Power, sleaze & the beautiful game

It doesn't get bigger than the football World Cup. Naturally, the politics around it gets murky. And the economics is full of twists

- Sanjiv Shankaran, Rudroneel Ghosh & Jiby Kattakayam

On a winter's day in Zurich in 2010, Bill Clinton, who used to be the most powerful man in the world not that long ago, sauntered into a meeting of global football's governing body Fifa. Turning on the charm for the media, he exuded confidence that the 2022 World Cup, for which he was fronting the US bid, was theirs for the taking.

TV footage of Clinton's expression a while later when Fifa announced that Qatar won the 2022 bid has a parallel in a World Cup game - French defender Patrick Battiston was knocked out cold by the German goalkeeper Toni Schumacher in the 1982 semi-final. The French players watched helplessly as the referee didn't see a foul there. France lost. The American delegation was shocked.