So, the South Korean national football coach has thrown in the towel, resigning amidst a World Cup corruption probe. How delightfully predictable. It seems the beautiful game is once again ugly beneath the surface. The British FA, ever the opportunistic imperialists of the sporting world, have already extended an ‘expert advisory role’. Because nothing says ‘we respect your sovereignty’ like a former colonial power offering to help clean up your mess.
Let us not pretend this is surprising. Football has always been a mirror of geopolitical decline. The FIFA scandal of 2015 was merely the overture; now we are in the second act, where national associations crumble like paper empires. South Korea, a nation that rose from the ashes of war to become an economic tiger, now finds its football federation mired in the same corruption that plagues its chaebols. The coach’s resignation is not an isolated incident; it is a symptom of a deeper rot. The modern bureaucracy corrupts all it touches, from Seoul to Zurich.
The British FA’s offer is particularly galling. They project an air of moral superiority, yet their own house is hardly in order. Remember the ‘cash for access’ scandals? The infighting that makes Westminster look stable? The FA’s advisory role is a thinly veiled power grab, a chance to extend its influence into East Asian football. It is the soft power of the elite, the cultural equivalent of gunboat diplomacy. They will land in Seoul with their clipboards and their PowerPoints, pretending they have the answers, when in fact they are part of the problem.
This is the intellectual decadence of our age. We pretend that crises are technical problems to be solved by experts, rather than moral failures that require a fundamental reckoning. The FA’s experts will produce reports no one reads, recommendations no one follows, and fees no one questions. Meanwhile, the fans will suffer, the players will be disillusioned, and the game will continue its slow descent into a corporate farce.
What South Korea needs is not British advisors, but a purge of the corrupt and a return to the values that made its football great: discipline, passion, and a sense of national pride. Instead, they will get seminars on governance and ethical charters. It is the same story everywhere. The Roman Empire fell because it could not reform itself; it hired barbarians to guard its borders. Today, we hire consultants to guard our institutions. The result is the same.
So here we are, watching the slow collapse of yet another pillar of cultural identity. The British FA circles like a vulture, ready to pick at the carcass. And we, the public, are expected to nod along, to believe that this is progress. It is not. It is the continuation of decline by other means. As the old saying goes: football is a matter of life and death. But in this age of decadence, it is merely a matter of expense accounts and advisory fees.
