[Edited (3:59 AM PDT): Time for some sleep, I'll check in this afternoon!]
[Edited to add (3:39 AM PDT): Likely my last edit before I try to get some sleep. greenbird directed me to the Guardian's coverage, which is quite in-depth.
Among the other key lines from the US Department of Justice’s statement on the charging of 14 defendants with “racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies, among other offences, in connection with the defendants’ participation in a 24-year scheme to enrich themselves through the corruption of international soccer”:
The guilty pleas of four individual defendants and two corporate defendants were unsealed today - including that of Chuck Blazer.
I have to think that, if they agreed to plead guilty, they probably had to agree to testify against their co-defendants. That's going to be quite satisfying.]
[Edited to add (2:53 AM PDT): The NYT reports that the process that awarded the 2010 to South Africa is amongst the charges that have been or are being filed against the FIFA leaders. So, if 2018 and 2022 are moved, and they are not part of the charges as of right now, a return to South Africa seems to be out of the question. Original diary continues below.]
Thank God!
This isn't going to be much of a diary, and I apologize that I won't be in the comments for long past 3:00 or 3:30 am Pacific time, but wanted to get something up, as it seems that the timing and circumstances, although not the allegations of corruption, are taking everyone by surprise.
FIFA, essentially the worldwide soccer federation, has long been thought by pretty much everybody with two brain cells to rub together to be about as corrupt as Tammany Hall. They awarded the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, respectively, which are outrageous choices. Russia is a minor player when it comes to soccer, and, as we've seen with Russia's shameful officially-enshrined homophobia and the invasion of Ukraine, probably doesn't belong on the world stage right now. Qatar, of course, is less than a minor player when it comes to soccer - it is a non-entity, save for the fact that a very wealthy prince, Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani, is living out the dream life of middle-aged football fans across Europe and North America, spending absurd amounts of his nation's oil wealth to create a soccer scene out of thin air. The Qatari World Cup will need to be played in winter, because summer in Qatar is roughly one gazillion degrees fahrenheit in the summer, disrupting pretty much every single soccer season across the world outside of the United States (most countries play soccer in winter, but MLS, the American soccer league, didn't want to compete with American football, NCAA basketball and the NHL all at the same time, and at the launch of the MLS, many teams needed to share stadiums with the NFL and, in at least one case if I recall correctly, MLB).
One thing that Qatar and Russia have in common that did not go unrecognized by us peasants in the soccer world are governments with money that also have a desperate desire for prestige and legitimacy in the West. See what's known so far below the orange vuvuzela.
They were arrested in Switzerland and will be subject to Swiss extradition proceedings before arriving in the States; I know absolutely zero about Swiss law, but I am confident that the DoJ will need to lay out the basic elements of its cases against the FIFA officials in order to obtain extradition. As an ally of the US with what is reported to be a fairly comprehensive extradition treaty (tax crimes excepted), unless these charges are facially and fatally flawed, extradition seems likely, although they could potentially try to drag it out.
Take it away, New York Times!
The charges, backed by an F.B.I. investigation, allege widespread corruption in FIFA over the past two decades, involving bids for World Cups as well as marketing and broadcast deals, according to three law enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the case.
The indictment names 14 people on charges including racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. In addition to senior soccer officials, the indictment is also expected to name sports-marketing executives from the United States and South America who are accused of paying more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks in exchange for media deals associated with major soccer tournaments, according to one government official briefed on the matter.
[...]
“We’re struck by just how long this went on for and how it touched nearly every part of what FIFA did,” said a law enforcement official. “It just seemed to permeate every element of the federation and was just their way of doing business. It seems like this corruption was institutionalized.”
Am I thrilled? Damn right I'm thrilled! It's interesting to notes that the comments in the NYT from outside the US, as of this writing, are almost entirely grateful for these charges. I find myself wondering if the US was uniquely placed to finally bring down those crooks because of the fact that the US is in many ways the center of the financial world while only being a comparatively smaller player in the soccer world - if it were, say, the UK or Germany, you have to wonder if the charges would get bogged down in allegations of attempting to give their national teams a leg up in 2018. The US men's team is respectable - we consistently qualify with respectable play, but we're not going to win, not even as a dark horse team. (Our women's team is better, but sadly we all know that as of today, there's not that much money in women's soccer).
I can only hope that Russia and Qatar will lose the World Cup, but where will they go? Although the US could host the World Cup without the need for any infrastructure at all due to the fact that we've now got a number of wonderful purpose-built MLS stadiums (or, in the case of Portland's Providence Park, purpose-rebuilt), it would be unseemingly for the US to get the 2018 or 2022 World Cups as a result of this action. Japan, South Korea, Brazil and South Africa were recent successful hosts and could possibly host again. With the sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, and with no hope on the horizon for that being resolved, if I were to wake up tomorrow and be given trusteeship over FIFA, I would be looking for a way out, but it'd be very difficult, because it would need to be a way out that looked "fair."
Other than the US, I'm having trouble thinking of a wealthy country with a lot of soccer infrastructure that is ready to host players, fans, media, massive amounts of TV infrastructure, you name it, that could be seen as a neutral third party because, while a credible force in soccer, it has no meaningful chance of winning the Cup and thus wouldn't benefit from a "home pitch advantage." The UK could, as a major soccer force and a recent host of the Olympics, but the UK contends for the World Cup. The only ideas that seem plausible to me are a rehash of Japan/South Korea's joint hosting of the Cup (which would be difficult but not impossible due to some diplomatic spats between the two - hell, soccer diplomacy might help smooth over those spats) or perhaps a European Union-wide World Cup that didn't necessarily give a clear home advantage to powerhouses like England, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain.
I'll be available in the comments for about another hour before I need to sleep.
[PS: You know, if Oregon and Washington were to secede from the US, we could host the World Cup as the newly-formed Republic of Cascadia... yes, I think that's an awesome idea! (/snark) Rose City 'til I die!]