U.S. Economist Says FIFA Needs Internal Reform

07/06/2015 - 09h36

American economist Andrew Zimbalist, of the Smith College of Massachusetts, is a major critic of the exaggerations seen during major sports events and, consequently, the World Cups to take place in Russia in 2018 and in Qatar in 2022.

He believes, however, that trying to take the World Cup from those countries at the current moment of institutional crisis faced by Fifa, the world's governing body of soccer, would misplace the focus on the reforms Fifa must undergo to recover its credibility.

"I would like the World Cup to be taken from Qatar and Russia, but I wouldn't recommend that Fifa do it. There are many legal problems regarding organization. I would rather see Fifa concentrated on a process of internal reform," Zimbalist told Folha in an interview.

"If it were easy to change the host country like a snap of the fingers, I would hold the 2018 World Cup in England and the 2022 event in the U.S.A., but that would create too much confusion," he says.

Zimbalist is the author of "Circus Maximus", published at the beginning of 2015 in the U.SA. and well reviewed in the American press. In the book he says that hosting major sports events such as the Olympic Games and the World Cup, is unjustified from the financial point of view.

The American economist is in favor of a series of changes that could be made in Fifa to make it more democratic and increase the mechanisms of control over its directors.

"The election for the president of Fifa must be done through a system that takes into account the proportion of players from each country," he says.

Today, each federation member of Fifa is entitled to one vote, which makes the weight of each country's vote the same - in that case, the votes of countries with greater importance in the world of soccer such as Brazil, Germany and England have the same importance of that of countries with little or no relevance, such as Bhutan, Tonga and the Cayman Islands.

"Giving a country with 40,000 inhabitants, like an island, a vote and the same to continental countries, such as the U.S. and Brazil, doesn't make sense," he says.

Zimbalist believes that Joseph Blatter's resignation of the presidency of Fifa was a major step toward the reforms that will occur in Fifa.

Translated by THOMAS MUELLO

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