Add a league match in one of the world’s most anarchic states.
Add a team owner who’s a paranoid, violent, Russian oligarch.
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I mean, so far, so good — no one cares that FIFA is hopelessly filthy.
No one cares that people routinely get beaten and killed in and around world soccer matches.
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The whole thing: FIFA, club owners, fascist fans — it’s just pigs happy in the swill, and no one wants to interrupt the fun because if you do these people will blow your fucking head off.
They’re Walter Sobchak, at 1:30
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But Walter’s so crazy that eventually his mad pistol-whipping ways get him in a little trouble, just like his real-life equivalent, eminent Russian statesman Ivan Savvidis. Ivan doesn’t go anywhere without serious personal weaponry and several heavily armed guards, and when a Greek team he owns ran into some trouble with a referee yesterday, he stormed the field along with his armed guard and with his hand on his gun and informed the referee “You’re over.”
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What a pretty picture. Look at this (scroll down): Proud fascist enforcers, all of them dressed in black, swagger fully weaponized onto the field of play to kill the referee. It takes you back.
And forward. Nihilist kitsch again becomes the way of the world. You can see its most naked return on the fields of FIFA.
March 14th, 2018 at 4:33PM
But the ref disallowed a goal!
March 14th, 2018 at 5:23PM
MattF: Plus the guy explained later that he only went out there with his gun to protect people.