By Frank Deford
Futbol Club Barcelona’s Neymar da Silva Santos pours champagne over Adriano as their team won the final match against River Plate at the FIFA Club World Cup soccer tournament in Yokohama, near Tokyo on Dec. 20, 2015. Shuji Kajiyama/AP hide caption
toggle caption Shuji Kajiyama/AP
Much as we talk about certain financial institutions that may be too big to fail, you can be absolutely certain that the one organization in the whole wide world which truly fits that definition is FIFA, the grubby behemoth that runs soccer. Too many international sports associations are rife with corruption, but the graft exposed at FIFA beggars the imagination.
Americans, of course, have virtually no interest in FIFA, for most of us are athletic aliens, caring not a whit for Earth’s game. Sorry, but I must count myself among those who do not find soccer as entertaining as our own favored sports. I’ve always thought it was perfectly idiotic to call an exercise which you perform with your feet “the beautiful game.”
Click the audio to hear more of what Frank Deford has to say about soccer.
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