FIFA’s utopia: An analysis of FIFA’s football for hope movement

Pinning our hopes to sport

Nearly seventy years ago, the German Philosopher Ernst Bloch noted that “sport has never been more desired, practised, planned than today, and never have more hopes been pinned on it” (Bloch, 1954/1986: 451–452). This is equally true today, as various groups, some with vastly different political worldviews, pin their hopes to sport. This was evident at the World Cups in Brazil and South Africa, where FIFA, local organizing committees, and business interests, were promoting the events as an example of how football could bring hope and build a better future. This was contrasted by community groups, often representing poor and marginalized communities, that hosted Poor Peoples World Cup in South Africa and the Copa Popular in Brazil to protest the impact the events were having and to demonstrate how football could still bring people hope by being organized in more democratic and inclusive ways (Anti-Eviction Campaign, 2010; Borja and Streiker-Ginzberg, 2013).

The understanding of hope I am using for this paper is derived from the work of Bloch (1954/1986). Bloch’s understandings of hope was situated within what he referred to as the ‘Not-Yet.’ For Bloch, hope represented an orientation to the future, but one that was grounded in the indeterminacy and ‘Not-Yet’ of the present (Geoghegan, 1996; Hudson, 1982). Bloch’s work examined everyday instances of hope within various facets of society, including literature, architecture, cinema, music, art, and sports, as well as daily practices such as dress, jokes, travel, and daydreaming. Bloch viewed ideology as “two- sided: it contains errors, mystifications, and techniques of manipulation and domination, but it also contains a utopian residue or surplus that can be used for social critique and to advance progressive politics” (Kellner, 2010: 41). Within Bloch’s philosophy, all ideologies past and present include this utopian surplus, and in addition to critiquing ideologies, scholars should attend to this utopian surplus. Geoghegan (2004: 128) described Bloch’s utopian surplus as the “gold-bearing seams of hope and promise.” With this view of ideology as two-sided, Bloch believed that hope could be oriented in two different directions, towards either abstract or concrete utopias. Abstract utopia was viewed as compensatory, based on an individual desire for success, fame, wealth, and so on, but not pointing towards a different world. Concrete utopia on the other hand involved a more open, collective, and ongoing process of striving for a better future (Levitas, 1997).

Although Bloch’s notions of hope have been absent within studies of sport, Haro (2010) drew on Bloch’s conception of hope to analyze A Better World for All, a document created by the United Nations, the World Bank, and the IMF that set the stage for the Millennium Development Goals. Haro argued that the better world imagined through the document was essentially predetermined, it was an abstract utopia, promoting what she referred to as a neoliberal fraudulent hope. The critique offered by Haro was similar to critiques of SDP that highlight how neoliberal ideologies promote forms of individual responsibility and success (Darnell, 2012; Hayhurst, 2014). In contrast to fraudulent hope, Haro (2010: 189) drew from the Zapatista movement to describe genuine hope, which “has the distinct affective capacity to sense the not-yet, to imagine and move toward the unknown or never previously manifested.” Genuine hope and concrete utopia go beyond imagining the content or form that a possible future would take. They represent a process that is open to the utopian surplus present in daily life. A focus on hope and utopia allows for a critique of ideology, but also provides a way to be attentive to how the “gold-bearing seams of hope and promise” (Geoghegan, 2004: 128), may be present within both the ideologies and everyday practices of FIFA.

Utopia as method

Levitas (2013) came to her “Utopia as Method” through her engagement with Bloch’s (1954/1986) conception of hope. The utopian method Levitas (2013) developed constantly moves between three forms, utopia as archaeology, utopia as ontology, and utopia as architecture. Archaeology and ontology are closely related to the thoughts of Bloch outlined above and are based on processes of excavation and reconstruction. All political positions, even though they do not explicitly claim to be, are based on “images of the good society and views of how people are and should be” (Levitas, 2013: 154). Therefore, FIFA’s vision of a better future can be understood as a reflection of its political positions and how it imagines a ‘good society’. The task of utopia as archaeology then, is to reconstruct these images through a mix of “evidence, deduction, and imagination” (Levitas, 2013: 154). The ontological mode is focused on how people are conceived and positioned within these imagined futures, as well as how ideas such as human development, wellbeing, and flourishing are constructed. The architectural mode involves the speculative construction of alternative futures. Importantly, this is not meant to be a linear process, but instead a form of analysis that moves between these three modes. Archaeology and ontology provide a means for critiquing particular visions of the ‘good society’ and architecture is meant to construct an alternative. In constructing an alternative, you also open yourself up to critique. In this way, Utopia as Method is meant to be ongoing or cyclical. This paper primarily focuses on utopia as archaeology and ontology as a means for critiquing FIFA’s vision of a better future. However, in highlighting the utopian surplus or the already existing alternatives within FFH, I also begin the process of utopia as architecture.

Neoliberalism, colonialism, and utopian football spaces

Although little has been written about FFH, two studies have emphasized how FFH potentially reproduced neoliberal ideologies (Manzo, 2012; Shehu, 2010). Shehu (2010: 151), through a critical discourse analysis of the 20 Centres for 2010 initiative, argued that the idea behind these centres reinforced neoliberal and colonial ideologies in ways that “maximize private goods at the expense of public ones…due to several reasons, including paternalism, rent-seeking by local football organizations; a narrow focus on one sport, and dominance of masculine perspectives.” In a study comparing approaches to development between two different development projects, one of which was FFH, Manzo (2012) found that the emphasis upon entrepreneurship within FFH related to neoliberal development thinking. These analyses offer an important critique of FIFA and FFH and align with broader critiques of how SDP often perpetuates neoliberal understandings of development (Darnell, 2012; Hayhurst, 2014). A critique of FFH along neoliberal lines is important, but it is also possible to examine FFH for the potential alternatives it offers, to take seriously the utopian surplus that Bloch maintained was always part of everyday life and contained in all ideologies. Understanding and critiquing the ideologies presented through the FFH Centres and Festivals also required an engagement with theorization around space, social reproduction, and social change.

Similar to abstract utopias, Lefebvre’s (1991) theorizations on space included the concept of abstract space—the grids, plans, and structures that scaffold, commodify, and homogenize life under capitalism. Importantly, and like Bloch’s abstract utopia, abstract spaces are closed off in terms of spatial practices and representations of space that reduce life and social relations to capitalist understandings of production, exchange, and value. As well, like Bloch, Lefebvre emphasized that the production of abstract space was never complete; spaces will always contain historic elements and contradictions, which means that their reproduction will always be contested (Wilson, 2013). Importantly, in terms of the FFH Centres throughout Africa and the FFH Festival in Brazil and South Africa, conceptions of space need to be considered alongside colonialism. As Park et al. (2011: 12) noted, “taking over, reclaiming, or rewriting actual spaces into hopeful places,” a process they term utopian territorialisation, demonstrates elements of colonialism. This utopian territorialisation produces a form of hope that has its roots in colonial notions of modernity and constructing places of hope within ‘hopeless’ urban spaces can serve as a form of inclusion for marginalized populations, but one which requires them to assimilate, while still providing no guarantees of full inclusion within society (Buffon, 2011). In this regard, utopian territorialisation has significant overlap with how scholars of sport have discussed how sports-based gentrification projects maintain structures of white supremacy through regulation, surveillance, and segregation (Scherer et al., 2020). Similarly, sporting mega-events like the World Cup and Olympics have been criticized for how they provide a mechanism for implementing neoliberal forms of governance that promote regulation, surveillance, and segregation, in addition to promoting privatization and neo-mercantalism (Cornelissen, 2011; Gaffney, 2010).

The FFH movement, particularly the FFH Festivals in South Africa and Brazil, and the 20 Centres for 2010 throughout Africa, presented a particular understanding of football, hope, and utopia. Instead of simply critiquing the ideology that underpins FIFA’s work, Bloch and Lefebvre would compel us to look at the spaces themselves and attend to examples of potential resistance, as well as possible alternatives taking shape and being practiced. This is also at the heart of Levitas’ (2013) utopia as method.

Football for hope: productive oases of opportunity

From FIFA’s (2013) final report on the 20 Centres for 2010 Campaign, it was apparent that the FFH Centres were primarily described as oases in spaces of hopelessness. This was apparent within the visuals that FIFA used within their documents, often representing a FFH Centre as a bright green space within an otherwise bland or brown background. Quotes from the 20 Centres for 2010 Campaign also illustrated the way that centres were positioned as oases. For example, a counsellor at one FFH Centre is quoted as saying,

Before the Football for Hope Centre was here, I would see kids mainly hanging out on the streets. But since it was built, there haven’t been so many kids loitering around. The centre is a place where they can go and learn about being healthy and safe. (FIFA, 2013: 4)

Furthermore, the manager at another centre in South Africa stated that “the Football for Hope Centre has brought many opportunities to the community and surrounding areas, and the activities that are implemented at the centre enable people to access quality health and educational services” (FIFA, 2013: 43). In these cases, hope represented escape from a dangerous community to a place that offers education and opportunities, an oasis. As the manager from the centre in Burundi noted, “The centre and its football pitch is an oasis of protection for these children and young people who are confronted with poverty, violence and stigmatisation” (FIFA, 2013: 13).

Notions of hope and opportunity were also present at the FFH Festival. On the second day of the FFH Festival in Caju, I walked into the venue in the morning and hear the song “Billionaire” blaring from the speakers (Fieldnotes, July 8, 2014). The opening lyrics of which are: “I wanna be a billionaire so fuckin’ bad / Buy all of the things I never had / Uh, I wanna be on the cover of Forbes magazine / Smiling next to Oprah and the Queen.” In some ways, the song encapsulated FIFA’s vision for a better future. The dominant vision of the future presented by FIFA was similar to how Haro (2010) described the fraudulent neoliberal hope that was prominent within the development campaign she analyzed. The better future that FIFA envisioned was based on targeting and ‘improving’ individuals within communities that are labelled as needing to be inculcated with values relating to fair play, discipline, and hard work. The emphasis on individual success and escaping poverty within the FFH Festival and Centres also echoed Manzo’s (2012) critiques of FFH promoting neoliberal understandings of entrepreneurialism.

FIFA’s vision of building a better future was not much different from current conditions in much of the world. Former Brazilian players such as Ronaldo and Cafu attended the festival to share how football had taught them many lessons and allowed them to overcome poverty. As Ronaldo stated, “everybody knows how football transformed my life. It was a very important part of my childhood, gave me hope for the future, and taught me values such as discipline and fair play” (FIFA 2014a: Para. 3). Similar to how the 20 Centres for 2010 final report discussed the centres as places of productivity and opportunity, the festival constructed hope as escaping from poverty, and promoted a vision of a ‘better’ future that primarily involved individuals improving themselves and becoming more successful. This epitomized the compensatory nature of what Bloch (1954/1986) referred to as abstract utopia. For Bloch abstract utopia included the ways that individuals might dream of their own individual improvement and success within an unchanging society that continues to systemically oppresses people. In this way, the better future for FIFA was simply the maintenance of the status quo, with the hope that through participation in football individuals’ chances of success would improve. From this, FIFA’s vision of a better future was aligned with how some scholars have argued that SDP as a broader movement perpetuates neoliberal understandings of development, through which the structural and contextual factors related to poverty are minimized in favour of emphasizing personal responsibility and character building (Darnell, 2012).

This construction of oases within communities labelled as at-risk or disadvantaged was also apparent with the FFH Festivals. In both Johannesburg and Caju, the FFH Festivals took place in temporary venues that were constructed for the purposes of the World Cup. In his opening remarks for the 2014 FFH Festival, Sepp Blatter stated that Caju, the community in which the festival was hosted, was the 13th World Cup venue (FIFA 2014b). Overall, this was a fairly accurate statement. The event utilized a pre-existing athletic facility but installed a temporary stadium that in many ways mimicked the spatial arrangements of the actual World Cup venues. For example, upon entering the venue, visitors had to put their bags through an x-ray machine and walk through a metal detector, at which point they would be told they could not bring bottled water into the venue because they would have to purchase food and drink inside. This focus on security and mitigating the risks of the outside community was similarly presented within documents relating to the FFH Centres. For example, the coach at the centre in Khayelitsha Township in Cape Town, South Africa noted that “if it wasn’t for the centre, a lot of these kids wouldn’t have anything to do. They would be on the street. We know what they would be doing…but instead they are here” (FIFA, 2013: 41).

After entering the venue, I walked by the Sony, VISA and Hyundai activity booths, as well as the Coca-Cola food stalls. After finding my way to the main field where the opening ceremony was taking place, I tried to climb a stairway to a section of empty seats only to have a steward whistle at me and tell me I could not go that way because I did not have the appropriate credentials. This was a recurring theme during the four days of the festival, where spaces were regulated and people were segregated. The spatial arrangements of the FFH Festival were similar to how Scherer et al. (2020) described how sports-based gentrification schemes have served to reproduce structures of white supremacy through the regulation, surveillance, and segregation of particular community members. Importantly, the Caju venue for the FFH Festival was a microcosm of how sporting megaevents like the FIFA World Cups have become “ensconced within a wider neo-liberal order and are increasingly shaped by tendencies towards corporatisation and neo-mercantilism” (Cornelissen, 2011: 3224). Further, the securitization of the FFH Festival was reflective of how, “the increased security apparatuses that have become defining features of global-mega events effectively privatize public spaces in the city” (Gaffney, 2010: 23).

Upon sitting down to watch the opening ceremony, two things stood out. At one end of the field, behind one of the goals was a giant screen that, like at an official stadium, would simultaneously broadcast the action on the pitch. FIFA’s corporate sponsors were prominently displayed under the big screen. Behind the goal opposite the big screen was a glassed off ‘hospitality’ section overlooking the field. For the opening ceremony, this area was filled with people, very important people, including Sepp Blatter and other FIFA executives. After the opening ceremony and the first match concluded, the area was mostly empty for the duration of the tournament except for the workers responsible for security and catering, and the occasional dignitary stopping in for a few minutes to watch the participants demonstrate their ability to play fair and get along with each other. In many ways, the separation of space at the festival mimicked the World Cup itself with certain people having access to certain spaces, while others were excluded and policed (Eisenhauer, Adair and Taylor, 2014).

Blatter stood at the centre of the field in Caju and claimed that football was building a better future and that the FFH Festival was a return to the essence of the game of football, emphasizing joy and togetherness. The fact that FIFA’s creation of the venue was simply a miniature of what existed for the official World Cup was demonstrative of FIFA’s vision for a better future. The poverty of imagination reflected in the spatial arrangements of the FFH Festival was illustrative of how “threatening it can be to imagine alternatives to a system that survives by grounding itself in inevitability” (Ahmed, 2010: 165). That said, there were elements of the FFH Festival and within documents relating to the FFH Centres that presented what could be referred to as utopian surplus. The next section follows Levitas’s Utopia as Architecture to highlight alternative framings of hope and the future that were also present within the FFH Movement. Although these aspects of FFH were not formal elements and they do not point to how FIFA is building a better future, they point to how people engaged in sporting spaces are always already engaging in practices that prefigure an alternative and potentially better future. As Levitas (2013) has advocated, a function of utopia as architecture is to bring forward these possibilities, as potential ways to construct a better world.

Football for hope: joy, togetherness, and utopian football

Although most language and images within the 20 Centres for 2010 Final Report (FIFA 2013) presented the centres as places of development, education, and opportunity, there were alternatives. For example, a volunteer at the Tarrafal centre observed that “this centre is giving the young people of Tarrafal so much joy and happiness, but most importantly, it occupies their free time with something useful, precious and rewarding” (FIFA, 2013: 17). Although the volunteer used language that related to the rest of the document in terms of distracting youth, or removing them from dangerous situations, happiness and joy were introduced as important outcomes. This pattern of language was repeated throughout the document by staff or volunteers at various centres. They acknowledged intangible aspects of the centre such as joy, happiness, and togetherness, and then deployed language that is more commonly associated with more dominant discourses of development such as using time more productively, teaching life skills, and offering forms of education and opportunity. For example, the Programme Manager at the Oguaa Centre in Ghana explained “It’s amazing how every time I come to the Oguaa Football for Hope Centre, I see how happily children and young people who live in the community and beyond fill the premises of the centre, while doing something useful with their time” (FIFA 2013: 20). Participants that were quoted also repeated this pattern of language in terms of expressing joy or happiness and then shifting into various discourses of development. As one youth from South Africa explained “WhizzKids United gives children a place to be happy. The staff know that these children face tough times. WhizzKids helps children with HIV.AIDS and when a child has a problem at home, the counsellors really listen” (FIFA, 2013: 36). Another student from the centre in Mozambique similarly exclaimed, “This feels like a dream. I can’t express how happy I am to see a centre like this being opened in my community. We are facing many challenges, like poverty, gender inequality and limited access to education, and a lot of people here don’t believe they can ever become something or add value to their society” (FIFA 2013: 53).

At other points in the documents and media produced by FIFA, program participants that were quoted similarly discussed how sport and how FFH programming allowed for expressions of joy and happiness, without also referring to various discourses of development. For example, a coach and peer educator at one of the centres was quoted as saying that “children are always playing on the football pitch and seeing a smile on a child’s face makes me also feel good about myself” (FIFA, 2013: 4). A girl participating in programs at the Kalebuka centre explained that “we have found a place where we could go to play and have fun, close to home, and are making a lot of new friends” (FIFA, 2013: 19). Another striking example of this use of language comes through a promotional video that FIFA produced for the 10-year anniversary of FFH. The video was produced shortly after the 2014 World Cup. The video was mostly a montage of video and images with a narrator explaining what the FFH movement has accomplished, primarily using language emphasizing the targeting of marginalized and impoverished communities for development. The only inclusion of participant voices came through a short clip of a participant from the Oguaa FFH Centre. In the clip, the participant noted, “The centre, it’s my home. The Centre, has given me everything so far.” (FIFA, 2015). Highlighting these examples are useful in terms of noting how a straightforward critique of FIFA’s ideology potentially overlooks the alternatives, or gold-bearing seams, that are also present within the FFH movement. Regardless of FIFA’s ideology and their promotion of dominant discourses of development, these alternative glimpses point to how sport, and the FFH programmes themselves may offer alternative visions and paths towards the future.

The idea that sport can serve as a source of togetherness, joy, and escape for people facing difficulty is something that might be difficult to capture through more traditional forms of monitoring and evaluation, or forms of analysis that focus on critiquing ideologies underpinning sport and development. However, focusing on the emotional and sensorial aspects of sport and SDP may provide important insights into the significance of sport in people’s daily lives, and how people can collectively organize and imagine a better world through sport (Forde and Kota, 2016; Pielichaty, 2020; Scott, 2020).

As explained in the introduction, football matches during the FFH Festival utilized a method known as Football3. The Football3 methodology has been discussed in terms of its efficacy as a development intervention at the South Africa FFH Festival and at the Euro Cup in 2016 (Gannett, et al., 2014; Trajo et al., 2018). However, from my analysis of documents and observations during the FFH Festival in Brazil, I believe that the football matches during the festival can be viewed as utopian in the way that they suggested an alternative mode of organizing and governance within sport.

The use of Football3 at the FFH festival introduced a number of interesting alternatives to dominant understandings of sport and social change. The festivals in Alexandra and Caju occurred in what Lefebvre (1991) might call abstract space. These spaces were illustrative of FIFA’s neoliberal utopia. Planned and constructed by FIFA, they were securitized and corporatized. Spaces were segregated, surveilled, and policed. Corporations provided entertainment and sustenance. However, the way that football was mobilized during the festival complicates the vision put forward by FIFA.

From observing the matches at the FFH Festival there were many examples of what utopian or Blochian scholars might refer to as utopian surplus, concrete utopias, or as the gold bearing seams of possibly alternative futures (Geoghan, 2004). The Football3 method involved a system where the players were responsible for collectively producing and safeguarding the process. This allowed for various possibilities, such as in the game between Kick4Life from Lesotho and Fundación de las Américas para el Desarrollo from Ecuador where the players decided that instead of playing against each other they would mix their teams and play together, essentially foregoing their national identities to forge new relationships (Fieldnotes July 10, 2014). The Football3 method used in the festival explicitly opposed notions of self-interest and measuring success in market-based, comparative, and competitive ways. Social order throughout the tournament was apparently maintained through dialogue and consensus rather than individuals or teams pursuing their own interests. It should be noted that because of the competitive nature of the tournament, researchers have shown that some participants in past festivals have felt that teams were not adhering to the spirit of the festival and instead were finding ways to abuse the fair play system (Gannett et al., 2014; Trajo et al., 2018).

The Football3 method was also representative of how sport could be organized in non-hierarchical ways. The players were involved in, and ultimately responsible for, decisions relating to the game. Although each delegation brought coaches, during pre-match and post-match discussions, as well as during the match itself coaches were not allowed to provide any guidance or direction. It is important to note that I do not want to present Football3 as a utopia or as a wholly ‘good’; Football3 is not an experiment in alternative forms of sport, politics, and governance. It is a targeted intervention, focusing on populations that are identified as deficient, deviant, or in need of development—according to FIFA, they are populations that need to develop life skills, decision making, and fair play. It is a methodology that FIFA and Streetfootballworld are not promoting as an alternative to how football is currently organized and played. Interestingly, although the World Cups in 2010 and 2014 were rife with acts of corruption, exploitation, and human rights abuses, it has never been suggested that members and executives of FIFA submit a team to the FFH Festival so that they may learn decision making skills, discipline, and fair play. My interest in Football3 within the FFH Festival was based on Levitas’s (2013) utopia as architecture. Football3 provided potential alternatives. The way that the players controlled the process presented glimpses of an alternative and possibly better future, one in which the individualism and entrepreneurialism promoted through FFH is flipped on its head.

From the perspective of Manzo (2012) the focus on individualism and entrepreneurialism within FFH is indicative of its neoliberal underpinnings. This was also the case in my own observations of the FFH Festival and from analysing FFH documents. However, we can also see how alternative visions of entrepreneurialism could be understood, particularly through Football3. Although different conceptions of entrepreneurship have been explored within SDP (see Hayhurst, 2014; McSweeney, 2020), I believe that the entrepreneurialism demonstrated by participants within the Football3 matches offered something different and more diffuse. For example, in his discussion of social entrepreneurship within SDP, McSweeney (2020) offered an important critique of neoliberal approaches to SDP, however, his promotion of social entrepreneurship was still largely based within an understanding of SDP that privileged the work of NGOs. The consensus-based, horizontal, and collective decision-making demonstrated through Football3 pointed towards a form of entrepreneurialism that was more aligned with Hardt and Negri’s (2017) notion of democratic entrepreneurialism of the multitude. Similar to how scholars have discussed forms of governance and democracy arising out of social movement and liberation struggles (Fanon, 1963/2004; Graeber, 2013), the form of organizing that the football matches demonstrated during the FFH Festival both hinted at a different world and demonstrated how sport and social organizing might function in a different world. As Hardt and Negri discussed, social movements and collective action often rely on individual and collective attributes that are similarly promoted by supporters of neoliberalism and entrepreneurship. As Hardt and Negri outline, successful movements require individual and collective risk taking, creativity, persistence, innovation, and discipline. The distinction between these forms of entrepreneurialism is indicative of the distinctions between the abstract and concrete utopias that could be observed within FFH.