December 6th 2025

Pollute the beautiful game

Pollute the beautiful game

FIFA is corrupt to the bone.

A game that is loved on the streets of the favelas of Rio, in the dry dirt of the Moroccan desert, and in the ruins of Palestine, is now captured by politics that know only greed and cruelty.

If we are to look at the pop culture representation of capture by corruption, we might look to the beautiful game.

The people who suffer under the weight of Empire, kleptocracy and colonisation, those who have found daily solace in the game, watch in horror as a man who actively incites violence, abuse and racism against them, is awarded a manufactured prize under the banner of ‘peace.’ The man who sanctions genocide, bombs people in boats and removes aid to millions, resulting in an estimated 600,000 deaths. A rapist, felon and probable pedophile.

Peace!

For whom, we might ask? These people and not those people, as if peace only ever applies to some.

The act itself says more about FIFA than it does about the recipient, for we know who he is, a craven manbaby who uses blackmail as his weapon of choice.

Yet when FIFA bends the knee, already mired in corruption upon corruption, we know the endgame is near.

Decimate land, throw people less than subsistent scraps, hold the poor and middle class to some legal standard that is never applied to the elite, break people under the weight of the cost of health and child care and education.

But pollute the beautiful game?

When we lose art, play, and music under the weight of corruption, the fracture of fractures is not far off.

It is the game played on dirt and dusty fields in bare feet that holds the Pattern Integrity of the game. The sanctimonious sycophants who run FIFA forget from whence it comes.

Photo Taken October 11th 2025, Article published December 6th 2025

​