10 things we learned about FIFA from Unit­ed Passions

On Tues­day 27 May, 2015, sev­en senior FIFA offi­cials were arrest­ed on charges of rack­e­teer­ing, fraud and mon­ey laun­der­ing stretch­ing back 24 years. For any­one who has even a cur­so­ry knowl­edge of football’s gov­ern­ing body and its cud­dly despot, Sepp Blat­ter, these seri­ous accu­sa­tions will have come as no sur­prise. But Blat­ter isn’t the unscrupu­lous Swiss bas­tard every­one out­side of FIFA is por­tray­ing him to be.

Not accord­ing to Frédéric Auburtin’s eye-open­ing pro­pa­gan­da his­tor­i­cal dra­ma Unit­ed Pas­sions, at least, which is described via its offi­cial syn­op­sis as: ​‘The saga of the World Cup and the three whol­ly hon­est and deeply eth­i­cal men who cre­at­ed it.’ The film was released in a scat­ter­ing of Euro­pean ter­ri­to­ries in 2014, and a rudi­men­ta­ry inter­net search leads to a tube chan­nel host­ing it in its glo­ri­ous, mul­ti-lay­ered entire­ty. Here are 10 things we learned from watch­ing it…

In 1904, back when Europe’s lead­ing nation­al foot­ball asso­ci­a­tions regard­ed stag­ing an inter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment as an absurd fol­ly, one man dared to dream of cre­at­ing a glob­al foot­balling com­mu­ni­ty built on the prin­ci­ples of fair play, integri­ty and tol­er­ance. That man was Cor­nelis Anton Wil­helm Hirschman (played here by Fish­er Stevens), a Dutch banker whose noble vision gave birth to the Fédéra­tion Inter­na­tionale de Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tion. To most peo­ple foot­ball was seen as just a bit of fun – to Hirschman it was so much more.

Hard to believe, but asso­ci­a­tion foot­ball wasn’t always the egal­i­tar­i­an utopia we know and love today. It was once a white man’s game played by gen­tle­men and gov­erned by ram­pant big­ots who con­sid­ered the minu­ti­ae of their fair sport as being far beyond the com­pre­hen­sion of those devel­op­ing nations unac­quaint­ed with the moder­ni­ties of West­ern civil­i­sa­tion. As one char­ac­ter puts it, ​“the stu­pid and undis­ci­plined Zulus” would nev­er be able to get their heads around the off­side rule. Enter Jules Rimet (Gérard Depar­dieu), FIFA’s third pres­i­dent and the man pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing the World Cup (or Copa del Mun­do as it was known back then). Thanks to Rimet, prej­u­dice and xeno­pho­bia with­in foot­ball were erad­i­cat­ed vir­tu­al­ly overnight. Though of course, every­one still hates the English.

They say mon­ey makes the World Cup go round, but con­trary to pop­u­lar belief the des­ti­na­tion of the tour­na­ment has nev­er been decid­ed through any­thing oth­er than a robust demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ing sys­tem. The inau­gur­al 1930 cham­pi­onships, for instance, may have been pro­posed by Uruguayan diplo­mat Enrique Buero (Anto­nio de la Torre) – who in one scene ensures Rimet that ​“unlim­it­ed funds” will be made avail­able should his beloved Uruguay become the first host nation – but the fact that the final end­ed up being played in front of 100,000 spec­ta­tors in the brand spank­ing new Esta­dio Cen­te­nario sta­di­um in Mon­te­v­ideo was just a hap­py coincidence.

Two years pri­or to host­ing the 1978 World Cup, Argenti­na suf­fered a mil­i­tary coup, prompt­ing sev­er­al min­is­ters and social com­men­ta­tors to call for a boy­cott of the tour­na­ment. Not one to bow to exter­nal pres­sure, then FIFA Pres­i­dent Joao Have­lange (Sam Neill) points out that Pelé has done more for world peace than any UN res­o­lu­tion, before task­ing a dynam­ic young tech­ni­cal direc­tor by the name of Joseph Blat­ter (Tim Roth) with find­ing a solu­tion to appease all par­ties. What the peo­ple need, he rea­sons, is an icon­ic, uni­fy­ing motif they can iden­ti­fy with. A spher­i­cal sym­bol of hope. What they need is to see their heroes take to the field, specif­i­cal­ly with an adi­das Tan­go at their feet. Argenti­na went on to defeat the Nether­lands 3 – 1 in the final, with Mario Kem­pes stroking home in extra time to send the entire coun­try into a state of tick­er tape eupho­ria that would alle­vi­ate their polit­i­cal con­cerns for good.

Pol­i­tics and sport are insep­a­ra­ble. Sepp Blat­ter knows this, which is why he’s long been out­spo­ken on such non-foot­balling mat­ters as apartheid and racial dis­crim­i­na­tion. He may be intro­duced here as FIFA’s 12^th man, described by Have­lange as some­one who is ​“appar­ent­ly good at find­ing mon­ey,” but he quick­ly estab­lish­es him­self as the organisation’s unerr­ing moral com­pass and cru­sad­ing spokesman on an array of com­plex social issues.

In the mid-1970s, FIFA was in finan­cial dis­ar­ray and fac­ing an uncer­tain future until Blat­ter bailed the organ­i­sa­tion out by writ­ing a cheque for 2,000 Swiss Francs, ensur­ing every­one was paid on time. Quite what state foot­ball would be in with­out his time­ly inter­ven­tion hard­ly bears think­ing about.

The world’s foot­ball press has been gun­ning for Blat­ter ever since he rose through the ranks to become Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary in 1981. In one scene, sev­er­al so-called pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists have the temer­i­ty to hijack a per­fect­ly good-natured press con­fer­ence in a cal­cu­lat­ed attempt to put Blat­ter on tri­al. Nat­u­ral­ly he fends off these unfound­ed alle­ga­tions in a calm and dig­ni­fied man­ner, inform­ing British reporter Edgar Will­cox (Jason Bar­ry) that he will stand up to any bad apples with­in FIFA.

Through­out the 1980s, while Maradona was work­ing his mag­ic on the pitch, Blat­ter was work­ing his off it – inspect­ing sta­dia, sign­ing lucra­tive con­tracts with cor­po­rate spon­sors and meet­ing with for­eign dig­ni­taries on his count­less diplo­mat­ic mis­sions. It’s thanks to his tire­less efforts that foot­ball con­tin­ues to thrive on a glob­al scale. Lest we for­get FIFA has sur­vived two world wars and an unprece­dent­ed eco­nom­ic cri­sis, so maybe it’s time we all showed Blat­ter and co a bit more respect, yeah?

There was a time when FIFA’s involve­ment in African foot­ball didn’t extend beyond pro­vid­ing a few bits of kit here and there. That all changed thanks to Uncle Sepp, who went out of his way to accom­mo­date African nations com­pet­ing at major tour­na­ments and lat­er laid the ground­work for the huge­ly suc­cess­ful 2010 World Cup in South Africa by win­ning the hearts and minds of the vot­ing CaF (Con­fed­er­a­tion of African Foot­ball) mem­bers, not to men­tion the African people.

Yes, he’s on record as say­ing female foot­ballers should wear ​“tighter shorts” if they want to attract more view­ers, but no one has done more to pro­mote women’s foot­ball than Sepp Blat­ter. No. One.