Quote · Fin vs History
Hanging Out The Blatter it | The History of The World Cup (Part 4/4)
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Grumpikins Be Grumpikinin
At 32:13 · chapter starts 31:48
France '98 gets positioned as the first truly modern World Cup, with the 32-team expansion requiring corporate money and creating the conditions for the Blatter era. The hosts digress into a discussion about football's golden age — Horatio argues it peaked in 2006, when every squad was stacked with generational talent: Zidane, Ronaldo, Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Ronaldinho, Scholes, Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney — before Pep Guardiola's system football changed the game after 2008. On the pitch, France's victory over Brazil 3-0 is attributed partly to Ronaldo waking up having suffered what Fin believes was a stress-induced seizure. The tournament's political resonance is significant: France's rainbow squad — Vieira, Desailly, Zidane, Henry — playing in a city riven by the banlieue racial tensions that inspired La Haine, winning the World Cup on home turf for the first time.
FIFA's corruption was always there, but it evolved. In the 1930s it was facilitated by fascist governments; by the 1990s it had become nakedly personal — delegates lining their own pockets in a globalised brotherhood of graft. The institution never changed, only the beneficiaries.
Chuck Blazer was a 400-pound FIFA delegate who rented a $6,000/month Trump Tower apartment for his cats, spent a decade not paying taxes, then turned FBI informant to bring down the very organisation he'd helped corrupt. He didn't do it out of principle — just maximum personal gain.
FIFA delegate Chuck Blazer rented a $6,000-a-month apartment in Trump Tower solely for his cats.
