FIFA Mandates World Cup Drunkenness

At long last, we've identified the one cause FIFA will fight for: The right to sell their sponsors' beer.

The World Cup will be in Brazil in 2014, where soccer stadiums have been prohibited from selling alcohol since 2003. But FIFA will not have it, because FIFA has a special deal with Budweiser.

"Alcoholic drinks are part of the FIFA World Cup, so we're going to have them," FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke said in Rio de Janeiro this week. He was in town to visit stadiums and to press for the Brazilian Congress to pass a law for the Cup.

"Excuse me if I sound a bit arrogant but that's something we won't negotiate," Valcke added. "The fact that we have the right to sell beer has to be a part of the law."

There is nothing inherently wrong with standing up for cheap beer, but let us review, briefly, the standards we are dealing with here: FIFA will let sexism, homophobia, racism, religious intolerance, and rampant corruption pass—but not sobriety, goddammit.

Beer 'must be sold' at Brazil World Cup, says Fifa [BBC]