What would happen if we boycotted FIFA?

On Friday Stewart Regan, chief executive of the Scottish Football Association, said that UEFA, the 54 member governing body of European football, might consider boycotting FIFA competitions, including the World Cup. Regan also mentioned the possibility of establishing a rival global body. UEFA will consider a boycott when it meets this week in Berlin.

UEFA is the centre of world football. The biggest football leagues in the world are all located in Europe. Not only does it produce many of the world's best players, but those who do not come from Europe mostly play there. Four of the last five winners of the World Cup have been from Europe, and it has long been true that if qualification for the World Cup were based on sporting merit rather than continental quotas, there would be many more European countries in the finals. The European Championships (Euros) rival the World Cup in terms of interest and commercial power. So would UEFA really leave FIFA? And what would be the consequences if it did?

On the first point, it's not clear that UEFA will easily reach a consensus on action against FIFA. This is largely down to Russia, whose President so publicly endorsed Blatter before Friday's vote, and which will host the 2018 World Cup. If the rest of UEFA wished to secede, then Russia would have to resign.

I think a more serious problem might be that many in UEFA are genuinely committed to an internationalist perspective. Despite its shortcomings FIFA has presided over the rapid development of football in Africa and Asia over the last three decades, largely thanks to the redistribution of money generated by European broadcast and sponsorship rights sales (Visa, McDonalds and Coca-Cola may be American companies but they are to a large extent targeting European consumers with their World Cup sponsorships). In this cynical world it is worth noting that this redistribution has not generated massive protests from Europe—spreading the wealth has been good for everyone.

But just suppose that a majority of UEFA members agreed to boycott the next World Cup—what then? They would not allow FIFA to run its tournament with the rest of the world participating. Even without Europe the competition would generate a lot of interest and at the very least this would lead to discontent among European fans.

By far the most likely action would be to create a new tournament to run at the same time as the World Cup, and invite selected teams from around the world to compete alongside the European elite. The USA would of course jump at the chance, and Korea and Japan might easily be persuaded. If Brazil and Argentina could also be enticed then FIFA would be looking pretty threadbare.

Both competitions would fall short of a true World Cup, but the UEFA version would be the more attractive. If this were a competition based purely on consumer power, then UEFA would win hands down and FIFA would be destroyed. But then one suspects that the "sugar daddies" who have become so prominent in club football would make their presence felt. Clearly Russia and Qatar could be willing to bankroll FIFA to ensure that the tournament retained some prestige, and it is likely that China will in the not too distant future wish to be seen to be playing a role in the global body. Who knows what kinds of inducements could be offered to, say, Brazil?

As has happened in other sports, where splits of various sorts are all too common, it is perfectly possible for the two organisations to operate independently and relatively successfully, while denying consumers what they really want, which a truly global competition. There could be other nasty consequences. The freedom of players to move around the world has helped to raise the standard of the game everywhere and a break-up of the global governance system could lead to isolationism. In the extreme, the different federations might play to different rules on the field, making re-integration impossible.

But all that is a long way off. My own view is that UEFA will continue to campaign against Blatter, and where possible assist the US Justice Department in its campaign to root out corruption in FIFA, but will stop short of breaking up the global game. After all, who really wants to be the one to say that they were responsible for dismantling the World Cup?

Stefan Szymanski is the Stephen J. Galetti Collegiate Professor of Sport Management at the University of Michigan. His new book, Money and Football: A Soccernomics Guide is published on June 17