Corruption in Soccer and the Difficulty of Proving it

Table of contents

Abstract

Corruption in soccer

Theoretical Background

The world cup corruption affair in Qatar

Corruption in European Leagues and the MLS

Discussion and Conclusion

References

Abstract

The following paper is concerned with the problem of corruption in soccer and the difficulty

to prove that corruption happened in some cases. For this the first part defines corruption and gives some examples from the past. This is important to understand the meaning of corruption in this paper and to give some background information about it.

The main part of the paper focuses on the suspicion of corruption for the Soccer World Cups in Qatar 2022. Many people see the decision for those two countries critical and so an analysis of the process should help to find out if corruption took place by choosing the country.

The third part of the paper is a comparism between the corruption in European soccer leagues and the MLS.

The result of the analysis for the World Cups shows that it is impossible to prove that corruption took place but there are many facts that could prove that corruption took place but nobody is really investigating this case. Also the comparism shows that corruption does more often happen in European leagues than in the MLS.

Corruption in soccer

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association, short FIFA, continues to lose credibility, but no way to power. After all, who should replace the organization, making the monopoly in dispute, to rule over the world events of soccer (Teuffel, 2014)? This statement was made in 2014 and concerns the difficulty about the corruption at the granting Soccer World Cup in 2022. This is one of the most popular cases when people talk about corruption in sports because the World Cup is the biggest sports event worldwide and million of people are watching those events. This case is the most popular one but there are many other corruption cases related to soccer. But what exactly is corruption?

Corruption is a “dishonest behavior by those in positions of power, such as managers or government officials. It can include giving or accepting bribes or inappropriate gifts, double dealing, under-the-table transactions, manipulating elections, diverting funds, laundering money and defrauding investors (Investopedia, n.d.).” In soccer the most cases of corruption are related to the games, e.g. that players showing a bad performance or make their team loose because they have deals with other people who are betting a lot of money on the game saying that the players team is loosing. The deal is that the people who are betting sharing the money with the players.

But there are other areas of corruption related to soccer, for example at the construction of the world cup stadia in Brazil. The concern Bilfinger is accused that they paid around 22 million euro bride money to get the task for constructing the stadia in Brazil (Zeit online, 2015). And then there is the big case about the giving-away from the world cup. This case is analysed more detailed later in the paper because it is a current topic and many different parties are included in this corruption case.

This three examples shows that corruption is a big problem in the field of soccer and in the paper there will be discussed the punishments and impacts about corruption. Also, the question how corruption influences the reputation of soccer should be answered.

Theoretical Background

Soccer is the most popular sport worldwide. In the professional leagues the clubs pay million of dollars for their player salaries. The rules and policies for the leagues are controlled by the association in the country (e.g. in Germany from the German soccer association). Responsible for the international events in Europe like the champions league is the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and for worldwide events like the world cup the FIFA.

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