No one knows when the young soccer players and coach trapped in Chiang Rai province’s flooded Luang Cave will be free, but that hasn’t stopped the worst sports sanctioning body in the world (as voted by Coconuts editors) from trying to cash in with a, frankly, grotesque PR stunt.
Give this morning’s tragic news of the death of a rescue diver, its seems likely that extracting the trapped team will take quite a bit longer than anticipated.
If, however, they somehow do manage to get out in the next nine days, well, then they’ve been cordially invited to attend the 2018 World Cup Final in Moscow as FIFA’s honored guests.
In a message that was clearly in no way intended to paint the scandal-plagued body in a favorable light, FIFA president Gianni Infantino put pen to paper yesterday to make the offer, which, of course, has almost no chance whatsoever of being cashed in by the trapped team.
Just warms the heart, doesn’t it? Sure, they might’ve spent decades taking millions of dollars in bribes, and sure, they placed the 2022 World Cup in a country accused of literally working hundreds of migrant laborers to death to build stadiums for the event, but hey … they’re good guys!
After extending FIFA’s “deepest sympathies,” and expressing their hope that their “words of support may help bring them a little peace and courage in these difficult moments,” he then proceeded to make the organization’s eye-rolling offer.
In a world of best case scenarios, we’d love to see these kids watching this World Cup anywhere, ideally in the arms of their desperately worried parents, but if there’s anything to be learned from FIFA’s checkered past, it’s that the organization’s motives should be treated with suspicion. They’ve been caught, more than once, well off-side.
