In a development so shockingly predictable it could have been culled from the discarded script of a dystopian reality show, FIFA stands accused of fan safety breaches. Specifically, the accusation is that spectators were forced onto concourses. Forced, I say!
Like cattle being herded into the stockyard, but with fewer hippies protesting and more middle-aged men weeping into their £8 plastic pints. The concourse, that liminal space of sticky floors and dubious hot dogs, has become the new front line in the never-ending war between football's bloated oligarchs and the actual people who pay their wages (i.e.
, the fans, but also, increasingly, the sovereign wealth funds). The details, as they emerge, paint a picture of logistical chaos that would make a Boris Johnson-themed theme park look well-managed. Imagine this: thousands of ticket holders, who have spent approximately the GDP of a small island nation to witness a spectacle that is itself a monument to corporate avarice, are herded into these concrete purgatories.
They stand there, like ghosts from a Dickensian workhouse, watching the match on screens that have the resolution of a potato. The concourses, my dear reader, are not designed for watching football. They are designed for the consumption of overpriced alcohol and for the strategic management of human bodies.
They are the circulatory system of the modern football stadium, but one that has been clogged with the plaque of corporate greed. And now FIFA, that great and noble institution that has given us so much (one remembers the Qatar World Cup with the fondness of a kidney stone), is accused of a 'breach of fan safety'. As if safety was ever a priority in a world where a ticket for a final can cost more than a used car.
The accusation comes from a group of fans who, one presumes, were foolish enough to believe that their presence at a football match meant they should actually see the football. What a quaint, old-fashioned notion. In the modern era, attending a football match is a test of endurance, a pilgrimage where the reward is not the game but the smug satisfaction of having survived.
And let us not forget the drinks. Oh, the drinks. Forced onto concourses, the fans are captive consumers, forced to buy warm lager from sullen teenagers who would rather be anywhere else.
This is the FIFA experience: a monument to the idea that the fan is not a participant but a resource, a walking wallet to be milked for every last penny. The irony is as thick as the air in those concourses. FIFA, the organisation whose motto might as well be 'Fans: Who Needs Them?
', is now being dragged before the court of public opinion for treating fans like inconveniences. But do not hold your breath for change. This is the same organisation that gave us the World Cup in Qatar, where workers died in their hundreds so that air-conditioned stadiums could be built.
Fan safety? That is a laugh. The only safety FIFA is concerned about is the safety of its own vast, unearned fortune.
So as the accusations fly and the lawyers circle their prey, remember this: the concourses are not a mistake. They are a feature. A deliberate design choice to remind you, the fan, that in the grand cathedral of football, you are not the congregation.
You are the coin. And FIFA will always, always choose the coin over the soul.
