Would love to hear Mr. Zirin's opinion about the sold-out Sounders/Timbers game last night ...

FIFA doesn't own soccer. FIFA doesn't own football. FIFA doesn't own us.

I haven't read Zirin's book, but I've read Alex Bellos's Futebol: the Brazilian way of life and David Goldblatt's Futebol nation: the story of Brazil through soccer. I think the story is a lot more complicated than this interview suggests, which I assume is reflected in the book. Soccer, and soccer corruption, threads through Brazilian life in so many ways -- they play a hundred different kinds of soccer there besides the one in the stadiums -- beach soccer, beach volley, society soccer, button soccer, keepie-uppie (with numerous very highly paid professional keepie-uppie stars). The corruption has always been a part of it, from the beginning (FIFA for decades was the province of a Brazilian, Joao Hangeland). I think the protests were using corruption in soccer as a way to get at corruption in every aspect of life.

The militarization isn't the biggest issue for me.What's worse is the wholesale taking of public amenities to feed the maw of FIFA and the IOC. For instance, the Maracana stadium, jewel of the nation, was never just a stadium; it was a vast sporting complex available to the people, for many of them their only outlet for swimming, tennis, etc. That's all been taken away from them and privatized.

Another horrific example is Rio's abysmal sewage system, which still spews the raw waste of 20 million people right onto the beach -- not the famous one at Copacabana, but others further down. A huge sewage treatment plant could have been built for the cost of just a few of these giant stadiums that will never be used to more than 10% of capacity again.

One of the terrible ironies of futebol is that attendance at professional league games is extremely low, as ordinary people are afraid of being attacked, shot, or just herded like cattle. Plus, because of the Brazilian TV network Globo's insistence on running telenovelas in prime time, the games all start at ten o'clock at night. Brazilia's new stadium holds 70,000, but the local team typically draws 5,000. At least one of the other stadiums was built in a city that doesn't even have a team -- which is OK, because numerous Brazilian "teams" are "ghost teams", who have no fans, and exist solely to collect the contracts of young players and profit from their sale to foreign teams.

But Brazil is a fascinating and wonderful country nonetheless. You put up with contradictions there because contradictions are what life is made of. It's going to be very different in 2018, in Russia [spit], where there are no contradictions, only the iron fist, or Qatar in 2022, where...man, where do you even begin with Qatar? I think those games will get moved, personally.

Dave Zirin forgot to say that all these protests started last year in São Paulo (where I lived for 5 years) not because of FIFA but the rise of public transportation fees from BRL 3 to BRL 3,20. After this, Brazilians started protesting against corruption and their own government, this is not about football, Brazilians aren't against Mega-Events, they love it. Second, only in the slums you have a strong presence of the army in order to protect the population from the dug mafias. Sorry but wasn't FIFA who stole the money, and Brazilians know that, their government and politicians did it. You have to live in Brazil and experience the whole country to write about it. Sorry Mr Zirin. Guys from the Stranger you better interview Mr Flavio de Campos to understand much better what's going on in Brazil.

You can get the gist of the book by watching John Oliver's Last Week Tonight episode on FIFA here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlJEt2KU…

i'm pretty sure Dave opposed the sweetheart deal McGinn made for the Sonics. did you talk about that?