Indictments against FIFA spark War on Soccer – Chicago Tribune

After decades of appeasement and countless futile attempts to reach an understanding, America finally lashed out at its greatest enemy: soccer.

The U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a 47-count indictment Wednesday morning charging 14 international soccer figures — including some members of FIFA, the sport’s governing body — with “racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies, among other offenses, in connection with the defendants’ participation in a 24-year scheme to enrich themselves.”

For those of you keeping score, that’s America 47, Soccer 0. It sounds refreshingly like a real American score, perhaps the result of a football game — American football, that is — in which a mighty team mercilessly and American-ishly squashes its opponent.

It sounds like revenge for all those miserable 0-0 ties parents have had to sit through on Saturday afternoons while wondering where they went wrong in raising a child who — gulp — likes soccer.

While it is the world’s most popular sport, soccer has always trailed others sports in America, usually ranking below football, baseball, basketball, hockey and even auto racing. (That’s right. Most Americans would rather watch cars drive around in circles than watch soccer.)

In a Harris Poll released earlier this year that asked people to identify their favorite sport, soccer was tied at 6 percent with basketball and hockey, but that was an aberration brought on by Americans feeling pressured to pretend they cared about the 2014 World Cup. In other years, soccer has held firm at around 2 percent, tied with swimming, track and field, and “not sure.”

In the garden of U.S. sports, soccer has long been an invasive weed, one that looks enough like a plant that you can’t decide whether to pull it or just leave it alone. With Wednesday’s indictments, it appears America reached into the garage for the weed whacker.

This approach fits with the American mantra: If you can’t beat ’em (and in soccer we most certainly can’t), indict ’em.

A statement released by the Justice Department quotes Attorney General Loretta Lynch saying: “The indictment alleges corruption that is rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted both abroad and here in the United States. It spans at least two generations of soccer officials who, as alleged, have abused their positions of trust to acquire millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks. And it has profoundly harmed a multitude of victims, from the youth leagues and developing countries that should benefit from the revenue generated by the commercial rights these organizations hold, to the fans at home and throughout the world whose support for the game makes those rights valuable.”

The United States appears to have also enlisted the help of normally neutral Switzerland in this War on Soccer. Hours after arrests began in the U.S. case, Swiss prosecutors announced they are investigating possible corruption behind FIFA’s decision to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, respectively.

Clearly the goal here is to rid the world of soccer and replace it with more uniquely American sports like football, beer pong or shooting guns at things.

As Kelly Currie, acting U.S. attorney of the Eastern District of New York, said in the Justice Department’s statement: “Today’s announcement should send a message that enough is enough.”

Indeed. Enough of this sport that has for so long flummoxed Americans and made them feel inferior to people who have intriguing accents and use terms like “toe punch” and “pitch” and “sweeper.”

Enough of letting foreigners tell us we can’t use our hands or violently tackle defenseless people.

FIFA will likely recognize the only way to get out from under these indictments and make peace with the Ameri-Swiss Soccer Evisceration Task Force is to alter the game so it appeals to an American audience. These are the primary requirements:

1) Stop calling it football. We don’t care if you came up with that word first, it describes our favorite game and you need to knock it off.

2) Rebrand the sport as “Diesel-Powered Gun Ball, sponsored by Bud Light.” Players will take the field — don’t you dare call it a pitch! — riding two-wheeled, Segway-like vehicles that awesomely belch black exhaust. Each player will be armed with an automatic weapon. The object is to charge the opposing team’s goal and shoot a midsized mammal that is trapped in the net. Whoever shoots the most midsized mammals wins. Ties are strictly forbidden.

3) Continue the tradition of rioting and general hooliganism, as those behaviors fit fine with American sports culture.

4) Never mention that America got help from Switzerland. That could damage our street cred.

It’s good to see the United States finally defeating the sport that routinely bored us into watching golf, a sport whose name we shall never speak again.

It’s also nice to know that no country will ever beat us at Diesel-Powered Gun Ball, sponsored by Bud Light. That’s a nuanced game only an American can master.

rhuppke@tribpub.com

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