FIFA’s World Cup Follies
One of the ironies of modern football is that national teams whip up passions in a kind of carnivalesque performance of patriotic partisanship. But the players are mostly colleagues in club teams, speak several languages, and are often close friends off the field, making them unsuitable avatars for this type of chauvinism.
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NEW YORK – Count on the International Federation of Association Football, better known as FIFA, to come up with a fatuous slogan for the World Cup in Qatar: “Football Unites the World.” An official promotional video has Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Brazil’s Neymar mouthing the words in Spanish and Portuguese, respectively. Is it true? Does football really unite the world?