On Saturday night at New York’s Madison Square Garden, WWE pro wrestling will hold a special “Main Event” featuring CM Punk and Cody Rhodes against Gunther and Sami Zayn along with a women’s tag team championship match of Paige and Brie Bella against Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid.
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The following afternoon on the other side of the Hudson River, the World Cup final will be played at MetLife Stadium.
At least one of them will have a scripted result.
If you are from Algeria or Cape Verde or Egypt or Switzerland, or perhaps anywhere else on the planet except a certain South American nation that wears sky blue and white vertical stripes, you believe either Argentina has benefited from a propitious string of fortune through the first month of this World Cup or that the tournament is flat-out fixed for Lionel Messi to win yet another title with the accompanying billions of eyeballs and billions of dollars.
“Congratulations to Argentina on the World Cup,” Egyptian winger Mostafa Ziko said sarcastically after a pair of controversial officiating decisions in a 3-2 loss in the round of 16. “The tournament was rigged, they didn’t need anything else. … The referee was unfair, unfair, unfair, unfair. The Cup is being given to Argentina.”
Imagine their reaction during Sunday’s quarterfinals, when VAR-gentina prevailed 3-1 after Switzerland was reduced to 10 men because the booth recommended rescinding a yellow card given to an Argentine player and instead giving it to Swiss forward Breel Embolo, who already had one and was thus ejected.
Then again, Egypt coach Hossam Hassan presumably didn’t see it, vowing after the round of 16 that “once I’m back in my country and at home, I will never watch the World Cup again because there’s no justice in this competition.”
Give the Egyptians credit. They’re just saying what everyone else is thinking.
And this, at its core, is FIFA’s problem: Not that the World Cup is actually rigged, but that an increasing number of people believe it is.
“An integrity crisis,” one English newspaper calls it.
Did Argentina get a marshmallow group draw? Is it the first team in World Cup history to reach the semifinals without facing a top 15-ranked opponent? Has it benefited from several questionable referee or VAR decisions? Has it yet to have a VAR intervention go against it through six matches? Does it have one of the lowest fouls-to-yellow-card ratios in the tournament?
Did FIFA president Gianni Infantino tell Argentine TV “I suffered with Argentina” after it squeaked past Cape Verde in extra time?
Are there previous examples of perceived FIFA favoritism toward Messi and La Albiceleste?
Are there previous incidents of Argentine tampering at the World Cup?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Yes.
Yes.
And yes.
Is this World Cup rigged?
That’s a much harder yes.
World Cup draws have long been suspected of skullduggery, or at least strategic manipulation.
Argentina drew Algeria, which had missed the last two tournaments and never advanced past the round of 16; Austria, which had missed the last six tournaments; and Jordan, which had never qualified before. Then it got Cape Verde with a population of 530,000 in the round of 16, followed by Egypt and Switzerland en route to Wednesday’s semifinal date against England in Atlanta.
That’s an average FIFA world ranking of 38.
Spain had to beat No. 5 Portugal and No. 9 Belgium to reach the semis. France had to beat No. 7 Morocco. England had to play Mexico at 7,352 feet in Estadio Azteca, where El Tri had lost only twice in its previous 89 matches.
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Seems sus, except Argentina entered the tournament as defending champion and ranked No. 1, which in most brackets is afforded the most favorable draw. And La Albiceleste was slated to face Portugal in the quarterfinals until the Portuguese failed to win their group and landed in the opposite side of the bracket.
Then there’s the officiating.
There is Messi with his cleats on the back of the leg of an Algerian player in the opener that didn’t draw a foul, much less a yellow card or a VAR review for a red, as did a similar incident by U.S. forward Folarin Balogun.
There were the seemingly one-sided whistles once Cape Verde tied it in the round of 32. The Egyptian goal disallowed by VAR for a marginal foul nearly 100 yards away in the play’s buildup followed by a refusal to review a similar foul in the box that would have given Egypt a late penalty kick. The Swiss red card was awarded only after the referee mistakenly issued a yellow to Argentina’s Leandro Paredes.
But that’s four different matches, four different center refs, four different three-person VAR crews, plus officiating assigners and other staffers.
Are they all in on it?
Is FIFA so sophisticated in its criminal deceit that it can corrupt dozens of people from dozens of countries without any of it leaking out? Is someone in referee João Pinheiro’s earpiece, telling him to wrongly issue a yellow to Paredes so they can reverse it and, by rule, give Embolo a second yellow for diving?
The quarterfinal against Switzerland, fittingly, was played at Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes, site of what football fans have claimed for years is slanted officiating in the name of preserving the league’s market appeal.
The NFL has long dismissed it as a “myth,” and its relative organizational credibility supports that except among the most diehard conspiracy theorists. And where were all those favorable flags this season when the Chiefs failed to make the playoffs?
FIFA and Argentina don’t get that same pass.
Not when FIFA releases only vague qualification procedures for the 32nd and final team at the 2025 Club World Cup struggling for international traction, then out of the blue announces that Messi’s Inter Miami is getting it.
Not when reports surface that it deposited a sizable chunk of Argentina’s 2022 World Cup payout to a shady company in Florida, or that the Argentine federation is under FBI investigation for fraud and money laundering involving hundreds of millions of dollars.
Not when FIFA’s disciplinary committee lifted the one-game ban for Balogun’s red card after President Donald Trump phoned Infantino, and a Times of London report claims Mohammad al-Kamali, the committee chair, unilaterally made the decision without consulting any of its other 17 members despite Infantino insisting it was adjudicated by “an independent judicial body.”
Not when, in the 1978 World Cup, Argentina needed to beat Peru by at least 4-0 to advance to the final and magically won 6-0, only for a Peruvian senator years later to testify before a Buenos Aires court that their two strongman presidents cut a deal in exchange for Argentina imprisoning 13 Peruvian political dissidents.
“Life is unfair,” Hassan, Egypt’s disillusioned coach, said. “The world is unfair. OK, but why isn’t there any fairness in sports?”
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It’s a fair question to wrestle with.