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April 12, 2005

FIFA/ Coca-Cola World Rankings...Explained!

strong>In which a member of the FIFA Executive Committee is perhaps 13% too candid

Among the exceptionally unique/ almost-justify-the-price-tag features of the business-school experience is the opportunity to meet and listen to the exhaustive roster of really impressive and accomplished people who come through campus as guest speakers. Whether invited by professors or by student organizations, not a week goes by without some brand-name CEO stopping by to give a presentation and answer student questions. Typically these folks are luminaries from the corporate world, but sometimes you do get someone from off the beaten path (where "off the beaten path" means they don't work in financial services or consumer packaged goods).

We had one of those off-the-beaten-path folks today -- a member of the FIFA executive committee. For the soccer geeks at school (meaning like three Americans and a few dozen dudes from Latin America and Europe), this was pretty juicy. There aren't that many "members of the FIFA Executive Committee" walking around, and certainly not that many in America, so this was a huge chance to get some good dirt on The World's Most Popular Game directly from one of the bigwigs who run the sport.

For the most part, our guest speaker met expectations. One wouldn't have judged his performance to be inspirational or overly charming (especially considering that some of the CEO-types we get are unnervingly persuasive), but he did offer a nice history of CONCACAF, the development of US Soccer, and some details on the politicking that attends the selection of World Cup hosts (he claims it isn't a done deal that 2014 goes to Brasil). He thought that soccer still had a long way to go in the United States, and that the responsibility for its continued development needed to be shared by MLS and the US Soccer Foundation (not terribly controversial). One of the South American kids made the mistake of complaining that South America doesn't get enough slots allocated to their federation (they get 4.5 slots), at which point our speaker pointed out that those 4.5 slots are contested by 10 countries, while Africa gets 5 slots for 50 countries (actually 52). He then pointed out that CONCACAF put all three of their entries through to the second round in the 2002 World Cup (go CONCACAF! -- though I don't think that's actually true) and certainly had as good a case as anyone for more slots.

But the best part of the presentation came when a student asked if he could explain the FIFA/ Coca-Cola World Rankings. (The context here is that global soccer is to FIFA/ Coca-Cola World Rankings as college football is to the BCS -- no matter how much you follow the game, you still really don't understand how these things are calculated. It's a big topic of conversation and FIFA has even admitted that the rankings might need some reform.) Our speaker chuckled and said that it's a "mystical formula" before defending the rankings by saying that "at least we don't use them to decide who gets into the World Cup." Fair enough, but not a great answer, and we grumbled our disapproval. So he continued, "To be honest, and I shouldn't say this, there aren't any journalists here, right, but mostly it was a really good idea to sell to Coca-Cola."

Luckily, I don't count as a journalist. And I swear I won't tell Coca-Cola either. Honest.

Posted by thatkid at April 12, 2005 8:56 PM under Sports

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