. It's Africa's first World Cup and it's a host South Africa. But before the dust had even settled,

Blatter and FIFA were under scrutiny again for another change of protocol around the allocation of hosting rights for the World Cup. This seemingly innocuous change of protocol would set in motion a series of events that would ultimately bring down more than a dozen soccer executives and spell the end of Blatter's time as president. That's next.

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Now, let's get back to soccer. After the 2006 World Cup in South Africa, FIFA announced a change in protocol. For the first time ever, It was going to announce the host countries for two World Cups, the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, at the same meeting. So what happens is in Zurich, in December in 2010, the entire FIFA world descends on the FIFA headquarters in Zurich to award two World Cups. And everyone is bidding. This is the most competitive World Cup bidding process that there has ever been. All the sort of like biggest soccer nations are trying to bid to host it.

There's England are bidding, Spain are bidding. the Netherlands was bidding, Russia was bidding. The thought was that the first one was sure to go to Europe, and the second one would go outside of Europe. And the US was bidding. US was strongly favoured to get the 22 World Cup. Australia bid on that one as well. And there was a sort of quixotic and sort of rather easily dismissed bid from Qatar,

which everyone thought was a sort of rank outsider and had no chance. Why? Why was Qatar such an outsider? Because the proposal was to host a World Cup in the summer in a desert country with no football infrastructure or history of playing the game. Hot, no stadiums. Yeah. Hot, no stadiums. A country that had never been to the World Cup before. No football history, no soccer history to speak of.

I had like wild ideas about air conditioning the stadiums. And it was just seen as completely fanciful, which is why it was sort of dismissed as a contender. But in the months beforehand, There had been a sort of drumbeat of stories about how Qatar was trying to buy the World Cup. And what they had done is they had secured a large number of soccer stars to endorse their bid and say, this sounds crazy, but it's actually perfectly reasonable to host a World Cup in the desert in the summer. Brazil and did Sudan, the French star did one. In having, today, the candidature of Qatar, it means that the foot appertain to all the world.

England football star David Beckham did one too. I think everyone knows how much I love food, and the food culture is very exciting in Qatar. I'm going to meet, Chef Noor. All these guys were coming out and throwing their weight behind Qatar. And, I mean, the number we heard that they were throwing around to buy these endorsements from some of the biggest names in soccer was roughly $10 million.

Each per player? Yes. Wow. But even after all that, it was still not considered a serious contender. I think FIFA puts together a review of the various World Cup bids that have come in, the sort of technical reports they're called on the World Cup bids. And even FIFA's own technical report had dismissed Qatar as like, I think, potentially dangerous place to host the World Cup. For player health, it would be too hot and that it would not be a reasonable place to host the World Cup.

Josh and John's reporting at the time showed that Spain was the favorite to host the 2018 World Cup, and the U.S. was the frontrunner for 2022. Shall I recall the candidates? When Seppes gets up to the sort of lectern to announce the decision, he is about... You're there. I'm there, watching this, right? Watching this, and he proceeds to deliver

the most sort of stunning announcement in global soccer history when he announced that the 2018 World Cup will go to Russia and the 22 World Cup will go to Qatar. The winner to organize the 222 FIFA World Cup is Qatar. I mean, what was everyone's reaction?

Like, wow, Qatar pulled it off or? No, it was fast, corrupt, crooked, how can this travesty be allowed to stand? The announcement that Qatar would get the World Cup was genuinely sort of ground-shaking decision in soccer. And the calls to sort of overturn that decision or to, you know, uncover the corruption that must have led to it in the eyes of so many soccer fans, you know, began immediately. One question keeps coming up. How did a country of 3 million people, with summer temperatures above 45 degrees, where homosexuality is illegal, get the tournament?

because these events sportive to give to the state authoritarian or semi-authoritar, who are tend to utilize the event. Because for reasons that it turns out, FIFA were fully aware of, Qatar was a fundamentally unsound choice for a summer soccer tournament. Kata has never qualified for a World Cup,

let alone hosted one. In a statement, the government of Qatar said that every host of a mega event faces criticism. Qatar said that it followed regulations during the bidding process, and that it won because it won, because it had the best bid,

and that it was time for the Arab world to host its first FIFA World Cup. The country also said it was exonerated by various investigations and reviews into the 2018 and 2022 bidding process. Did it change at all how you guys thought about FIFA or covered FIFA? Yeah, it did, because I think it was such a sort of momentous thing that, as we said, there had been whispers about corruption, there had been a sort of, you know, stench of corruption around FIFA for years. but this was the sort of first time where it was really hard to fathom how this had happened without something sort of going awry or without,

it just defied all logic that FIFA would come to this decision without something sort of nefarious going on. Was something nefarious going on? FIFA's Ethics Committee would later launch an inquiry into the 2018 and 2022 votes, but it did not lead to a redo of the vote for those bids. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice had started a process, probe. And that investigation was gathering momentum. That's probably the biggest ever U.S. contribution to global soccer and to the World Cup.

U.S. prosecutors started poking around what was going on with this World Cup bid and what was going on with FIFA generally. And that would soon turn into very bad news for SEPBLA. How is it that the DOJ even has jurisdiction to investigate FIFA at all? So the DOJ began to look at two things that FIFA's business. happened to do that made it eligible for such close scrutiny. One was it did a lot of its business in dollars, which gives the DOJ very, very long reach and plenty of latitude to do, to poke its nose wherever it likes.

And two, because so much of this corruption was located in the space of TV rights, particularly with South America, that brought in every South American TV executive's favorite South American country, Miami. technically part of the country of Florida. Technically part of the country of Florida. But what happened is that everyone had bank accounts in Miami and New York as well. Everyone was having these meetings.

All of these deals were being done with U.S.-based middlemen. And so that gave the DOJ exactly what he needed to look into FIFA as a potentially corrupt organization, an organization that was not abiding by U.S. business practices. that wasn't doing open tenders or anything like that for TV rights. And there were easy payments to trace wherever they look. How did the DOJ know all of this? Well, they had a man on the inside. Chuck Blazer.

He was the U.S. soccer representative to FIFA. Chuck was a man of interesting taste. An odd character. Yes. Looks like Santa Claus. Kept an apartment in Trump Tower. Yep. Two apartments.

There was a second one. The second one was for his cats. I'm sorry, what? Yep. Chuck was a great lover of animals. I love cats so much that they can't live with me. They need to get their own apartment? I think it's not a statement on how much he loves them, but how many he had.

He also could be seen around Manhattan with a parrot on his shoulder. And he used to feed the parrot chicken, which seems quite perverse to me. You weren't kidding when you said character. Yeah. Okay. So what was Chuck Blazers deal? Chuck Blazer had another problem that didn't involve kitty litter or chicken for his parrot. He had a big problem with the taxman.

He was on the hook for about $10 million to the IRS. Wow. But instead of prosecuting him, the DOJ did the classic prosecutor move, which is flip him, and try to use Chuck to get to this larger nebulous and quite otherwise difficult to penetrate question of FIFA corruption. Right. And they were looking at sort of, they were looking at the awarding of the World Cups to Russia and Qatar, but they were also looking at the awarding of sort of marketing and merchandising rights that had happened in America and the meetings that happened in America for those things to take place, right? Yes. And broadcast rights throughout South America and Latin America.

So sort of how all of those things were awarded? Like, were they awarded through kickbacks and bribes? Exactly. Exactly. And the answer was invariably, yes. That is exactly how they were awarded. Yes. What they're trying to get to is. is understanding this network of FIFA payments that had otherwise been quite obscure and run as a good old boys system. So what did Chuck Blazer or his parent tell the Justice Department?

Actually, it was the third thing, which was Chuck Blazers keychain, which he had a secret recording device in, planted by the feds. You're kidding. He used to go to meetings with FIFA executives, and as he'd enter the room, the same way we've put our phones on the table, toss his keys on the table,

and record everything that was said in these quite candid meetings where everyone behaved with quite mind-blowing impunity. I mean, the recordings were quite damning because they all involve various sweetheart deals for marketing rights, for broadcast rights, and actually naming people who were receiving various payments to facilitate these. The evidence that they got from Chuck Blazer really sort of threw open the case And that culminates in May 2015 with a dawn raid on the Bar-a-Lock Hotel, this five-star Tony establishment right on the lake in Zurich, that had always been exactly where FIFA executive stayed when they're in town.

Long before these raids, I used to hang out at the Bar-Lock to meet FIFA executives. And I would sit there with like an $8 coffee on the table in the lobby and watch as each of them would roll in and out of here and come in. back with massive bags from every beautiful shop on the Bonhoff Strasser. And this is how they were spending all of their important meetings for discussing the growth of the game and FIFA development. And so, were you, one of you, was there when this raid took place? That morning in May 2015. You got your $8 coffee. I mean, I'm arriving as people are being walked out by Swiss police, who have been empowered by the FBI and the DOJ, to carry out these warrants.

arrest these people on various charges of wire fraud, various corruption charges, and what emerges later in and grabs all the headlines is they're charged with RICO. That's racketeer-influenced and corrupt organizations. It was a law created to go after the mob. All right, good morning, everyone. Thank you all for being here today. Here's then Attorney General Loretta Lynch reading out the indictments. The 47-count indictment against these individuals includes charge.

of racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracies spanning two decades. It was truly one of the most remarkable days in the history of the organization, and one of the most remarkable days I've ever had in journalism. Fourteen people were indicted that day. Some took guilty pleas, and others were convicted at trial. Setbladder issued a statement at the time, which said, we understand the disappointment that many have expressed, and I know the events today will impact the way in which many people view us.

I think for a lot of people, it was among vindication because, like you said, the stench of shadiness and corruption had been around FIFA for so long. And yet, they seemed completely impervious to any sort of punishment or being called to account. And so I think that for a lot of people, it was, yeah, it really was, you know, a sort of decade of vindication delivered upon them. I often think back to a joke I heard that afternoon from the former FIFA head of, communications who had quite a you know casual view of the whole thing and the joke went like this the president of FIFA the secretary general and the head of communications are in a car who's driving the police there you go that's the head of communications talk about spin yeah that's amazing so what did this mean for sepladder that opened a can of worms where subsequent scandals began to

emerge and every piece of dirty laundry suddenly was out in the open. I mean, at this point it's clear that SEP has to go. I mean, you know, it's remarkable for a guy who was elected five times, whatever it was

as FIFA president, but the whole sort of Jenga Tower is collapsing at this point and it's clear that he's going to go. Yeah, the organization is on fire effectively and the pressure is finally mounted and at that point he steps down. And you had the first

interview with SEP Ladder after he stepped down, right, Josh? From the moment of the arrest, I had been trying to pursue an interview with him. And finally, after he steps down that December, the contact I'd been working through calls me one evening and says, the president will see you tomorrow morning. And so the next morning, I put on a tie-in jacket and went up to this hotel in the hills above Zurich where Blatter was ready to hold court. And he was the only person in this lobby, a very different hotel lobby from the Barlack. And we met, we spoke in French for two hours.

And he was unbelievably charming, not even a little bit contrite. And he argued that this was all a big conspiracy, that the U.S. was upset about not winning the hosting rights, had sick the DOJ on FIFA, and that he would ultimately be cleared by history. I see. So the DOJ, he was blaming on the U.S. being angry about not getting the bid. Exactly.

And as always, a few bad apples within the organization. But that his real takeaway was, why are they looking at us? They have no business here. In a statement, a FIFA spokesperson said the 2015 corruption scandal changed FIFA from a toxic organization to a respected and trusted sports governing body. Did you think at the end of 2015 when SEPLADder stepped down that it would be a turning point for FIFA? I mean, it was growing a lot, but there was also all these allegations and in some cases proven allegations of corruption so rolling around the organization. Did you see his stepping down as a possible turning point.

Yes, absolutely, because every single candidate who was vying to replace him said that this would be a turning point and that FIFA would be completely different under a new president. We will restore the image of FIFA and the respect of FIFA and everyone in the world will applaud us and will applaud all of you for what we'll do in FIFA in the future. So was FIFA at a turning point?

That's next time. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. This episode is produced by Piers Singing, with help from Evelyn Fajardo Alvarez and Tatiana Zemise. It was edited by Pia Gedkari. I'm Ryan Knitzen. Special thanks to Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Catherine Brewer, and Sarah Platt.

Fact-checking by Nicole Posulka. Mixing by Griffin Tanner. Our theme music is by So Wiley and remixed by Peter Leonard and Griffin Tanner. Additional music in this episode by Griffin Tanner and Blue Dot Sessions. Our second episode on the World Cup will air next Sunday. We'll be back tomorrow with a regular show.

Thanks for listening. See you then.