Last night we watched the last episode of the documentary, Fifa Uncovered, and I felt a combination of awe and anger at the levels of impunity of the men at the top. The extent of the corruption it investigates is staggering, and the deceitful ways in which it is inevitably linked to ‘the good’ of football are delusional. I tried to muster a critical and even cynical distance as I waded through each gripping episode. Unlike Vatican Girl, a documentary we had tried to watch that over-invests in a slew of conspiracy theories surrounding the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi with visuals that over-show and over-tell to the point where nothing is left to the imagination, Fifa Uncovered is taut and incisive. I am not a football fan. I enjoy watching the game when I am with others who are also watching. I don’t know all the rules, but I like the camaraderie. Knowing that any moment a goal can be scored, adds to the sense of suspense and spectacle. If you asked me to name three contemporary players, I would be out of my depth. That’s the extent of my know-how. And yet, I was totally taken in by each episode of Fifa Uncovered.

The last documentary we had seen that was football-oriented was Bad Sport, which chronicled, through elaborate interviews with key players, how Juventus, an iconic football club in Italy, was relegated thanks to an elaborate scandal of mind-boggling proportions. That feels like a petty crime when pitted against the brazen corruption that seems to have been embedded in FIFA’s DNA. What intrigued me most, though, was how various people, who were interviewed and whose testimonials constitute the documentary’s narrative, spoke about how the endemic nature of FIFA’s corruption had to do with the way the world works. I suppose that was where an intersectional feminist perspective could have homed in to say that this was a classic illustration of how patriarchy intersects with colonialism, racism, and various other forces to create a culture of impunity. In some ways it is kind of genius that the film manages to reveal the complex nexus between these forces and how it manifests to shape the compulsive nature of greed that is the defining feature of the men at the top.