Balance of Power

Iranian Fans celebrating
The world cup must be one of the only international events that America doesn’t dominate one way or another. The thing about football is it isn’t about wealth, how much a country can spend on developing the sport. Brazil is not the richest country and yet their football team is arguably the best in the world. Football unites people in a way not many other things can. At club level, fans often cheer foreign talent for example. Football could even be seen as educational, how many Briton’s knew what a metatarsal was before Beckham or Rooney
broke one? It is not an English sport as arguably
cricket is, it is truly international. Only Zimbabwe and North Korea don’t try for qualification.

Despite its almost universal appeal, most Americans don’t know the world cup is happening. Remembering the Kyoto treaty, perhaps America naturally shys away from international events that either in the case of Kyoto mean a sacrifice, or in the case of the World Cup, they do not dominate. The UN is another example, US domination is hardly complete and what degree of control they do have over the UN is probably the only incentive they have to stay in.

What if the UN was more like the world cup? No, I don’t mean dominated by Brazil but what if the UN was more international and less dominated by America? What if America wasn’t allowed to veto almost every resolution that put pressure on Israel? What if America couldn’t pressurise the UN by threatening to withhold funding to the UN because it recognises the democratically elected Palestine government? What if America could be shown a red card when she plays dirty?

As it stands African nations are better represented in the World Cup than in the UN and the Iranian football team is more likely to meet the USA in the knockout stages of the world cup than Iranian leaders are to sit down to face to face negotiations with Bush & co.

Sure all this happening is as likely as England winning the world cup, but we can dream can’t we?