JOHN DAVENPORT | Football is losing its soul to the billions in others’ pockets

There was a time when a professional player was not allowed to compete in any number of sports. The idea of being paid to play was considered unsporting, and thus the person who did so was not a sportsperson — they were a professional person.

Naturally this (like virtually everything else on the planet) worked to the advantage of those with money. So it rightly died out as an idea. But should it totally have died out as an idea? Is there still a point where money makes sport unsporting?

During the World Cup I was in Brazil for work. I stayed at an odd hotel near the airport. While perfectly nice, the planes flew over it so low that it felt as if any misjudgment on the part of the pilot would end extremely badly for me and the other occupants of the hotel. The World Cup had just begun, which is like the start of a giant, month-long, monotheistic religious festival for Brazilians.

And football, like any good deity, is omnipresent.

On the TVs all over the hotel there is blanket coverage of football and football-related content. As we leave the hotel for supper, we see footage of football matches from the ’60s and ’70s. Then, because the TV stations are running out of the football-related content needed to supply several channels 24 hours a day, they show current but lower-level local football.

Muddy pitches. Torn jerseys. Tackles that today would result in tearful denunciations at the UN. Beards. Players (shameful in this day and age) going onto the pitch without having visited the hairdresser in 12 hours. Forwards being cut down and jumping right up again to continue playing. Fans who live up the road from the football ground attending games live as often as possible because they do not own TVs. Players who drink with fans after the game. Jerseys decorated with the logos of local car dealerships and power tool makers.

I’m not sure what the technical definition of a sport is. But I think any rational person might think that football back then, or football now, in the second division of the Brazilian, Italian, English, or any other league, is more of a sport than the spray-tanned product that is rolled out on pristine, manicured pitches on our TV screens. Sport was supposed to teach us lessons about life. And we still do learn from the stories of bravery, dedication and selflessness that we see on the football pitch. But we are also learning other things. Things involving private islands and man-buns that feel less beneficial.

Money.

When has a vast quantity of money ever not destroyed anything it touched?

In a Sao Paulo sports bar. Patinaed green tiles on the wall. What seems to be a sort of shrine to Pelé in the corner. With candles. The devotion here is as powerful as anything found in an evangelical tent church. Plastic tablecloths covered with Bible verses and beer logos. Cold beer served in short glasses that disappear faster than waiters can bring them. Shots of local mescal. Small hills of sliced steak. A table of prostitutes behind us are glued to a TV that discusses the minutiae of Brazil’s last game. They’re arguing about an offside call that occurred a week ago. But what is no-one watching? The screen in the corner, where Canada are beating Qatar 6-0.

That screen is a snapshot of the case against modern football.

In the past it would have been a commendable miracle for Canada to be at the World Cup. We would have cheered on those plucky underdogs of underdogs as they bravely held on against Argentina or Spain before yielding. But now, in an insatiable pursuit of money, there are 48 teams at the World Cup instead of the 24 in 1994. And none of the football fans in this São Paulo bar have any interest in the game that is unfolding on the TV.

Because the aim of the World Cup now is only one thing. And it isn’t sportsmanship, or the fans, or even winning. It is money.

Fifa president Gianni Infantino has led this unlovely charge.

Hosting World Cups in bleak dictatorships with no history of football in exchange for dumpsters full of oil money. Workers dying in the heat. That should have been the point at which he was stopped. But nothing happened, so he carried on.

At this World Cup it reached a peak. It became too much.

Because the aim of the World Cup now is only one thing. And it isn’t sportsmanship, or the fans, or even winning. It is money. Fifa president Gianni Infantino has led this unlovely charge.

First there was the expansion to include so many teams that qualifying was a formality — except for Italy.

Then it was the hydration break.

Somehow it has stayed after the last World Cup. Not because it was needed, but because changing the actual rules of football in this way created advertising space sold for a fortune.

Then it was Fifa rescinding a red card simply because Donald Trump wanted it rescinded.

At this point Infantino was teetering. He just didn’t realise it.

Unabashed, he went further and proposed selling off a chunk of future World Cup revenues as part of a plan that would doubtless have made him and his coterie millions. The deal was ready to go. Notes taken. Objections noted. Lunch to be had. Starters optional.

And now he is hiding in the steel and glass Führer bunker that is the Fifa Africa headquarters as the mob grows.

Uefa (Europe) and Concacaf (the Americas) are implacable in the view that he should be deposed. The other federations are wobbling, their current support undoubtedly shored up by streams of money, much of it very grubby. In a desperate bid to stave off a revolution, Infantino called on his praetorian bodyguards — the highly paid Fifa ambassadors. Almost all of them stayed silent. Except Luis Figo, who described Infantino’s behaviour as “craven” and concluded, “It is too late to save his dignity, but it is not too late to save football. He should go. Now.”

Which isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement.

After leaving that football bar in São Paulo and making our way back to the hotel, we caught a glimpse of what football really is. The real football, not Infantino’s football.

To one side is the ground of a local working-class football club. Only half of the floodlights are turned on, probably for budgetary reasons. But a team is playing. We can hear players shout for the ball. Only a few spectators are there. But they call encouragement to their players and shout at the opposition over an ill-timed tackle. A woman is holding a cat. Someone is serving espresso out of the back of an old Renault. A billboard behind the stadium seems to be advertising a kind of fizzy soup. The netting in the goal closest to me has been fixed with green string. There are big muddy patches in front of both goals. The lady with the cat starts to sing. The players laugh. Clothes are drying on a droopy line behind the parking area. Some men driving a truck full of goats have stopped to watch the second half. And all this seems more like sport than anything infected with the billions of dollars that have entered the bloodstream of the football that often appears on our TV screens.

Money has improved the level of competitive sport. It has improved access to sport for people who come from lower-income backgrounds. It means financial security for players. But money is a two- or three-edged sword, at least.

Is there a point where a sport is so commercialised that it is no longer a sport?

A business perhaps? Because who wants to watch business being done rather than sport being played?

Football must be careful because there is much to protect. Paraguay is knocking Germany out of the tournament. Argentina’s comeback against Egypt. Norway’s astounding run. This is why we watch. This is sport. This is football. Let’s not kill it with money.

As the Bible says, you cannot serve God and mammon. And if football is God in the old tiled São Paulo bar, you can’t serve football and money at the same time. We know which one will win.

• Davenport is chief creative officer for Mediology, Vice Media & Virtue Advertising, London & Dubai, and an occasional war correspondent.