In much the same way that recent Best Documentary Oscar winner The Cove wasn't really about Dolphin's, Craig Tanner's pointed, if simplistic, expose isn't really much about soccer. Like The Cove, this too is a scathing indictment of one nation's rich and powerful elite, in cahoots with big business, playing Pied Piper to an unsuspecting population and leading them right over a cliff. Indeed, World Cup Soccer in Africa: Who Really Wins? is first and foremost about politics, and you won't find a more political sphere of influence in the world than FIFA, soccer's international governing body: a Draconian organization comprised of fools, thieves, and career bureaucrats, riddled with enough gamesmanship, political infighting, and professional jealousy to shame a renaissance court.
Not to be misunderstood, Tanner iterates his point both early and often: No one is disputing the legitimacy of South Africa's bid to host a World Cup - the first African nation to ever do so. Rather, Tanner takes issue with the voracity of FIFA's arguments that a country desperately trying to combat an AIDS epidemic, and battling upwards of 40% unemployment, should be plowing hundreds of millions of dollars that could be spent on infrastructure into stadiums that will be used for a handful of soccer matches spread across all of a month.
Garnering opinion from a variety of left-leaning sources, mostly sociologists, academics, and journalists, Tanner compiles a gallery of talking heads who between them expose the great myth that this World Cup will somehow benefit South Africa's impoverished masses, painting a distasteful portrait of a despicable shakedown perpetuated by FIFA and enabled by self-serving elected officials at the state and local level.
Chief amongst the indictments is the assertion that stadiums deemed perfectly adequate to host the Confederations Cup in 2009 (an international tournament surpassed in prestige only by the World Cup itself) are now deemed of insufficient capacity and/or standard, judged so by requirements that are always just suspiciously that bit beyond what currently exists. furthermore, Tanner's experts explore the head-smackingly stupid decision not to renovate existing stadiums, but to build new ones a mere stone's throw away at costs that ultimately skyrocket beyond the naive estimates.
It quite literally is a case of 'If you build it, they will come...for a month, and then leave again, forever.' It does, of course, all come down to money. Larger stadiums means more advertising space that can be sold, bigger exclusivity zones than can be offered (Google 'Bavaria Babes' to see just how important those are to FIFA), and more money flowing out of South African coffers and into those of FIFA. A sad case of trickle-down economics in reverse, Tanner highlights the unfortunate, planet-sized logic holes in the arguments for these cripplingly expensive 'white elephants' as they're known, illustrating not only the short term shrift, but the economic impact years down the line. Smaller, existing stadiums are demolished, leaving local teams with behemoth structures they could never hope to fill and therefore can't generate the required revenue to pay the rent on...and what then?
Chief apologist for this debacle is Danny Jordaan, CEO of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, whose best rationale it seems is to dismiss the mounting concerns on the grounds that the country can now bid for The Olympics, which they may or may not get sometime in the future (completely ignoring the fact that the infrastructure requirements for that event would be even greater). FIFA's hypocrisy comes under fire also, with Tanner exposing official documents that politely instruct the nation's various cities to 'hide away' it's poor so as to not tarnish the image of the cup.
As an argument it's compelling, but as a documentary it's somewhat unimaginative, with seemingly endless montages of construction and demolition used to illustrate more than a few bland interviews. To be fair to Tanner, he really doesn't need to do much more than let the likes of Jordaan talk, giving him enough rope to hogtie and hang both himself and FIFA, but while it certainly manages to fuel an ire, it's rarely gripping as a spectacle. To quote one academic, who sums up the whole affair quite nicely by equating South Africa's World Cup to Ancient Rome in that: "'All you need to control an empire is bread and circuses.' Well here in South Africa there is a drastic shortage of bread." That being true, Tanner's doc, well-intentioned as it most certainly is, could perhaps have used a little in the way of circuses.
DVD Bonus Features
An extended interview with the Archbisop Desmond Tutu, and extended interview with South Africa's Jono Sono, and a featurette on political cartoonist Zapiro, whose numerous rib-tickling illustrations on the issue are a real highlight.
"World Cup Soccer in Africa: Who Really Wins?" is on sale June 15, 2010 and is not rated. Documentary. Written and directed by Craig Tanner. Starring NA.
