On Monday, the BBC investigative news program Panorama will air a documentary that purportedly reveals widespread improprieties in the voting process Fifa uses to award the World Cup. This has caused all manner of unpleasantness. England 2018's bid chief has branded the broadcaster unpatriotic; and Concacaf president Jack Warner, who is said to figure prominently, has dismissed the show as a personal vendetta against him and assured everyone that he continues to "sleep very soundly at nights." (Incidentally, anyone who feels the need to tell the wider world that he sleeps very soundly probably spends a fair amount of time tossing and turning.)
But there's a simple fix to all of the hurt feelings and name calling. Like arguments that say the Olympics should allow drug use, the government should legalize prostitution and Dancing With The Stars should forgo real judges, Fifa should simply recognize the human condition for what it is and embrace corruption, fully and happily.
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To do otherwise is incredibly short-sighted. For example, FIFA recently suspended two executive committee members for accepting bribes in exchange for their votes in the World Cup bid process. How exactly did Nigeria's Amos Adamu plan to spend his ill-begotten windfall? On four artificial soccer fields, that's how.
Imagine the benefit to grassroots Nigerian soccer if Qatar were allowed to throw its full financial weight behind its World Cup bid without Fifa's pesky "code of ethics" getting in the way. Every child in the country would have his or her own air-conditioned soccer pitch, complete with painfully over-priced concessions and badly furnished luxury suites.
The benefits of a full-blown acceptance of corruption would resonate throughout the football world. Trinidad and Tobago's federation would see badly needed funds diverted into its coffers as Jack Warner tried to avoid taxes on all the money paid to him personally each time the country played a friendly.
In a no-holds barred, all corruption goes world, England bid booster David Beckham could offer to literally scratch a Fifa executive committee member's back in exchange for the same favour. Sure, this conjures up an awkward image, but a relatively harmless one compared to the closed-doors interests of officials in other major world sports.
And don't discount the damaging effects of the constant moralizing and high-horsedness on the part of the press and blogging corps when it comes to these matters. Take the case of Luis Suarez. He was savaged for his last-gasp handball that allowed Uruguay to advance against Ghana at the World Cup. Everyone said he "cheated," but really the poor bastard simply did what anyone else in his position would have done in that split second.
Now, months later, the strain of all that criticism appear to have finally broken him. During a Dutch league match Suarez went bonkers and bit opponent Otman Bakkal. A full-out chomp. Sadly, I fear Suarez's once proud athletic career will now culminate with a cameo appearance in the soon-to-be-released Uruguayan movie La Resaca, a lower budget remake of the Hollywood classic, The Hangover.
And this is a professional athlete in top physical condition, one who enjoys the psychological benefits of regular strenuous exercise. Imagine what the same pressure could do to someone like Concacaf suit-wearer Chuck Blazer? If we're not careful he's liable to try and eat a street urchin.
Look, does corruption make me happy? Well I don't know, I've never attained a position remotely powerful enough to benefit from it. But perceived corruption within world football certainly isn't making the game less popular. In fact it seems to be having the opposite effect. I can't help but wonder whether eliminating all the "rules" pertaining to how a country can go about snaring a World Cup might save us all a bunch of heartache. And would it really affect who wins in the end anyway?