7. Discussion: three capacities of a parallel order

The divergence of the maps would be merely picturesque if FIFA were a private club without consequence. It is not, and three capacities demonstrate it. The first is normative: FIFA imposes rules on sovereign states. In 2012, Brazil passed the General World Cup Law (Law 12,663/2012), changing its own legislation to, among other things, suspend the ban on alcohol sales in stadiums (the so-called “Budweiser Law”) and grant tax and customs exemptions, because the body demanded these guarantees as a condition for hosting the tournament. No country accepts that from another country; it accepts it from the owner of the World Cup.

The second is sanctioning: on 28 February 2022, four days after the invasion of Ukraine, FIFA and UEFA suspended all Russian teams and clubs from all competitions “until further notice” (not, as sometimes repeated, “with immediate effect” — the suspension was decided that same day, but the official statement used a different phrase), before much of the state-level sanctions had left the drawing board. For a state, vanishing from the planet’s biggest stage is a punishment the entire population feels at once, which cannot be said of most UN resolutions.

The third is constitutive in the strong sense: at the FIFA congress each association has one vote, Brazil is worth the same as San Marino, and the admission (or expulsion, as Zanzibar learned) of a member redraws in practice who exists on football’s map, over any Security Council’s head. The three capacities together show why the divergence cases from section 5 are not anecdote: they are the visible trace of an organisation that behaves, on a smaller scale and without an army, like a parallel international order.