The new Netflix documentary “FIFA Uncovered” couldn’t have been released at a better time.
The four-part series came out on Wednesday, just a week and a half before the World Cup in Qatar kicks off. The process by which the Middle East country was awarded the tournament is, of course, a major topic of “FIFA Uncovered,” but the docu-series goes much deeper than that.
The first episode examines the presidency of João Havelange in the 1970s, as the Brazilian turned FIFA into the money-printing entity it would eventually become.
From there, the series goes deep on the rise to power of Sepp Blatter, a tenure that would fall apart after the 2015 FBI raids and indictments of top FIFA officials.
We spoke with “FIFA Uncovered” producer Miles Coleman about the series. This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
PSW: What was the onus behind choosing FIFA as a subject for a documentary?
Coleman: The inspiration for this came from the fact that we, like you, are football fans, so any any football fan basically in living memory will have had an uneasy feeling about FIFA. I think there are very few football fans who have looked at FIFA historically and said, “yeah, these guys are doing everything right.”
And really the catalyst for the series in many ways was the [FBI] raids in 2015. And after that, John [Battsek, producer] and Dan [Gordon, director], were sort of working out the idea to do something that profiles FIFA and it’s really a sort of a “how did we get here” piece.
The idea behind it is if you look at the start of FIFA and the noble aims and the very amateur spirit in which it was founded, how did we get to the point where the FBI is conducting raids across multiple countries in 2015 and arresting FIFA top executives?
PSW: Lots of us will be familiar with some of the corruption that has taken place recently, but this series begins in the 1970s with the presidency of João Havelange and the rise of his right-hand man Sepp Blatter. What did you learn about the Havelange era and how that set the tone for the FIFA that we know today?
Coleman: We were surprised how few people knew the name Havelange, even though he was such a fundamentally important figure in football. But I think the thing that’s really stuck with us and I hope the documentary shows is how cyclical history can be. If we look at the relationship between Blatter and Havelange, we can learn a lot about the direction FIFA’s going in today.
Money in football is not the default. It hasn’t always been thus, football and FIFA in 1974 basically didn’t have two pennies to rub together and now look at it.
The thing we found particularly interesting was the relationship between FIFA and corporate sponsors. This was a relatively new thing and the idea of sponsorship in sport really didn’t exist at any sort of meaningful scale until Havelange, until the Adidas and Coca-Cola relationship with FIFA.
PSW: I want to ask about a key moment in the film, which is the 1998 FIFA presidential election. Blatter is facing Lennart Johansson, who presented himself as an anti-corruption candidate. Blatter’s victory is shown to be a butterfly effect moment where perhaps much of the corruption and grift that followed could have been avoided had he lost to Johansson.
Coleman: I think the thing that I found so astonishing is when you listen to Blatter’s pre-election speech, what he’s basically saying is, “you guys know me, and you know what you’re getting with me.” And it’s a wink and a nudge to the delegates. And then Johansson stands up and says, “I’m for transparency.”
And what blows me away about that election is that Blatter wins it not by stealth, not because you promise one thing and change. The delegates in that room knew what they were voting for in 1998. So I suppose if Johansson had won, football would be in a very different state. It’s hard to imagine, but I think that’s a fair thing to take away.
PSW: Speaking of Blatter, one of the things that stood out is that he is interviewed in the film, along with other major figures like Ricardo Teixeira and Mohammed bin Hammam. How did you get them to agree to be interviewed, and was there anyone you really wanted who turned down your request?
Coleman: You have to remember that someone like Sepp Blatter worked his way up from pretty much nowhere to be the most powerful man in world sport using just the gift of the gab. This was a consummate politician who got to where he was simply by his own nous so for him, when we approached him and said, “would you like to do this documentary?” He absolutely backed himself to manage that situation proficiently. That’s what he built his career on.
That being said, and forgive me if this is a little immodest. Myself and our team, we basically researched this topic for about two to three years before reaching out to anyone, which is like doing a master’s degree in FIFA. So I think when we reached out to people they respected the fact that we’d taken the time to understand the story and respected the fact that we were clued up.
But even I was surprised sometimes by some of the people who agreed to speak. Someone like Mohammed bin Hammam has not spoken to the press, certainly not the foreign press, in about 11 years. Someone like Ricardo Teixeira is essentially wanted by U.S. Justice and here he was doing an interview with us. Why did they do it? I suppose it’s the same thing as Blatter. These are people who are politicians by nature, and they’ve made their money from speaking and not by not speaking.
In terms of people who don’t appear, a couple come to mind. Issa Hayatou, who was the head of African football and the interim [FIFA] president after the arrests. We arranged an interview with him months in advance, we flew out to Cameroon to interview with him, and he canceled 15 minutes before he was meant to show up in the studio. I think it was indicative of the regard in which sometimes football grandees go about their day-to-day business. They do see themselves on a different plane and different rules apply.
PSW: What were some of the most surprising things you learned while making this film?
Coleman: I actually thought a lot of the corruption was more primitive in some ways. I thought it was just backhanders and brown envelopes, and there of course is that in the story, but what surprised me as I became more clued up on it was the power politics involved.
We’re talking about having lunch with the president of France and making deals to buy fighter jets, and then linking that to a World Cup vote allegedly. That for me was shocking, because as a football fan, I cannot emotionally connect with the fact that the World Cup, which I love and is the highlight of my every four years, is somehow linked to the purchase of a fighter jet. That sickens me and shocks me.
PSW: What are some of the new revelations that come from this film?
Coleman: To give you one example, Blatter confirmed to us that he sat with Mohammed bin Hammam and the now-emir of Qatar and made a deal that bin Hammam would withdraw his candidacy for FIFA president and in return, Blatter would stop talking negatively about the World Cup in Qatar.
This is something that has always been sort of whispered about but has never been confirmed, and certainly not confirmed by someone in that room, which is revelatory. Why? Because this week, Blatter stands up and says putting the World Cup in Qatar was a mistake. But here he is on our show, saying that he made a deal to keep it there. Why? To keep himself in power.
PSW: Do you have any hope that FIFA can be meaningfully reformed? There is so much power wrapped up in controlling the world’s most popular sport, which will always seem to attract unscrupulous people.
Coleman: Any optimism around football has somewhat gone out at me as I’ve spent three years looking at the dark side of it. I would say if we look across sports, there are very few sports governing bodies that haven’t been wracked by some sort of controversy around their governance. And I think there’s a reason for that.
The thing that is an inherent problem with sporting organizations is there’s no popular election. It’s just the vote of the member associations and that means that basically if you can convince 120 individual human beings that you are the right person for the job, you can stay in that job for a very long time. And a lot of the aim of the game becomes holding onto power and solidifying power bases. So these are organizations that are basically petri dishes for political scientists to study how to how power works in a very small coalition where very few alliances can keep you in power for a long time.
PSW: We love soccer and we love the World Cup. There’s no way around that. So how do we fully enjoy the upcoming tournament in Qatar, knowing everything that went on behind the scenes?
Coleman: What I’d remind fans at home is the World Cup was not put in Qatar because of their inaction, but because of the votes of 14 men. There is a lot of talk right now about boycotting and what we do as a fan, but I also think it’s important for fans to remember that basically, the World Cup is going ahead whether we like it or not. And what the organizers of the World Cup and Qatar are after in my opinion is not necessarily your eyeballs, it’s after your hearts and minds.
Whether you watch it or not doesn’t make a big difference them, it’s whether you watch it and say “Qatar was wonderful, what a great host.” Or if you go there and say the same. If you sit at home and you watch it, and you say “I enjoyed that goal, I enjoyed that save, but I think the following things about Qatar,” then they’ve sort of spent all that money and lost the battle.
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