Joao and the Amazing Multicolored Postcolonial DreamVote

You gotta know when to hold em, fold em, walk away, and when to run class. So put your chips all in, hide that fifth ace, and keep the get-away-car running, because it’s time again for Footie 101.

First, let me offer my full and genuine congratulations to Russia (2018) and Qatar (2022) – the nation’s

which have won the honor of hosting the FIFA World Cup – in my mind, the world’s most spectacular socio-political tribal event. No matter what one believes, you can’t accept the terms of the selection process and then whine about them after losing.

I may not be in Russia in 2018, or Qatar in 2022, but I raise my glass to them both and wish them all the best. Well played sirs… well played.

I liken the WC selection process to US presidential elections, which have lacked a certain veracity and transparency throughout American history. The presidential winner invariably is whoever gets away with the dirtiest trick; and both major US political parties willingly and repeatedly play by those rules.

Think George W. was the first to strong-arm an election in 2000? Then you need to read how JFK raised the dead in Chicago and unleashed the mob on poor W. Virginia union workers to get into the White House in 1960. And these tactics go all the way back to the Founding Fathers.

Now I want it clear for all to read; The FP was deeply disturbed last week when Qatar was selected. This had as much to do with my own future prospects as my own belief that Qatar was not the best place to host the tournament; but “best” by my own selfish and colonial perspective.

You see class; the world is not the Western-controlled empire most of us grew up in. In fact, the postcolonial / post Cold War global power shift to Asia, Russia and the Middle East has already taken place – we just continue to live the deluded lives of the imperialist fixated on a vanishing Super Power mirage. It’s a subject I often engage thoughtful friends with, and even taught when I was actually a university professor.

The wealth created and stockpiled by Western Europe and the United States already resides in Asia and the Middle East – with Russia a late arrival to the party. This took place over the past two generations in which oil and technology became the commodities that turned the wheels of the global industrial and informational economies. You see our oil addiction – to run the automobiles, aircraft and ships that facilitate the global economy – has always been predominantly serviced by the opulent fuel reserves in the Middle East and former Soviet Union.

Further, the massive military spending to “win” the Cold War and negotiate its treacherous weapons-of-mass-destruction littered aftermath needed to be financed by someone. Not sure who loaned all that loot to build-up a conventional US military that now fights unconventional wars?

I often say that if China showed up in the States tomorrow and asked for its money back, the best the US could do is offer California as a modest down payment. Cali, by the way, is the wealthiest state in the country and boasts a larger Gross Domestic Product than all but eight nations of the world.

Now bring all that politics back to sport. It’s a documented, but often overlooked, fact that international sport organizations (such as FIFA) act on social and human issues long before conventional international organizations (such as United Nations) even recognize them. Some might say sport groups actually lead the UN and NATO.

For example, it was international table tennis in 1956, the IOC in 1964, international track and field in 1966, and International cricket in 1970 that first boycotted South Africa’s brutal system of racial segregation called Apartheid. The UN followed in (drum roll please)…. 1985.


These early sport boycotts, many argue, were reflections of the growing deconstruction of colonized lands (made up largely of “non-whites”) and the international empowerment of those “non-whites” in largely “white-led” international organizations. During the colonial period Europe (generally considered “white”) conquered lands in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Middle East. The wealth of these lands filled the coffers of successive empires in Portugal (1400s-1700s), Spain (1500s-1899), France (1500s-1958), the Netherlands (1500s-1975), and England (late 1400s-1999).

The Western world we live in today was funded by the wealth earned (some say stolen) by conquering and exploiting those lands. But by the post WWII 1950s, many of these nations demanded the freedom the Allies (including the colonies) had fought the Axis to maintain. Consequently, a succession of African, Asian, Middle Eastern and Latin American nations fought for and gained their independence. Often first leading the call internationally were international sport organizations.

With that newfound independence came representation in the international community; and while most multinational groups incorporated these “non-white” nations into their democratically-run predominantly "white"organizations, the most powerful – like the UN, NATO, the IOC and FIFA – devised executive structures that kept ultimate control in the hands of the former colonizers.

This was also largely true in the international sport community until 1974 when cagey (and conventionally “white”) Brazilian Joao Havelange wrestled control of FIFA out of the hands of its English head at the time Sir Stanley Rous. Though Joao Sidious is considered proxy European, his palace coup meant that a continent of people mixed mostly with Native, European and African blood would run FIFA from then on. Joao’s protégé and successor – current FIFA King Sepp Blatter (though Swiss) – inherited power and maintains it through a coalition of postcolonial nations in the FIFA executive committee.

The King came to power (with his mentor’s help) by wooing the postcolonial votes; maintained that power (after an early corruption scandal) by promising and delivering a world cup to postcolonial Africa; and currently reigns supreme by adjusting his coalition to feature fuel-rich former European colony Qatar and fuel-rich post-Soviet Russia.

It’s worth noting that while Western Europe struggled with postcolonialization, the USSR was coming unraveled. It took a generation to stabilize, but the Russians who de-nationalized latent post-Soviet industry into staggering wealth (like the baby seal-soul-sucking Roman Abramovich seen celebrating his purchase at FIFA House) now sit financially firm at the global powerbroker table once occupied only by Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Britain and the US.

By the way, my money is on China (the benevolent bank of the West) to host the World Cup in 2030.

So in essence, what we saw happen at FIFA House last week was the first bold declaration by the postcolonial / post Cold War world that the West don’t run things anymore. Yes, it was done in sport, but remember, sport often drives the first nail into the house later claimed by the conventional international community.

Perhaps I'll address the African and Latin America lag, and the social construction that is "race" in a later blog.

As for the US bid, we brought a knife to a gun fight; simple as that. And that much-maligned Aussie bid? Their two-vote haul should be a learning experience to divine which way the global wind is blowing and adjust their sails. Oz football took an initial step towards this (if unwittingly) in 2006 when it left the powerless Oceana Federation and joined the Asian Football Confederation.

And all that bellyaching coming from England – the bidding nation that’s sole vote was cast from its own executive committee member – I have to say it’s a classic case of the chickens coming home to roost. If the sun hadn’t already set on the British Empire, it just did.

And now, your postcolonial/Cold War World Cup footie anecdote:

Former England international striker Gary Lineker has admitting relieving his bowels during a 1990 World Cup match with Ireland. Said Lineker: "You can see me rubbing the ground like a dog. It’s filmed ... but unless you know (what was happening) you wouldn’t know.”

Now YOU know. 

CLASS DISMISSED