‘FIFA Uncovered’ review: Netflix documentary traces FIFA’s power struggles and what it takes to host a World Cup

The Netflix series exposes Blatter’s role in turning FIFA from a non-profit organisation to a multi-million dollar family, the corrupt alliances that secure FIFA World Cup bids, and how football walks an ethical tightrope

Within 15 minutes of the first episode, you feel a certain kind of numbness tracing the history of FIFA.

But when Sepp Blatter walks in and claims that the former FIFA President João Havelange literally handed him the job to be FIFA’s number two, it is intriguing. This sounded a lot like a cliched poor-boy-hits-the-jackpot-in-a-big-city story. How did it happen?

The series reels us in from hereon. This is the first tell from FIFA Uncovered into how FIFA functions; a secret garden and a tea party nobody invites you to... unless you can charm people into giving you loads of money. This is the one rule of the club, and you must never talk about it outside.

Sepp Blatter did just that. He was the man to strike FIFA’s first commercial deals with giants like Coca-Cola, Adidas, and International Sport and Leisure for sponsoring FIFA endeavours.. And then, began the corruption and bribery.

Not that FIFA was honest and law-abiding before Blatter. FIFA Uncovered exposes a pattern that FIFA has in handing out World Cup hosting rights: a host seeking sportswashing (using sports to improve reputations stained by wrongdoing) followed by a low-key host, and then repeat. 

Glimpses of FIFA awarding Germany the 1938 World Cup hosting rights when Adolf Hitler was in power helped drive the point home. The four-episode Netflix series also shows that Havelange awarded the World Cup to the Argentine dictatorship of 1978, and then to post-Francoist Spain of 1982, a state eager to display itself as clean as the whistle. On the bench is Sepp Blatter waiting for his time to play the game.

Blatter is shown as a cunning visionary, who upon the chance discovery of the corrupt nature of his boss, evolves into a serial negotiator, leveraging the power of knowledge that he has over Havelange to put his boss out of business. The first episode ends with executive committee members, who after elaborate courting by Blatter to vote for his presidency in 1998, suddenly turn on him and against each other.