Soccer / corruption in sport

American writer Brian Tuohy in his seminal book, 'The Fix Is In' , written in 2010 writes that the major sports competitions in the USA from NFL to NBA are all manipulated to produce watchable sport, TV-worth drama and Hollywood endings dreamt up by TV executives, League management, sponsors & gambling syndicates to ensure the best, most entertaining stories and outcomes have billions of fans on the edge of their seats, Today in The World Cup Final, France and Argentina will compete for The World Cup Final or The World Corruption Cup as it should be known as both teams have benefitted from a string of dodgy officiating decisions to reach what should be the pinnacle of the global game but one that has descended into a steered 'Dream Final' by Qatar, FIFA & the sponsors to give the worldwide popular Lionel Messi the best chance of leaving the greatest stage of international football with a World Cup trophy under his arm. On Tuesday night, Lionel Messi - who had scored 6 goals in his previous 20 World Cup matches going into Qatar - scored his fifth goal & fourth pen in just six games - a World Cup Finals record - to kickstart Argentina's 3-0 win against Croatia but it was again in suspicious circumstances with the game-changing penalty at 0-0 a controversial one to almost double his World Cup total from three previous tournaments from the pen spot. In the ITV football studio at half-time, the ex-player pundit panel comprising Gary Neville, Ian Wright and Roy Keane unanimously believed that it wasn't a penalty - that Croatia keeper Dominik Livakovic, who was adjudged to have fouled Argentina striker Julian Alvarez hit the ball past him then ran into the keeper, had nowhere to go after making an honest attempt to save the ball & it was a clash of bodies due to momentum: If Peter Walton's support of the referee's decision doesn't convince of the officiating bias then you haven't been watching him on BT Sport dissecting Premier League football when he inevitably backs the officials & is rumoured to be in the pay of PGMOL. Following that game-changing decision which gave Argentina the upper hand, the South Americans cruised to a 3-0 win - an exact mirror of the 3-0 Croatia win over Argentina at the 2018 World Cup in Russia and even Luka Modric, who is known for never criticising officials, joined the chorus of Quarter-Finalist decrying refereeing decisions: It was a similar story in the other Semi Final when France beat Morocco 2-0 but only after some more controversial refereeing decisions that benefitted the holders with free kicks not being given to Morocco for clear fouls but most bizarrely of all, a Boufal booking when in reality the Atlas Lions' winger should have won a penalty kick: Following the match, Morocco were so incensed at the big decisions they didn't get from the referee and VAR officials, they made an official protest to FIFA with special complaints about the decision to book Boufal instead of awarding a penalty to him: ViVAR La France Picking Up Where They Left Off In 2018 Yet France progressed as they did in Russia 2018 with big help from the officials literally from their first game against Australia with a controversial penalty needed to break the deadlock against The Socceroos that was the first ever use of VAR in a World Cup...: ...to the Final itself when another controversial penalty was awarded to Les Bleus at 1-1 for a handball that the BBC Match of the Day panel didn't believe was a spot kick especially according to the rules governing handball at the time: So Sunday's Final in the Qatar World Cup 2022 is likely to be decided - like most big football games and competitions now - by whichever team gets the big decisions and while its a toss-up between two of Qatari-owned PSG's stars, Messi and Mbappe... ...I'm going with the continued favouritism for Messi and Argentina - & it’ll be very interesting to see if France who have got away with conceding stonewall penalties against England & Morocco get away with it today - ...to continue over France, who benefitted from VAR to win it in Russia in 2018 at the behest of the disgraced Michel Platini, who helped land that tournament for Vladimir Putin and the 2022 World Cup for the Qataris: Some extraordinary statements have been made by key figures like FIFA President Gianni Infantino who is on record as saying it would be "an injustice if Messi retired without winning the World Cup" & Hassan Al-thawdi, of the Qatar Organising Committee, who said it would be "Special" if Messi lifted the World Cup in his last World Cup game. I predicted before a ball had been kicked that England would win The World Cup unless the powers-that-be fixed the tournament for Messi, and referee's 'meetings' arranged by FIFA pre-tournament told them to crack down on the English' holding at free-kicks leading to injustices like this in the early games: I wrote about England's history of World Cup injustices in my last blog: and the 2022 England team who are still the tournament's joint-top scorers going into The Final despite having played a round less can feel themselves very hard done by: So I suspect a Messi victory today but ViVAR La France are still in with a big shout depending on which way the key decisions go but whoever wins fair football is the loser.