FIFA has been “reforming” for decades after multiple investigations, exposes and scandals, but it has never addressed the central structural problems in its governance system. As a result it has ended up even less accountable to the people and groups it is supposed to represent and worse governed and more dangerous than at any time in its history.
But FIFA has also never been subjected to a sustained, systematic and rigorous campaign for it to radically restructure itself. We believe if we can fully expose the scope and gravity of its failings, we can force change.
Investigations have proved corruption in the past, but while they exposed the problems, they let FIFA decide how to fix them. Exposes and scandals have captured public attention, but have failed to convince the people who actually have the power to properly reform FIFA.
If we can gather enough hard evidence, and enough support from people around the world who care about the game and understand why it’s important, we believe we can persuade politicians, governments, football associations and sponsors to act to reboot and regulate FIFA.
FIFA’s problems are serious but there are lots of things about the way it currently operates that do make a lot of sense.
FIFA should be a not-for-profit association that represents its member associations.
Its job should be to develop the game and redistribute the money football generates to the countries that need it most and where football’s transformative potential is vast.
Football needs an organisation at the top of a pyramid to set rules and principles and standards.
And while the problems it has cannot be fixed from within, from a structural perspective they are not particularly complex.
Independent auditing of how FIFA redistributes money, the separation of its commercial and regulatory branches, and updating its basic governance structures so that they are underpinned by the principles of transparency, democracy and accountability will fix the key problems.
Replacing it entirely could leave the door open to a full takeover from private capital and authoritarian states that have done so much damage to the game already.