The news from Seoul is predictably dreary: a football corruption scandal so deep that the beleaguered Korean Football Association has sent an SOS to the FA of England. Yes, the same FA that gave us the Three Lions, Wembley’s perennial debts and a managerial merry-go-round that would make a Victorian carousel blush. But the Brits, ever the gentlemen of the global game, have offered their expertise in bribery investigations.
How quaint. It seems the footballing world has finally discovered what we in Blighty have known for decades: the Football Association is a master of not fixing matches so much as fixing the narrative around them. The Koreans, one presumes, are hoping for some of that old imperial wisdom, a sort of financial fair play colonialism.
But let us not be naive. The FA’s offer is not altruism; it is a branding exercise, a way to remind the world that England still matters in a sport where our national team perpetually underperforms. Yet there is a deeper irony here.
The FA is offering to teach integrity to a nation whose football federation is reportedly riddled with cronyism and backhanders. One thinks of the Victorian public schools, sending missionary expeditions to save the souls of the heathen while their own pupils engaged in fagging and flogging. The truth is that corruption is not a Korean disease; it is a football disease.
From the FIFA blazers to the local league back rooms, the game has always been a playground for the greedy. The UK FA’s offer is therefore a splendid piece of theatre, a performance of virtue signalling that tells us more about the FA’s need for relevance than about Seoul’s need for reform. But perhaps I am being too harsh.
Perhaps the FA genuinely wants to help. After all, they have plenty of experience in such matters. They investigated Lord Triesman’s comments, the 2018 World Cup bid and the various allegations surrounding the Premier League.
They have committees for everything. They could teach the Koreans a thing or two about forming a quango. However, the real scandal is not the corruption itself but the weary acceptance of it.
We treat football as a morality play, yet we are surprised when the players turn out to be as fallible as the fans. The fall of Rome, if you will, was not the sack of the city but the loss of belief in its institutions. The FA offering help is like Caligula offering advice on stable government.
It is both absurd and necessary. So let the Brits descend on Seoul, armed with their spreadsheets and their solemn faces. They will investigate, produce a report and recommend reforms.
The Koreans will thank them, and the corruption will continue in a new, more sophisticated form. It is the way of the world. The intellectual decadence of our times is that we mistake process for progress.
We think that by investigating we have solved the problem, when all we have done is managed it. The FA’s offer is a metaphor for our age: a gesture of authority from an institution that has lost its own moral compass, trying to guide another. It is both touching and tragic.
But then, the Victorians also believed they were civilising the world. Look what happened to them. The empire crumbled, and the football left behind a legacy of hooliganism and debt.
Perhaps the Koreans should be careful what they wish for.
