Two worlds, one cup: Soccer is awesome but FIFA is terrible

It’s deafening inside downtown’s de Vere’s Irish Pub. A pint of beer might explode in your hand from the noise. The United States just scored a go-ahead goal against Ghana: an unconventional header with only minutes left in the match, on the heels of a Ghana equalizer. The scene is a chorus of piercing baritones and frenzied sopranos, men and women donning red, white and blue; standing on chairs; hugging; even crying. It’s awesome.

I get a lot of flak for being a hater on sports—on the Kings, on Second Saturday, on all things fun and forward-thinking in Sacramento. But I'm not that guy. What's better than a cold brew, a few hundred strangers and the World Cup on TV in a local bar?

Still, it's hard to stomach soccer, because the organization that puts on the World Cup every four years, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, is just awful.

John Oliver has a new show on HBO, and he recently did a segment on all the horrible things FIFA does to produce the World Cup every four years. In Brazil, there have been slave-labor accusations and deplorable working conditions at stadiums, displacement of poor residents and evictions from public spaces in Rio de Janeiro, wasteful public spending on FIFA facilities, rainforest destruction, law-enforcment crackdowns in “slum” neighborhoods, “exclusion zones” near the stadiums, and thousands of armed troops. It's unbelievable, really.

So, while it's easy to love the game, it's also just as easy to feel outraged by FIFA and the international community's treatment of Brazil's poor. Critics say things will only be worse in Qatar in 2022.

Not trying to be a downer here. But it doesn't have to be two worlds and one cup.