At what point is an organisation deemed so terminally hopeless that you really have nothing to lose by turning it into some giant social experiment?
In the case of Fifa, any time after about 1974. In the case of the Syrian state, now feels like a good time, and you have to doff your hat to the Kurds in Rojava, for doing just that. A region in Western Kurdistan on the borders of Islamic State’s “caliphate”, Rojava has declared itself autonomous, and is being run as what has been called an inverted caliphate. Among many other boggling initiatives for the region, gender equality and religious freedom have been constitutionally enshrined, there is a co-ed university, an all-female military force, a women-only section of the police force to handle sexual assault and rape cases (male recruits to other police divisions get their badges only after two weeks of “feminist instruction”), and it is claimed every government position at every level includes a woman with equal authority.
Reading Wes Enzinna’s New York Times article about this fascinating and stunningly radical experiment at the weekend, I suddenly recalled the modest proposal led by a consortium of women in the game for 30% representation on the Fifa ExCo, and had to shriek with laughter at the idea there is even the possibility of opposition to it. Yet there is. I expect it’s because the Fifa we have is simply too precious to tamper with.
Still, on the basis that all sorts of weird and wonderful and genuinely radical plans really ought to be on the table as Fifa reform is discussed, may I propose an only partially mischievous one for your consideration. To wit: Fifa becomes a vagocracy. Not 30% female ExCo representation, but 100%. Lady drivers, innit? Much less likely to be involved in accidents/mobility scooter chases/compulsive kleptocracy. As part of their appeal to Fifa’s reform committee, the consortium of women are submitting research which finds that global corporations who meet the 30% standard are less likely to be corrupt.
I know what you’re thinking: Spectre is less likely to be corrupt than Fifa. But really: what is there to lose? If they’ve got the nuts to try it in Syria in fighting distance of Islamic State, then why not in Switzerland, a madly progressive country where women got the vote in 1971? Admittedly, there is infinitely less life or death jeopardy in Zurich than there is in Syria – unless you count Sepp Blatter’s increasingly frequent visits to the Ernest Saunders Wing of what is doubtless Switzerland’s finest hospital. But as far as living on the border of impending catastrophe goes, football’s governing body has been ordering Pétrus in the last-chance saloon for some time now.
Yet whaddaya know? Fifa is gearing up to try more of the same – only with added torture allegations. By way of an update, here’s where we’re at with the forthcoming presidential election. It’s basically shaking down into a two-horse race between Sheikh Salman – a member of the Bahraini royal family who denies it but has been personally accused by various human rights groups of heading up a committee which identified pro-democracy athletes, many of whom were tortured – and Gianni Infantino, who is accused by absolutely no one of being remotely suited to the job, considering he was part of Blatter’s regime. There is apparently mounting speculation the two may unite as a dream ticket – or a malarial nightmare ticket, depending on your view of regimes which torture footballers. Sheikh Salman as president; Infantino as general secretary.
So look: I merely ask you to consider the vagocracy, which - even if it comprised Catwoman, the Snow Queen, Grace Jones out of A View To A Kill and all of Glenn Close’s many villainesses were in charge – could only be a step up.
And finally, before we conclude, I can only apologise for disappointing all those cross gentlemen who wrote to me after a recent deployment of the term cockocracy – also in relation to Fifa, would you believe – and who frothed that I would never DREAM of using an equivalent female-gendered term. My darlings, I dream of little else. And now you have seen it with your own swivelling eyes, you are formally dared to believe in magic.
Sound and Fury
I am very much enjoying the work of new heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, an auto-parodic character whose own success is among the most eloquent of arguments against his belief in a benevolent deity.
Asked to opine on his chances of winning the other big one – Sports Personality of the Year – Tyson was at pains to play down his chances. “They won’t let me win it,” he explained, disappointingly passing up the chance to speculate that the Beeb think he’s all fur coat and no knickers. “I am too outspoken and controversial.”
Ah yes. No one would accuse Tyson of being a man of range, and this finds him in a familiar furrow. “I say what I think,” he intoned after some spat with Dereck Chisora. “Got to say what I think or I wouldn’t be Tyson Fury,” he explained in June. “I say what I think,” was his verdict on an interaction with David Price. “I say what I think,” he sensationally revealed to a recent interviewer – indeed, you can scarcely find an interview where Tyson doesn’t say what he thinks, which is mainly that he says what he thinks. He serves as an encouraging reminder that we live in an era where “saying what you think” has been elevated to an accomplishment in itself. The thought and its quality are irrelevant: the aim is to say it out loud.
The more emotionally incontinent reality TV contestants always pride themselves on saying what they think, no matter how imbecilic, and Mr Fury is cut from the same cloth. Not altogether unusual in his line of work, of course, but even by industry standards he is a standout, and we await the next glimpse into his brain cell at his earliest convenience.
