ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the place of ethics in the workings of the world governing body of football, FIFA. How did FIFA and the global football world continue to anoint, and accept, the autocratic and dictatorial presidential styles of João Havelange and Joseph ‘Sepp’ Blatter? It offers a small and focused argument related to a critical flaw in the organisational composition of FIFA. In the context of FIFA’s ethics processes the chapter presents snapshots of ethical flaws and tensions at the highest level of the organisation, considering how both before and since the establishment of the ethics process, dissent has been routinely silenced and collusion bordered on corruption. Even when conditions conducive to the rise of emboldened and sustained critical voices have emerged, the chapter shows, possibilities of transformational reform have been constrained by a continuing tension between ethical universalism and cultural particularism in the modus operandi of the organisation.
