Nobody was ever particularly thrilled with Qatar winning the bid to host the 2022 World Cup — a decision that was met with a slew of criticism, for reasons ranging from the country’s unbearable heat to its abhorrent record of migrant labor abuse.

Even FIFA’s president Sepp Blatter admitted, last month, that giving the World Cup to the Gulf country was a “mistake” — though he seemed more concerned with the prospect of watching the game in 120-degree weather than with the human rights of the Nepali laborers building stadiums in similar temperatures.

Giving the World Cup to Qatar was a really stupid idea. Read more here.

But Qatar’s coveted spot as a host might now be in peril for a different reason — after new allegations emerged that soccer officials pocketed more than $5 million, in exchange for their favorable vote.

The latest bribery allegations — a recurring phenomenon in the history of World Cup bids, and hardly the first to implicate Qatari officials — followed an investigation by the Sunday Times of London, which obtained “a bombshell cache" of millions of emails, bank transfers, and other documents allegedly showing that Mohamed bin Hammam, a former member of FIFA’s executive committee, gave out millions in cash and gifts to help compensate for Qatar’s otherwise slim chances to win the cup.

The documents, which were leaked to the paper and will be released over the next weeks, were then handed over to Michael Garcia — FIFA’s top investigator and a former US attorney in New York. Garcia met with Qatari officials in Oman today, and said he will release his initial findings on June 9 — just one day before FIFA's congress and three days before the World Cup kicks off in São Paulo.

"After months of interviewing witnesses and gathering materials, we intend to complete that phase of our investigation by June 9, 2014, and to submit a report to the Adjudicatory Chamber approximately six weeks thereafter," Garcia said in a statement today. "The report will consider all evidence potentially related to the bidding process, including evidence collected from prior investigations."

If the allegations turn out to be true, they might mark the end of Qatar’s rocky run at the global event.

“The crooks of FIFA took the money and they gave the cup to Doha, to play in the Gulf summer, which is insane. It can’t happen,” Andrew Jennings, an investigative reporter who has written extensively about alleged FIFA corruption, told VICE News. “There has to be a vote. They have to drop it, nobody’s going to Doha. Do you like stepping over the bodies of dead construction workers? No, you don’t.”

The latest revelations hardly seemed to surprise fans of the game — many of whom are no fans of FIFA and its leadership. 

.@timandsid Qatar on pace to kill 4000 migrant workers constructing stadiums. That isnt problem for #FIFA but bribe suddenly is #TimandSid

— Nolan Haukeness (@Nolan_H) June 2, 2014

The @FIFAcom#EthicsInquiry into the #Qatar2022Bid must have @SeppBlatter shitting himself. On his solid gold #Qatari toilet.

— Richard J Perry (@Radula1976) June 2, 2014

But much of the public outcry about Qatar’s winning bid is more mundane, and has to do with the temperature, and the very unpopular proposal to move the event to the winter months, interrupting several European countries’ soccer seasons — and costing millions.

“Europe’s not gonna stand for this, and Europe’s all that matters, that’s a reality of money, not nationality. That’s where the money is, that’s where the best players are,” Jennings said, adding that money is what factored into the decision to give the World Cup to Qatar in the first place. "The World Cup is about getting construction contracts."

When similar accusations emerged in the past, the Qatar 2022 bid committee denied “all allegations of wrongdoing.”

But this time around, the evidence might just be too damning, and countries like Australia and Japan — whose bids lost out — are mounting pressure on FIFA to rerun the vote.

Palestine to seek FIFA sanctions against Israel, as Sepp Blatter visits the Middle East. Read more here.

Indeed, the association’s own vice-president has said he would be down for that.

“I certainly as a member of the executive committee would have absolutely no problem whatsoever if the recommendation was for a re-vote,” FIFA Vice-President Jim Boyce told the BBC. “If Garcia comes up with concrete evidence and concrete evidence is given to the executive committee and to FIFA, then it has to be looked at very seriously. The FIFA executive committee are 100 percent. He will be allowed to go and speak to anyone from around the world to complete his mission.”

He was not the only one. Lord Goldsmith, a member of an independent governance committee set up by FIFA after previous corruption scandals, also said there should be a new vote, if the allegations stand.

"If it is proved that the decision to give Qatar the World Cup was procured by — frankly one can describe it no other way — bribery and improper influence, then that decision ought not to stand," he told BBC Radio 4. "If FIFA is to emerge from the scandals, and this isn't the only one — there are other issues — it has to produce a convincing and transparent answer to these allegations, particularly to these hosting decisions."

A re-vote would be unprecedented, controversial, and probably very expensive. But not impossible.

But whether it happens or not, critics said, FIFA's already tarnished reputation — and the tarnished reputation of the association's embattled leader — gained nothing in the process.

“It’s a disaster. And Blatter can’t find a way out because his boys took the bribes, and he can’t turn on his own executive committee and say, ‘the bastards took the money, we’re out of here,’ because that would look pretty bad, for him and for FIFA,” Jennings said. “But they had to get out of it somehow, they had to find an exit door, and this only speeds up the process…. There will be a revote and I think the sponsors will insist it goes to America, where they can watch it.”

The US said that it would not take part in further bidding "until FIFA got its house in order," according to the Independent.

Hammam, the Qatari at the heart of the latest revelations, is no newbie to the world of FIFA scandals. Back in 2011, he was banned for life from the sport after being found guilty of bribing voters in FIFA's presidential election, but that vote was later annulled for lack of sufficient evidence.

Then in 2012, he was banned again for "conflict of interest" while he was at the helm of the Asian Football confederation, according to the Washington Post. Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup in 2010. At the same time, it was announced that the 2018 World Cup would be in Russia — another controversial pick.

The Sunday Times investigation alleges, among other things, that Hammam made payments of up to $335,000 into accounts controlled by the presidents of 30 African football associations to buy their support for Qatar. But there's more to come.

"There are two more weeks of it and it's going to be good stuff, because you never give it all away at once, you don't take all your clothes off on the first night," Jennings said. "This is how it works, FIFA is very, very corrupt."

“One has to say it like it is: FIFA is a load of corrupt shit that ruins our game. And these bums, these shoddy little thieves in Zürich, they’re not running my game,” he added. “FIFA is the enemy.”

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UEFA president Michel Platini told the French newspaper L'Equipe that there should be a re-vote on the 2022 World Cup if bribery allegations are proven true.

Platini, who has long been considered the most likely successor to Sepp Blatter as FIFA president, voted for Qatar back in 2010.

"I do not regret anything. I think it was the right choice for FIFA and world football. But if corruption is proven, there will need to be a new vote and sanctions," he told the paper.

His comments come after the Sunday Times dropped a bombshell report on corruption surrounding the 2022 voting process. According to "millions" of emails and documents obtained by the paper, ex-FIFA VP Mohamed Bin Hammam allegedly paid $5 million in bribes to secure votes for Qatar, largely to 30 African soccer officials.

Bin Hammam was banned from FIFA for life in 2012 because of a different bribery controversy when he was running for president of FIFA. 

The new allegations have prompted some key figures in world soccer to call for a re-vote. FIFA vice president Jim Boyce — one of the 24 officials on the FIFA executive committee that votes for World Cup hosts — also voiced his support for a re-vote if the allegations are proven true. 

Behind Blatter, Platini is perhaps the most influential person at FIFA. Until Blatter surprisingly announced his intentions to run for a fifth term as president in 2015, it was assumed that Platini would take over the organization. It's currently unclear if he will run against Blatter for president next year. 

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To determine the eight seeded teams at the 2014 World Cup, FIFA used the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking.

This points-based ranking system is oversimplified at best, and horribly flawed at worst. Yet it's an incredibly important factor in which teams will make it out of the group stage in Brazil.

The 32 teams at the World Cup are divided into eight groups. To keep the best teams from landing in the same group and eliminating each other right off the bat, FIFA puts the top seven teams in the world (plus the host nation) in separate groups.

And to determine the top seven teams in the world, FIFA uses its own rankings.

The formula FIFA uses is not an accurate representation of which are the best teams in the world. It ignores things like goal differential, home field advantage, and stakes — resulting in a crude list that doesn't give you a full picture of the international soccer landscape.

We'll get deeper into why it's so bad later on. But for now, let's break down the formula.

Teams get points for each international match based on four factors, and the final ranking consists of all a team's points over a four-year window. This is the formula:

Points = M (points for match result) * I (importance of match) * T (strength of opponent) * C (strength of confederation)

To explain each of those four factors a little further:

• M (points for match result): Teams get 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss.
• I (importance of match): This multiplier is fixed based on perceived importance of each competition, as follows: 
• Friendly game: 1.0
• World Cup qualifier: 2.5
• Confederation's Cup or confederation-level competition (like the Euros): 3.0
• World Cup game: 4.0

• T (strength of opponent): T=200 - (ranking of opponent). So if you play, 2nd-ranked Germany, T=198. And if you play 80th-ranked Haiti, T=120.
• C (strength of confederation): This multiplier is fixed by the perceived strength of each continent. The mean between the two numbers is used when teams from different continents play each other:
• Europe/South America: 1.0
• North/Central America: 0.88
• Asia/Africa: 0.86
• Oceania: 0.85

Multiply those four numbers together, and you get your FIFA ranking points for each game. Add up all of a team's points over a four-year window (with more recent games weighted more heavily), and you get its total FIFA ranking points.

The ranking takes the last four years of games into account, as follows:

• Four years ago: 20% weight
• Three years ago: 30% weight
• Two years ago: 50% weight
• Current year: 100% weight

So that's the entire formula.

The issues here are many.

1. It doesn't take into account goal differential. This is probably the biggest flaw. As Nate Silver wrote in his explanation for Soccer Power Index (his own ranking of teams), margin of victory is a more accurate predictor of team performance that simple wins and losses.

Since international soccer games are so infrequent, you have a small sample of data to use in the first place. By ignoring goal differential, FIFA is ignoring a massive set of data that could be used to differentiate teams from one another.

Not all wins, losses, and draws are created equal. England losing to Spain 1-0 is, in many ways, a good result. But the FIFA rankings treat it the same as a 5-0 beating.

2. It doesn't take into account home-field advantage. Silver says home field advantage in international soccer is worth 0.57 goals per game. That's an insanely high figure. The United States drawing Mexico 0-0 on the road (where they've only won once ever) is much, much more impressive than the United States drawing Mexico 1-1 at home.

FIFA treats all results exactly the same in a sport where we know home field advantage matters.

3. YOU GET ZERO POINTS FOR A LOSS NO MATTER WHAT. This is silly When teams play so few games, a ranking that treats every loss the same is going to be misleading. Argentina losing 1-0 to Bolivia at home is not that same as Argentina losing 1-0 to Brazil on the road. 

4. The "strength of confederation" metric is biased. Why not just use strength of team? The FIFA rankings assume that teams in Europe are inherently better than teams in Africa. There's no reason to give a team a bump in points for playing the worst team in Europe as opposed to the worst team in Africa. Just use team strength.

5. It doesn't take into account whether or a not a team plays its "A" team. FIFA tries to take relative team strength into account with it's "I (importance of match)" metric. But that number assumes team strength based on the specific competition — it assumes teams will always put out a weaker squad in less-important competitions and always put out a stronger squad in more-important competitions.

But that's not the case.

For instance, Italy officially qualified for the 2014 World Cup back in September with two qualifying games left. Those last two qualifying games were completely meaningless, and Italy fielded a more experimental team in two draws against Denmark and Armenia.

The FIFA ranking treats each team the same no matter which players are actually playing, or what the stakes are in that specific game.

FIFA has a really tough job here. As we said before, international teams sometimes only play a couple of meaningful games a year (and sometimes none at all). So determining a ranking of every team in the world with such a limited amount of information is tough.

But FIFA is ignoring important data that could make its ranking more accurate.

Here are the eight teams who were seeded at the World Cup, which was based on the October 2013 FIFA World Ranking:

1. Spain (ranked 1st)
2. Germany (ranked 2nd)
3. Argentina (ranked 3rd)
4. Colombia (ranked 4th)
5. Belgium (ranked 5th)
6. Switzerland (ranked 7th)
7. Uruguay (Ranked 6th)
8. Brazil (ranked 11th, but get an automatic seed as the host nation)

According to SPI— Nate Silver's super-complex ranking that uses things like goal differential and home field advantage, as well as player performance on the club level — these were the actual top-8 teams in the world at the time the top-eight World Cup seeds were determined:

1. Brazil
2. Argentina
3. Spain
4. Germany
5. Chile
6. Colombia
7. France
8. Uruguay

Chile and France were replaced by Switzerland and Belgium. At the World Cup, Spain and Chile are in the same group, despite being two of five best teams in the world according to a more accurate ranking system. Belgium, on the other hand, landed in the easiest group.

The strength of your group determines everything in the World Cup. And based on the discrepancy between FIFA and SPI, many of the groups in Brazil are mis-seeded.

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As Brazil gears up for the World Cup beginning June 12, one of the worst droughts in decades is straining the country’s electricity supply, threatening to cause rolling blackouts, and it could force the government to restrict Brazilians’ power consumption later this year.

Reservoirs that churn hydroelectric generators provide Brazil’s power grid with more than two-thirds of its supply, according to U.S. government data. Hydroelectric power can be cheap but depends on rainfall.

“Are we completely free from blackouts? No, not completely,” José Rosenblatt, a director at  PSR, an energy consultancy based in Rio de Janeiro, said. “We still might have one during the World Cup.”

Brazil has faced severe criticism for its planning and construction duties as host for the every-four-years event.

There have been concerns about delays in upgrading the country’s airports. An estimated 3.7 million people are set to travel to Brazil during the World Cup and, with the vast distances between host venues and the lack of a rail network, almost all of it will be by air. It is thought that many of the renovations will now be delayed until after the World Cup.

Intermittent blackouts one day in February, during record heat and low reservoir levels, affected 6 million people in 13 states. Brazilian government officials insisted the power failures weren't caused by overcapacity or surging demand on the grid, but the blackout occurred when Brazilians wanted more air conditioning, the primary energy hog in a household.

After the blackouts, several power regulators and energy consultants recommended that Brazil’s heavily populated areas reduce power consumption.  Regulator Aneel suggested the government should impose preventative rationing of 5 percent below normal consumption, and PSR suggested 6 percent rationing, to preserve water in the reservoirs and prevent dangerously low water levels of below 10 percent of their capacity.

But so far President Dilma Rousseff has vowed there will be no electricity rationing or service interruptions. Enforced power rationing would be a major setback for her as she campaigns for re-election in a national vote in October.  

“By our estimates there is a 46 percent chance that reservoirs will reach this critical level [below 10 percent capacity] by the end of November or earlier, but not much earlier,” Rosenblatt said. “It all depends on how dry this dry season is.”

If a blackout were to occur during the World Cup, the 12 stadiums would theoretically remain lit from back-up generators, but cities and their hotels, roads and public transit would go dark.

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The mesmerising wizardry of Lionel Messi and the muscular grace of Cristiano Ronaldo are joys to behold. But for deep-dyed internationalists like this newspaper, the game's true beauty lies in its long reach, from east to west and north to south. Football, more than any other sport, has thrived on globalisation. Nearly half of humanity will watch at least part of the World Cup, which kicks off in Brazil on June 12th.

So it is sad that the tournament begins under a cloud as big as the Maracanã stadium. Documents obtained by Britain's Sunday Times have allegedly revealed secret payments that helped Qatar win the hosting rights to the World Cup in 2022 (see page 63). If that competition was fixed, it has company. A report by FIFA, football's governing body, is said to have found that several exhibition matches were rigged ahead of the World Cup in 2010. And as usual, no one has been punished.

This only prompts other questions. Why on earth did anyone think holding the World Cup in the middle of the Arabian summer was a good idea? Why is football so far behind other sports like rugby, cricket and tennis in using technology to doublecheck refereeing decisions? And why is the world's greatest game led by such a group of mediocrities, notably Sepp Blatter, FIFA's boss since 1998?

In any other organisation, the endless financial scandals would have led to his ouster years ago. But more than that, he seems hopelessly out of date; from sexist remarks about women to interrupting a minute's silence for Nelson Mandela after only 11 seconds, the 78-year-old is the sort of dinosaur that left corporate boardrooms in the 1970s. Nor is it exactly heartening that the attempts to stop Mr Blatter enjoying a fifth term are being led by Michel Platini, Europe's leading soccercrat, who was once a wonderful midfielder but played a woeful role in supporting the Qatar bid.

Our Cheating Rotten Scoundrels Are Better Than Yours

Many football fans are indifferent to all this. What matters to them is the beautiful game, not the tired old suits who run it. And FIFA's moral turpitude is hardly unique. The International Olympic Committee, after all, faced a Qatar-like scandal over the awarding of the winter games in 2002 (though it has made a much bigger attempt to clean itself up).

The boss of Formula One, Bernie Ecclestone, stands accused of bribery in Germany, while American basketball has just had to sack an owner for racist remarks. Cricket, the second-most-global sport, has had its own match-fixing scandals. American football could be overwhelmed by compensation claims for injuries.

But football fans are wrong to think there is no cost to all this. First, corruption and complacency at the top makes it harder to fight skulduggery on the pitch. Ever larger amounts of money are now being bet on each game--it may be $1 billion a match at the World Cup. Under external pressure to reform, FIFA has recently brought in some good people, including a respected ethics tsar, Mark Pieth. But who will listen to lectures about reform from an outfit whose public face is Mr Blatter?

Second, big-time corruption isn't victimless; nor does it end when a host country is chosen. For shady regimes--the type that bribe football officials--a major sporting event is also a chance to defraud state coffers, for example by awarding fat contracts to cronies. Tournaments that ought to be national celebrations risk becoming festivals of graft.

Finally, there is a great opportunity cost. Football is not as global as it might be (see pages 23-28). The game has failed to conquer the world's three biggest countries: China, India and America. In the United States soccer, as they call it, is played but not watched. In China and India the opposite is true. The latter two will not be playing in Brazil (indeed, they have played in the World Cup finals just once between them).

In FIFA's defence, the big three's reticence owes much to their respective histories and cultures and the strength of existing sports, notably cricket in India. And football is slowly gaining ground: in the United States the first cohort of American parents to grow up with the game are now passing it on to their children. But that only underlines the madness of FIFA giving the cup to Qatar, not America. And the foul air from FIFA's headquarters in Switzerland will hardly reassure young fans in China who are heartily sick of the corruption and match-fixing in their domestic soccer leagues.

A Seppless World

It would be good to get rid of Mr Blatter, but that would not solve FIFA's structural problem. Though legally incorporated as a Swiss non-profit organisation, FIFA has no master. Those who might hold it to account, such as national or regional football organisations, depend on its cash. High barriers to entry make it unlikely that a rival will emerge, so FIFA has a natural monopoly over international football. An entity like this should be regulated, but FIFA answers to no government.

All the same, more could be done. The Swiss should demand a clean-up or withdraw FIFA's favourable tax status. Sponsors should also weigh in on graft and on the need to push forward with new technology: an immediate video review of every penalty and goal awarded would be a start.

The hardest bit of the puzzle is the host-selection process. One option would be to stick the World Cup in one country and leave it there; but that nation's home team would have a big advantage, and tournaments benefit from moving between different time zones. An economically rational option would be to give this year's winner, and each successive champion, the option of either hosting the tournament in eight years' time or auctioning off that right to the highest bidder. That would favour football's powerhouses. But as most of them already have the stadiums, there would be less waste--and it would provide even more of an incentive to win.

Sadly, soccer fans are romantic nationalists, not logical economists--so our proposal stands less chance of winning than England does. One small step towards sanity would be formally to rotate the tournament, so it went, say, from Europe to Africa to Asia to the Americas, which would at least stop intercontinental corruption. But very little of this will happen without change at the top in Zurich.

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"Last Week Tonight" host John Oliver did a 13-minute segment on FIFA on his HBO show Sunday night.

It was masterful.

He touched on nearly every contemporary criticism of the organization, ripping them for everything from 2014 World Cup costs to Qatar's abysmal human-rights record.

The litany of things he talked about:

• The $270-million stadium in Manaus— an Amazon outpost without a professional team and no need for a giant soccer stadium.
• FIFA reaping the profits of the World Cup while leaving Brazil with the costs.
• FIFA forcing Brazil to repeal a public-safety law that banned the sale of alcohol in stadiums: "FIFA seemed anxious to protect Budweiser from a law designed to protect people."
• FIFA's tax-exempt status as a nonprofit, even though it has $1 billion in the bank: "When your rainy-day fund is so big you've got to check it for swimming cartoon ducks, you might not be a nonprofit anymore."
• FIFA's propaganda film.
• Sepp Blatter saying the way to boost interest in women's soccer is by having the players wear tighter shorts.

The best part of the 13-minute segment was about the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Here's Oliver talking about the heat and bribes:

"You are hosting the World Cup somewhere where soccer cannot physically be played. That's like if the NFL chose to host the Super Bowl in a lake."

"There are now allegations that some FIFA executives took bribes to put the World Cup in Qatar. And I hope that's true, because otherwise it makes literally no sense."

Here's the full video:

SEE ALSO: 17 Reasons Why The Qatar World Cup Is Going To Be A Disaster

NOW WATCH: 13 Surprising Facts About Brazil

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As Qatar's World Cup continues to sink deeper into controversy, more and more people are calling for a re-vote to decide if the 2022 tournament should be moved.

Last week, UEFA president Michel Platini called for a re-vote if bribery allegations are proven to be true.

Now, FIFA, the governing body of the World Cup and international soccer, is receiving pressure from the companies that give the most money to the organization according to BBC Sport.

Five of FIFA's top six sponsors, have issued statements expressing concern of the possibility of wrongdoing in the bidding that awarded the World Cup to Qatar.

The sponsors that have issued letters of concern are Sony, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Visa, and Hyundai/Kia.

Of the top six sponsors, only Emirates Airlines has so far declined to issue a statement.

Adidas may have had the most telling words in their letter saying, "The negative tenor of the public debate around Fifa at the moment is neither good for football nor for Fifa and its partners."

It is one thing when fans or even presidents of football associations call for a re-vote. But it is something else when such high-profile sponsors start to hint that they will back away if negative publicity lingers.

Other sponsors have also expressed concerns, including Oil giant BP and InBev, the maker of Budweiser beer.

The United States is the favorite to host the 2022 World Cup if Qatar is stripped of the tournament.

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Budweiser, McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson, Continental Tire, and … Yingli?

The list of official sponsors of the 2014 soccer World Cup, starting in Brazil this week, includes plenty of household names. But most Americans won't recognize at least one of them.

Based in Baoding, China, Yingli is the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And its high profile sponsorship of the soccer fest marks something of a global coming out for the brand. 

The marketing deal is also part of a major push by the company into Latin American markets, where the growth possibilities for solar power are huge, thanks to the combination of abundant sunshine and relatively high electricity prices.

“Boosting name recognition and brand awareness is most critical for us in emerging markets like Latin America,” Yingli’s Vice President of Global Marketing Judy Lee said in an email.

“Many of our potential customers have not yet developed established relationships with PV [photovoltaic, the process that converts sunlight into electricity] suppliers, so we have the opportunity to take first-mover advantage in burgeoning, high-potential solar markets.”

Yingli’s role in the fight against carbon emissions and climate change provides a sharp counterpoint to the criticism that Chinese companies operating in Latin America and other developing regions have little regard for the environment.

The company already has a presence in the region, with offices in Mexico City, Sao Paulo and the Chilean capital, Santiago. Last year it sold a total of 45 megawatts of solar panels here, enough to power 225,000 households.

It calculates that will have stopped 80,000 tons of carbon dioxide from being pumped into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.

Latin America actually represents less than five percent of the company’s total 2013 sales, but Yingli hopes to increase that share to more than 10 percent in 2015, even as global revenues rise.

In the final quarter of last year, sales in Latin America jumped 114 percent. The company also acquired 44 new wholesale customers in the region, a rise of 118 percent, in 2013.

Beyond the abundant sunshine — the only Latin American nation completely outside the tropics is Uruguay — there are other reasons why solar power has huge growth potential here.

Electricity prices are often relatively high, making solar more competitive. And more countries are introducing “net-metering.” That allows homes or businesses with solar power to feed surplus electricity back into the grid in a process that often leaves their electricity meters literally whirring backwards.

The region’s two largest economies, Brazil and Mexico, already have net-metering, along with Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama, says Yingli’s Jeff Barnett. Chile is expected to join them soon.

Meanwhile, many households in remote rural communities, still unconnected to electrical grids, are already installing solar panels. In 2013, 31 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, 7 percent of the total population, still had no main source of electricity. 

Nevertheless, Latin America is such a promising market, says Barnett, that it is already being driven without the kinds of incentives that US states like California and European nations such as Spain offer, including subsidies for the cost of installing panels on a roof.

Yet the economics vary dramatically across the region, depending on cloud cover and grid prices.

Payback, the time it takes for a customer to break even after spending thousands of dollars to install solar panels by saving on energy bills, can vary from three years to well over a decade, depending on local conditions.

“Take a small country like Costa Rica, which has numerous microclimates,” adds Barnett. “You can drive a few hours from [the capital] San Jose and have six very different payback scenarios.”

For those customers who do decide the payback period is worth it, Chinese solar may be their only option.

The Asian giant now produces roughly 80 percent of the world’s PV panels, after increasing its production capacity tenfold since 2008, according to Usha Haley, a professor at West Virginia University.

The other leading manufacturers competing with Yingling are all Chinese. US and European manufacturers are almost nowhere in sight.

But the company is not without critics, adds Haley, who has authored a book about China’s alleged flouting of World Trade Organization rules.

She says Chinese solar panels have dropped in price about 30 percent a year thanks to Beijing’s illegal subsidies — a charge Yingli denies — making it tough for others to compete.

Haley also contends that China’s domination of the global solar panel industry is just sharp-elbowed economic opportunism rather than the result of any commitment from Beijing to the environment.

The proof, she says, is that only two percent of all the solar panels currently installed in the world are actually inside China.

"I have a great respect for the Chinese government's ability to commit to a policy and implement it,” says Haley — for good or ill. “The scale of renewable energy installations in China is abysmal. You can see the air you breathe."

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The FIFA World Cup is going to shatter internet traffic records, according to Cisco's State of the Internet Report.

The global soccer tournament, which begins this week, is predicted to generate a mind-boggling 4.3 exabytes of IP traffic. That's the same amount of traffic the entire country of Brazil (the World Cup's host country) generates in three months. 

What's more, Cisco claims that the mobile traffic generated by 60,000 people in a soccer stadium will surpass the busy-hour traffic of Brazil's 94 million smartphone users. This isn't as shocking because most Brazilian smartphone are more likely to get online for messaging, whereas visiting soccer fans will be uploading and viewing large image and video files.

The Cisco report then breaks down future internet usage in terms we can understand: watching the World Cup and streaming HBO's "Game of Thrones."

The company predicts 132 exabytes of traffic by 2018, which it claims is equivalent to:

• 8.8 billion people streaming the World Cup final (on 4K HDTVs) simultaneously
  
• 5.5 billion people watching Season 4 of "Game of Thrones" in HD simultaneously
• 4.5 trillion YouTube clips

In case you wanted to break down that data in measurable terms, that's 940 quadrillion text messages. Current projections put the world population at around 7.5 billion by 2018, so using the entire internet to watch the 2018 World Cup seems out of reach. 

SEE ALSO: Here Are The Favorites To Win The World Cup

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Brazil—as two recent book titles point out, and almost any kid kicking a ball anywhere in the world can tell you—is the country of soccer.

While the modern sport’s actual birthplace is England, Brazil is the spiritual center of the sport.

Brazil, whose beloved canarinho team is the only one to play in all World Cups and to have won five, perfected the English invention, inspiring a more poetic, fluid version of the game.

And while Brazil made modern soccer, the extent to which soccer made modern Brazil is often underappreciated.

The sport landed in Brazil (and throughout Latin America) at the moment of the creation of the modern nation state, in the late 19th century. As a result it tied into the historical narratives—the stories that Brazilians crafted about themselves—that underpinned the nascent nation. Soccer helped to knit Brazil together into one country in the early 20th century and played a key role in incorporating people of African descent into the polity.

Soccer arrived in Brazil in the 1890s, brought by British workers and Anglo-Brazilian youth who were returning from school in England. At first played in elite social clubs like the São Paulo Athletic Club, the sport soon diffused downwards to the masses, and by the first decades of the 20th century was already the most popular sport in the country.

Most soccer histories in Latin America suggest two separate “births”—the foreign birth marked by arrival of sport and the dominance of expatriate teams; and the national birth, when the local youth began to beat the Europeans at their game. In Brazil a third birth exists: when Afro-Brazilians enter the field in large numbers.

The first Afro-Brazilians played on major clubs in the 1910s—Arthur Friedenreich, Joaquim Prado, and others—but their inclusion was controversial. Freidenreich would straighten his hair and others would put on rice powder in efforts to lighten themselves.

And Afro-Brazilian inclusion created political tensions as well. Though Brazil instituted universal male suffrage in 1891, slavery had ended only in 1888, and Afro-Brazilians were not considered a full part of the nation. Nor were they welcome on the field. The first mixed race team to win a top league championship in Brazil was the Rio team Vasco da Gama, in 1923. The following year the league changed the rules so that the club was no longer eligible to play, and though by 1925 Vasco was back in the top flight, the place of Afro-Brazilians in soccer and Brazilian society more broadly was hardly secure.

But racial divisions began to break down in the 1930s for a number of reasons. The rise to power of Getulio Vargas signaled changes both in the state structure and in Brazilian society. Vargas ended regional power struggles, and at the same time searched for elements of quintessentially Brazilian culture to unify the nation. He promoted capoeira—the Afro-Brazilian martial art that had been vilified and associated with supposed Afro-Brazilian criminality—and samba, until then a dance of the poor and the African-descended population.

While capoeira and dance mattered, soccer was already the king of sports, and its influence only grew during the Vargas years. In the 1930s the racial dynamics of soccer began to change as the sport became more inclusive. Professionalization in 1933 opened the doors for more Afro-Brazilians to play, but there was also a greater willingness to select Afro-Brazilians to play on the national team.

Brazilians wanted the best team, not one that reflected an idealized “white” nation. Historians point to the inclusion of Afro-Brazilians Domingos da Guia and Leônidas da Silva on the 1938 World Cup squad as the turning point for racial inclusion in Brazilian soccer. And when Leônidas was named player of the tournament in France—where Brazil finished third—it encouraged discussion, and appreciation, for the contributions of people of African heritage to Brazil. That is, success on the soccer field opened up a broader space in the public sphere for Brazilians to debate their racial heritage.

Gilberto Freyre deserves to be credited with an important assist in the shifting of attitudes, alongside Leônidas da Guia and their 1938 teammates. A noted anthropologist, Freyre covered the World Cup for the Correio da Manhã newspaper. In his transatlantic dispatches, he lauded the “courage” of the Brazilian federation to send a “clearly Afro-Brazilian” team to the World Cup.

Freyre suggested that Brazil’s brand of soccer dominated Europe (da Silva did not play the semifinal match) because of this African heritage, which in his Freyre’s eyes brought spontaneity, passion, improvisation, and guile to the team. The supposed irrationality of Brazil’s African roots allowed the team to outclass most of its European rivals.

Freyre’s sports journalism tied into the idea of Brazil as a racial democracy, which he had proposed a few years earlier in his magnum opus The Master and the Slaves.

The book argued that all Brazilians carried some blackness in them, if only because of the “mammy who rocked us to sleep,” or the “mulatto girl [who] gave us our first complete sensation of being a man.” Notwithstanding its underlying racism and sexism, Freyre’s work was radical in its time, and both The Masters and the Slaves and his more popularly accessible journalism helped to foster a reevaluation of who was Brazilian and what Brazil should look like.

Not surprisingly, not everyone agreed that Brazil should be more inclusive. To the contrary, many continued to hold that Brazil’s population of African descent not only held the soccer team back, but impeded the development of the nation as a whole.

They remained concerned with the negative impact of the black population both in soccer and in society more broadly. Moreover, many worried that the outside world—particularly Europe—perceived Brazil as uncivilized and feared that Afro-Brazilian players would reinforce that attitude.

These fears surfaced in 1950, when Brazil hosted the World Cup, and again at the 1954 tournament in Switzerland. In 1950 Brazil needed only a tie in the final game to win the tournament. Two hundred thousand fans packed into Rio’s Maracanã stadium—which was still unfinished—expecting a carnival. Instead, they saw Brazil defeated by a supposedly weaker Uruguayan team.

Blame for the defeat fell on two players—goaltender Moaçir Barbosa and defenseman João Ferreira—of African descent. Both were accused of being too passive and too easily intimidated, and neither would play for Brazil again. The 1954 World Cup again brought defeat, to Hungary in the quarterfinals.

Again, that loss was blamed on the “mongrel” nature of Brazil and its citizens. The head of the Brazilian delegation blamed the failure on the “physiognomy” of the Brazilian people. Worse, the English press called the Brazilian squad “a mob of hysterical negroids.”

Both losses reinforced the idea, current among many Brazilian intellectuals, that the nation’s “racial cocktail” caused players—and the country as a whole—to crumble in the face of pressure. In short, the losses in 1950 and 1954 were interpreted as an indication of the inferiority of the Brazilian people. While soccer had the power to unite the country around race, it also had the capacity to divide.

But 1958 told a different story—one that united Brazil once and for all around the idea of a racially mixed nation. 1958 is of course the year that Brazil first won the World Cup and at which time the whole world really came to know the jogo bonito—the beautiful game—that was based on the play of Pelé, Garrincha, and others. From that point on there was at least general agreement that Brazil had a mixed race heritage and that people of African descent played an important part in society.

This is not to suggest a state of complete racial harmony or equality. Afro-Brazilians still lag well behind their white compatriots in most social indicators. While Brazil hovers around the 80th spot in the Human Development Index, when disaggregated for race, white Brazil ranks around 40th and black Brazil around 120th. Nevertheless, for the better part of the 20th century, soccer helped to knit together a racially diverse nation.

Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, the sport may pull the nation apart again. Protests have been a regular part of life in Brazil since last summer, when a rise in bus fares touched off a wave of street demonstrations that brought millions of Brazilians into the streets during the Confederations Cup, and soon enough FIFA and World Cup expenditures became focal points of the protests.

Brazilians have legitimate cause for protest. Government services lag well behind those of nations with similar tax rates; hospitals and schools are woefully underfunded.

These concerns have only been exacerbated by the cost of hosting the World Cup.

Initial estimates for stadium construction have more than tripled due to cost overruns and corruption, with Brazilian taxpayers covering the vast majority of the cost.

Many of the promised infrastructure projects—those with long-term benefits for Brazil—have been scaled back or canceled outright.

When Brazil was first awarded this World Cup back in 2007, the news was met with almost universal acclaim and joy, for what the tournament would say about the nation’s identity and development.

Now, on the eve of the World Cup, many Brazilians are legitimately torn, apprehensive, and even angry about what the tournament, and its preparations, say about the nation’s development.

But let’s hope that in the days ahead we also see an outpouring of pride and joy at the seemingly more ephemeral legacy the sport has bequeathed Brazil—its mutiracial, pluralistic national identity. 

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When soccer’s world governing body FIFA announced in August 2000 that future World Cup hosting duties would be rotated by continent, the decision seemed like a victory for countries outside the game’s traditional elites.

Earlier that summer, favorites South Africa had controversially lost the hosting rights for the 2006 World Cup to Germany.

At the time, no African nation had hosted the tournament, and no nation outside of Europe and North America had done so for more than two decades. Asia was only about to receive its first opportunity, with the 2002 World Cup slated to take place in Japan and South Korea, but the Germany decision suggested Europe’s stranglehold was still firmly in place—and in need of addressing.

South Africa became the first beneficiary of rotation, winning the rights to the 2010 World Cup, and hosting an event that was widely lauded—infrastructure projects were completed on time, the tournament attracted more than 300,000 tourists, and the wave of crime predicted by naysayers never materialized. In awarding the tournament to a developing country, FIFA, so frequently criticized for its own excesses, seemed to have turned a new leaf.

In fact, South Africa seemed to have benefited from hosting the World Cup by all but one vector of success: the accounting sheet. After $5 billion in outlays – equivalent to half of South Africa’s annual healthcare budget – the tournament generated revenues of just $500 million. A brief spike in employment in the country’s construction sector subsided when major infrastructure projects were completed. South Africa’s economic bounce, widely foretold by consultants and lobbyists prior to the tournament, was more of a splat.

More: Do you think inequality is bad in the U.S? See what it’s like in European sports.

Worse still, the country’s financial losses actually continued over time. Take the long-running infrastructure costs associated with Cape Town Stadium, the 55,000 capacity arena built from scratch, at a cost of about $600 million, to host the city’s allotment of World Cup matches.

In the four years following the stadium’s completion, maintenance costs outstripped revenues by a factor of 4:1, with net losses over that period amounting to about $40 million. While one of the city’s soccer teams has subsequently moved into the venue, it’s hardly affecting the stadium’s balance sheet: supporters rarely fill the first tier of seats, and ticket prices start at just $4. Some locals have even suggested that the stadium should be demolished, so that maintenance funds can be put to better use.

Why did Cape Town get stuck with a costly, unsustainable stadium? The problem, it turns out, wasn’t lack of foresight from local officials.

In fact, two other existing stadiums were proposed to host Cape Town’s games: one in an economically depressed region of the Cape Flats called Athlone, another in the wealthier suburb of Newlands. Renovations at either venue might have been more sustainable for local taxpayers: Athlone is already a regional soccer hub, while Newlands regularly hosts sold-out rugby matches. And Athlone would have benefited particularly from the injection of tourist euros and dollars that comes with hosting World Cup soccer matches.

Instead, FIFA president Sepp Blatter insisted that Cape Town’s stadium be built on the city’s picture postcard Atlantic seaboard. The decision, by all accounts, was motivated purely by aesthetics, but for reasons never made clear, President Thabo Mbeki and his cabinet took sides with Blatter. Members of Mbeki’s ANC party at the provincial and local level were ordered to ditch Athlone and Newlands, and when the ANC lost its mayoral seat in 2006, the city’s new mayor was told that Cape Town would lose its status as a host city if it attempted to revisit the issue.

Cape Town’s experiences seem symptomatic of the bigger problem: once a country like South Africa has secured the World Cup, FIFA can bully and maneuver its way around local economic considerations. FIFA’s bottom line comes first. Even as South Africa was hemorrhaging money over the 2010 tournament, FIFA was earning billions in television rights, sponsorship, and marketing sales.

Now it’s Brazil turn. The country has spent upwards of $12 billion – three times more than South Africa – on a four-week tournament that is set to bring in FIFA’s largest ever cash windfall. The scale of spending has even prompted widespread protests.

Meanwhile, under pressure from Europe and North America, FIFA has subsequently abandoned its World Cup rotation policy. It may be the best thing that it’s ever done for the developing world.

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Plagued by delays and opposition at home, the World Cup in Brazil might be a turning point for sporting mega-events, forcing soccer's governing body and the International Olympic Committee to accept less ambitious bids to reduce the risk of public backlash.

Described by Brazil's government as "the Cup to end all Cups," the tournament kicked off on Thursday to a backdrop of controversy and concern.

The world soccer organization, FIFA, is facing corruption allegations over how Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup as well as match-fixing claims, fewer countries are keen to host big events and even some sponsors are starting to question the "halo effect" of associating with them.

Ever since the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, which set the gold standard, large sporting events have been increasingly used to drive infrastructure projects and try to regenerate cities.

Sports economists and sources inside FIFA say Brazil, the most expensive World Cup ever at an estimated cost of $11.3 billion, has shown both the limits and the risks of this model.

Although the nature of the bidding process means countries able to splurge on state-of-the-art stadiums will still attract support, there is a growing sense among the populations of cities and nations considering being hosts for major sporting events that bigger is not always better.

"I think we are at a turning point in the history of mega-events and I think the turning point will lead to a very much reduced ambition towards infrastructure connected with these events," said Wolfgang Meaning, a professor at Hamburg University who specializes in sports economics.

For Maennig, who won Olympic gold at Seoul 1988 as a German rower, big sporting events have become so political and controversial they risk losing both corporate sponsors and countries willing to host them.

He points to the IOC's difficulty in finding a country to hold the 2022 Winter Olympics. Germany's Munich and Switzerland's St. Moritz-Davos both withdrew planned bids when people in the two places voted 'no' in referendums, leaving the IOC scrambling for a suitable candidate.

In Brazil, which will also host the 2016 Olympics, protests and strikes have dominated the public mood since millions took to the streets during a World Cup warm-up last June to bemoan poor public services.

"The positive to be taken out of Brazil is that we have learnt from it and will do things differently next time," one FIFA source said. The source added that FIFA should have insisted that Brazil cut the number of host cities from 12, which would have reduced the number of potential problems with unfinished infrastructure, and made good on the threat to move games if venues weren’t quite ready for prime time.

Soccer’s European body UEFA has already got the message - reducing the burden on any one country for its European Championship, with the 2020 tournament to be played in 13 cities across Europe. 

Flat-Out Nervous

For sponsors the equation may be changing too, as negative headlines have swelled from the usual trickle to a flood.

Sponsors took the rare decision to speak out on the corruption probe into Qatar's bid, with Adidas saying the negative debate around FIFA "is neither good for football nor for FIFA and its partners." Coca-Cola was similarly outspoken.

"The minute soccer moves from the sports pages to the political pages I think sponsors have to get concerned because their message is getting crowded," said David Carter, director of the Sports Business Institute at the University of Southern California.

"People are flat-out nervous," he said. "The last thing you can afford when you're investing hundreds of millions of dollars into a global sports opportunity is to have to cross your fingers and hope for it to turn out alright."

Carter said the price FIFA commands from sponsors was at risk of going down if they saw less benefit from being directly connected with FIFA and the World Cup. Still, that is unlikely to happen anytime soon given that sponsorship deals are usually organized over many tournaments - Adidas for example has signed up as a FIFA sponsor until 2030.

And the mega-events remain very healthy on some levels. For example, the prices for television rights have continued to rise with little sign of abating.

Sixty percent of Brazilians now think hosting the Cup is bad for Brazil, according to a recent poll, and thousands have marched nationwide carrying banners telling FIFA to "go home."

Brazil may have exploded with street parties as its team won the opening game on Thursday but scattered violent protests were a reminder that many locals remain angry over the cost of the tournament.

One source working at a leading World Cup sponsor said the firm had been forced to change its marketing strategy in response to public negativity surrounding this year's event.

However, Andrew Sneyd, an executive at World Cup sponsor Budweiser responsible for marketing, was more upbeat on Brazil, saying it was Budweiser's largest campaign to date and no adjustments had been made in response to local opposition.

Change Not Easy

Changing the way these events are structured is not easy.

In countries other than the most advanced soccer economies like Britain or Germany, stadiums have to be built and infrastructure improved to put on events like the World Cup.

The challenge is how to make them less ambitious and less controversial without excluding developing nations who almost always need to invest heavily to get venues up to standard.

A different FIFA source said there was a growing awareness of the social and economic responsibility that came with putting on the World Cup but that the bidding process remained one of faith - you have to trust the country chosen will deliver on its promises.

Still, the tide seems to be turning because of growing popular resistance to huge spending on sporting events.

For Maennig the answer lies in bids that are more collaborative with the local population.

"I am pushing my home city Berlin to have a completely different Olympic bid (for 2024) by asking residents to participate in an Olympic concept they would be in favor of,” he said.

(Editing by Todd Benson, Kieran Murray and Martin Howell)

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It's not just morons throwing bananas on the field.

Far-right political parties are gaining ground in France and the Netherlands.

Most of Germany's soccer hooligans are now neo-Nazis. And this spring, Switzerland voted to curb immigration, defying the spirit of laws that allow citizens freedom of movement across the European Union.

But amid all the bad blood, has anyone thought about how sending immigrants packing would affect the teams playing the world's greatest game?

Broadly defining “foreigner” as anyone with at least one foreign-born parent, Switzerland would lose two-thirds of its players.

France and the Netherlands might be knocked out of contention. And Algeria, Ghana, Turkey or even Suriname could win it all.

Here's how the world's best would stack up in a World Cup with no first-generation immigrants.

(Odds come from here, and stats from here.) 

Group A: Brazil, Croatia, Mexico, Cameroon 

A heavy favorite in their real-world group, Brazil retains all of its star players in the no-immigrants-allowed version. Better still, Brazil picks up a few more of its nationals from other country's teams: Shakhtar Donetsk striker Eduardo Alves da Silva and Getafe midfielder Jorge Sammir Cruz Campos from Croatia, and Real Madrid defender Kepler Laveran Lima Ferreira from Portugal.

Brazil

Croatia

A heavy favorite in their real-world group, Brazil retains all of its star players in the no-immigrants-allowed version. Better still, Brazil picks up a few more of its nationals from other country's teams: Shakhtar Donetsk striker Eduardo Alves da Silva and Getafe midfielder Jorge Sammir Cruz Campos from Croatia, and Real Madrid defender Kepler Laveran Lima Ferreira from Portugal.

Although Croatia has only a slim shot at winning the real Group A, it would gain ground if it got some of the Balkan immigrants back from other teams. In the no-immigrant tourney, it keeps Bayern Munich striker Mario Mandzukic, Hull striker Nikica Jelavic, and Queens Park Rangers midfielder Niko Kranjcar.

As noted above, it loses da Silva to Brazil. But if we're generous about allotting the players from the former Yugoslavia, Croatia could get Napoli midfielder Blerim Dzemaili (born in Macedonia) and Bayern Munich midfielder Xherdan Shaqiri (born in Kosovo) from Switzerland. (We'll send Real Sociedad striker Haris Seferovic, whose parents came from Sanski Most, and FC Zurich striker Mario Gavranovic, whose parents are from Gradacac, to Bosnia-Herzegovina).

Group B: Spain, Netherlands, Chile, Australia

Spain

 Despite its proximity to Africa and a decade-long boom that saw immigrants swell from 2 percent to 12 percent of the population in 2010, Spain retains more than a 50-50 chance of winning Group B in our immigrants-barred game.

It keeps Barcelona striker Pedro Eliezer Rodriguez Ledesma, Barcelona defender Jordi Alba Ramos, Atletico Madrid striker David Villa, Manchester United midfielder Juan Mata, Real Madrid defender Sergio Ramos, and Manchester City striker Alvaro Negredo.

But it loses Manchester City striker David Silva, whose mother is from Japan and whose father is from the Canary Islands.

Netherlands

The Dutch keep Manchester United striker Martin van Persie, Hamburger SV midfielder Rafael van der Vaart, Bayern Munich winger Arjen Robben, and Schalke striker Klaas-Jan Huntelaar. But we're taking back Dynamo Kviv striker Jeremain Lens, Swansea City goalkeeper Michel Vorm, and AC Milan midfielder Nigel de Jong — all of whom have roots in Suriname.

We'll also take Norwich City midfielder Leroy Fer, whose grandfather played for Curacao. And we'll grab Feyenoord defender Rolando Maximiliano "Bruno" Martins, born in Portugal, and Swansea City midfielder Jonathan de Guzman, whose father was born in Jamaica.

Group C: Colombia, Ivory Coast, Japan, Greece

Colombia

 Colombia remains the favorite in Group C, retaining AS Monaco striker Radamel Falcao, River Plate striker Teofilo Gutierrez, AS Monaco midfielder James Rodriguez, and Atalanta defender Mario Yepes and West Ham United defender Pablo Armero, who's of African descent but not an imigrant by our definition.

Group D: Italy, Uruguay, England, Costa Rica 

Uruguay

Facing even odds in the real cup, Uruguay remains even with Italy in the no-immigrants tourney. The South American side keeps Liverpool striker Luis Suarez, Paris Saint-Germain striker Edinson Cavani, and West Bromwich Albion defender Diego Lugano.

We'll also let them keep Diego Forlan, whose father and grandfather both played for Uruguay, though they're technically of Basque descent.

Atletico Madrid winger Cristian Rodríguez has roots in Spain, and Sao Paolo striker Alvaro Pereira and Palermo striker Abel Hernandez have roots in Africa, but none of them meet our definition of immigrants. However, they do lose Galatasaray goalkeeper Fernando Muslera, who was born in Argentina.

Italy

Co-favored to win the group in the no-limit cup, Italy loses less than you might expect in the no-immigrant version. It keeps Juventus defender Giorgio Chiellini, AC Milan midfielder Riccardo Montolivo, Roma midfielder Daniele De Rossi, Juventus midfielder Andrea Pirlo, and Roma striker Mattia Destro.

However, the Italians do lose a few guys. Fiorentina forward Giuseppe Rossi was born in New Jersey. And AC Milan striker Mario Balotelli, born in Palermo, has parents who immigrated from Ghana.

Group E: France, Switzerland, Ecuador, Honduras

France

The favorite in the real Group E, France can hardly field a team without its immigrants, losing a whopping 12 players from its 23-man squad. It retains a shot at getting out of the group with Bayern Munich winger Franck Ribery and Arsenal striker Olivier Giroud.

It drops Arsenal defender Bacary Sagna and Liverpool defender Mamadou Sakho, whose parents were born in Senegal, and Manchester United defender Patrice Evra, who was born there himself.

It also loses Real Madrid defender Raphael Varane and Queens Park Rangers striker Loic Remy, both of whom have fathers who were born in Martinique; Paris St.-Germain midfielder Blaise Matuidi, whose father was born in Angola; and Porto defender Eliaquim Mangala, whose parents were born in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

France also gives up Lille OSC midfielder Rio Mavuba, whose father was born in Zaire and mother in Angola; Newcastle United midfielder Moussa Sissoko, whose parents were born in Mali; and Marseille midfielder Matthieu Valbuena, whose father was born in Spain.

And don't look for as much flash without Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema, whose father was born in Algeria. France also loses Juventus midfielder Paul Pogba, whose parents were born in Guinea. 

Switzerland

“No more immigrants” Switzerland loses about two-thirds of its players if it goes all-Swiss, all but erasing its chances of getting out of Group E. It keeps Grasshopper Club Zurich defender Michael Lang, FC Basel defender Fabian Schär, and Juventus defender Stephan Lichtsteiner. But it loses a lot more. Eintracht Frankfurt midfielder Tranquillo Barnetta is of Italian descent and holds dual citizenship.

Napoli midfielder Gokhan Inler's parents were born in Turkey. Borussia Monchengladbach midfielder Granit Xhaka, Napoli midfielder Blerim Dzemaili and Bayern Munich midfielder Xherdan Shaqiri were all born in the former Yugoslavia, while Real Sociedad striker Haris Seferovic and FC Zurich striker Mario Gavranovic are of Bosnian descent.

Ecudaor

Wee little Ecuador has a slim chance of getting out of Group E in the real cup. But its odds look much better against the almost-empty rosters of France and Switzerland in the no-immigrants version.

Monarcas Morelia winger Jefferson Antonio Montero hails from one of Ecuador's indigenous tribes. Al-Jazira striker Felipe Caicedo, Al-Hilal midfielder Segundo Castillo, Santa Fe midfielder Edison Mendez and Tijuana striker J. Ayovi don't meet our definition for immigrants, although all are of African descent. 

Group F: Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Nigeria, Iran

Argentina

A strong favorite in the real Group F, Argentina leads the group in the no-immigrant tourney, too. It keeps Barcelona striker Lionel Messi, Barcelona midfielder Javier Mascherano, Real Madrid winger Angel Di Maria and Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero.

However, Argentina loses Napoli striker Gonzalo Higuain, of Basque descent, who was born in France. On the plus side, it picks up Juventus striker Pablo Osvaldo from Italy.

Group G: Germany, Portugal, USA, Ghana

Ghana

Ghana keeps Al Ain striker Asamoah Gyan, Rubin Kazan midfielder Wakaso Mubarak, Vitesse Arnhem striker Christian Twasam Atsu, AC Milan midfielder Sulley Muntari and Juventus midfielder Khadwo Asamoah, and Rennes defender John Boye, not to mention AC Milan midfielder Michael Essien. 

The team also keeps Schalke midfielder Kevin-Prince Boateng and gets back Bayern Munich defender Jerome Boateng from Germany — their father was born in Ghana, though the brothers were born in Berlin. The same goes for Marseille striker Jordan Ayew, whose parents were born in Ghana though he was born in France. As a final bonus, Ghana picks up AC Milan striker Mario Balotelli, whose biological parents were born in Ghana, from Italy. It also gets Danny Welbeck, whose parents were born in Ghana, from England.

Germany

The Germans get our moral support in honor of their recent decision to allow dual citizenship to the children of immigrants. But their football team doesn't look too good without the guys that the red-faced chap at the end of the bar still calls “foreigners.”

Germany keeps Arsenal defender Per Mertesacker, Bayern Munich midfielder Thomas Mueller, Bayern Munich midfielder Toni Kroos, Bayern Munich midfielder Mario Goetze, and Chelsea winger Andre Schuerrle. They retain Schalke defender Benedikt Howedes, whose parents were born in Germany though the family has roots in Norway.

But they lose superstar Arsenal midfielder Mesut Ozil, whose father was born in Turkey; Real Madrid midfielder Sami Khedira, whose father was born in Tunisia; and Lazio striker Miroslav Klose, who was born in Poland.

They'll also take the field without Bayern Munich defender Jerome Boateng, who has roots in Ghana; Sampdori defender Shkodran Mustafi, whose parents are Albanians born in Macedonia; and Lukas Podolski, who was born in Poland. 

Portugal

Lesser-known colonizer Portugal keeps Fenerbahce S.K. Defender Bruno Alves, Real Madrid defender Fabio Coentrao, Valencia defender Ricardo Costa, Besiktas J.K. forward Hugo Almeida and Lazio striker Helder Postiga. But it loses Real Madrid defender Kepler Laveran Lima Ferreira, aka Pepe, to his native Brazil.

It also drops Luis Carlos Almeida da Cunha, aka Nani, who was born in Cape Verde, and FC Porto winger Silvestre Varela, whose parents were born there. Lucky for them, Real Madrid striker Cristiano Ronaldo, whose great grandmother was from Cape Verde, isn't an immigrant by our rules.

United States

Team USA gets to keep San Jose Earthquakes striker Chris Wondolowski — half Native American, with a grandfather from Poland — as well as Seattle Sounders midfielder Clint Dempsey and Stoke City defender Geoff Cameron.

However, the melting-pot nation loses Sunderland striker Jozy Altidore, whose parents were born in Haiti; Tim Howard, whose mother is Hungarian; AZ striker Aron Johannsson, who was born to Icelandic parents in Alabama; and Rosenborg midfielder Mix Diskerud, who was born in Norway.

We'll also take away LA Galaxy defender Omar Gonzalez, whose parents were born in Mexico, and Nantes midfielder Alejandro Bedoya, whose father was born in Colombia.

Finally, we'll take back Hertha defender John Brooks, Nurnberg defender Timmy Chandler, Bayern Munich winger Julian Green, Besiktas midfielder Jermaine Jones, and 1899 Hoffenheim defender Fabian Johnson — all of whom were born in Germany or have a German parent.

Group H: Belgium, Russia, South Korea Algeria

Russia

Bookies say Russia has an outside chance of winning the real Group H. But Vladimir Putin's men become the odds-on favorite when we take away the immigrants. Among scorers, the Russians keep Zenit St.

Petersburg striker Aleksandr Kerzhakov, Dynamo Moscow striker Aleksandr Kokorin, FC Krasnodar midfielder Roman Shirokov, Zenit St. Petersburg midfielder Viktor Faizulin, Zenit St. Petersburg midfielder Igor Denisov, Spartak Moscow midfielder Dmitriy Kombarov and Spartak Moscow midfielder Denis Glushakov.

We'll also let them keep CSKA Moscow midfielder Alan Dzagoev (3 goals). Strictly speaking, Dzagoev is of Ossetian descent — his parents moved from Georgia in 1989. But we've seen Putin without his shirt, and we don't want another Crimea-type situation.

Belgium 

A strong favorite to win the real Group H, Belgium loses some stars without its immigrants. Among scorers, the Belgians keep Vfl Wolfsburg midfielder Kevin De Bruyne, Chelsea midfielder Eden Hazard, Tottenham Hotspur defender Jan Vertonghen and FC Porto midfielder Steven Defour. But they lose a lot.

The fathers of both Manchester City defender Vincent Kompany and Everton striker Romelu Lukaku were born in what is today the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Everton striker Kevin Mirallas' father was born in Spain. Marouane Fellaini's parents were born in Morocco. FC Zenit Saint Petersburgmidfielder Axel Witsel's father is from Martinique. And Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Mousa Dembele's father was born in Mali.

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The 2010 World Cup generated $3.66 billion in revenue for FIFA while expenses equaled just $1.30 billion according to their own financial documents. That is a nice little profit of $2.36 billion, up 7.3% from 2006 and 22.8% from 2002.

If the 2014 World Cup shows a similar rate of increase, FIFA will profit approximately $2.61 billion from the tournament.

Of the nearly $4 billion in revenue from the 2010 World Cup, 65.9% came from the sale of television rights ($2.41 billion) and 29.3% came from the sale of marketing rights ($1.07 billion). The remaining revenue came from the sale of hospitality rights and licensing rights.

The biggest costs for FIFA included $348 million in prize money for the participating countries and member associations, followed by $326 million to South Africa for their organizing committee and a World Cup legacy program, and $214 million in TV production costs.

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During the second half of Uruguay's win over England at the World Cup, Uruguayan midfielder Alvaro Pereira was injured when his head collided with the knee of an English player.

Even though he appeared to be momentarily unconscious, Pereira remained in the game, in large part because FIFA's antiquated substitution rules do not allow teams enough time to properly evaluate players for concussions.

This particular case is a perfect example.

It was clear to anybody with access to a replay just moments after the collision that the contact with Pereira's head was not only severe but that he was clearly out of it as he laid on the pitch.

Pereira was able to get up and walk off the field, but he was clearly woozy and a person who appeared to be the team doctor immediately signaled to the sideline that a substitute was needed.

But once Pereira saw the signal for a substitute he immediately argued that he was staying in the game, saying no to both the doctor and to the coaches.

And here is where soccer has its biggest problem when it comes to head injuries.

The team's manager must make a decision right now, and he has three choices.

1. He can insert a substitute and lose one of his best players for the rest of the match. In soccer, once a player is replaced by a substitute he cannot re-enter the game.
2. He can have the player evaluated for a concussion. But this forces a team to play with only 10 players until the evaluation is complete. According to the NFL, a proper concussion evaluation takes a minimum of eight minutes and includes a test where a player must recall a specific word five minutes later.
3. He can just trust his player and put him back in the game at the next dead ball.

The Uruguayan manager opted for the third option, reinserting Pereira without a proper concussion evaluation. Most managers would make the same decision.

Former American national team member and current ESPN analyst Taylor Twellman was one who expressed his concern with how FIFA handles head injuries.

Any questions about Perriera being unconscious?! This has to stop FIFA. #URUvsENGhttp://t.co/VX3la5mje5

— Taylor Twellman (@TaylorTwellman) June 19, 2014

While this particular injury was a freak accident, head injuries are not rare in soccer. Concussions are actually a huge problem because of headers in general and especially when two opposing players attempt to head the ball at the same time.

The simple solution is that FIFA is going to have to allow special temporary substitutions when a head injury is suspected. Allow teams to enter a substitute while the injured player is tested along with a time limit on the return of the player (e.g. if the player is not cleared to return in 12 minutes, he cannot return).

These substitutions could still count toward the allotted three substitutes to help minimize the number of fake head injuries from players just looking for rest.

Like the NFL, a concussion crisis is coming to FIFA and the sport of soccer. Changes will have to be made that will affect the tradition of the sport. But those changes must be made.

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The question of nationality at the World Cup took another bizarre turn as Germany faced Ghana in the World Cup. During the match, brothers Jerome Boateng of Germany and Kevin-Prince Boateng of Ghana played for opposing sides and even battled each other at times.

This led to this amazing photo of two brothers battling for opposing countries at the World Cup.

This is actually the second time the two brothers have faced each other in the World Cup, having also done so in 2010.

Despite growing up in Germany and playing for Germany at the youth level, Kevin-Prince chose to play for Ghana during the 2010 World Cup when he was passed over by the German national team. The Boateng's father is Ghanaian.

The move was allowed because FIFA had recently removed the age limit for switching nationalities if the player had represented one country at the youth level. Kevin-Prince was 23 at the time.

It is no secret that FIFA's nationality rules combined with the flexibility in citizenship rules for star soccer players around the world creates some interesting situations in deciding who can represent which countries at the World Cup.

Diego Costa is a Brazilian who now represents Spain in the World Cup. Likewise, five of the 23 players on the U.S. national team are German, with four being born to fathers who were American servicemen stationed in Germany.

But all of that is less strange than seeing two brothers play for opposing countries.

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Cristiano Ronaldo, Juan Mata, Wayne Rooney, Mario Balotelli, Luis Suarez, together currently valued in the transfer market at nearly US$500 million, are playing no further part in the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

But in one respect, FIFA has reason to be happy that they all headed home earlier than expected – and that’s down to injury insurance.

The players are all employees of their club teams in the domestic leagues in which they play. Should a player be injured during the World Cup, FIFA has to pay compensation to the club for loss of the player until he has recovered. The compensation would normally be to cover the wages of the player during the recovery period.

With Rooney and Ronaldo rumoured to be on annual salaries in excess of US$25m, and the others not far behind, FIFA has been saved from a large potential payout. Because the premiums quoted for these risks are so high, FIFA has effectively self-insured.

FIFA has certain costs that are fixed in relation to the 2014 World Cup, which includes paying the national football associations of each country participating as follows:

In addition FIFA has agreed to pay clubs with players involved a total of US$70m for “borrowing” their players during the competition, which takes the total to US$476m. All these costs are fixed in nature, and have a degree of certainty attached to them.

Club Protection

But, in addition to the above, FIFA has something called the Club Protection Programme (CPP), which is effectively an insurance scheme to cover players who get injured during the tournament. FIFA prudently budgeted US$100m for this, a figure which would have proven to be too little had two of the players mentioned at the start of this article suffered career-ending injuries. The money is paid out to the clubs the players are registered with.

Historically the majority of claims in relation to CPP claims are based in Europe, with UEFA affiliated claims representing 77% of the money paid out by FIFA in 2013 to players from UEFA countries. The loss of Spain, Italy, Portugal and England so early in the competition is likely to ensure that FIFA’s CPP commitments stay within the US$100m sum it originally estimated.

In 2013 CPP payments were approximately US$37m and, of the 80 reported cases, 46% were in relation to players who ply their trade in England, Spain, Italy and Portugal. Fans and managers of players from those countries should in theory benefit from their stars having extra recovery time over the summer with a new season starting in mid-August.

At the most recent FIFA congress in June 2014 each of the 209 FIFA national football associations was promised US$750,000 and the six confederations US$7m from the profits of the tournament. This will be a financial commitment of US$199m. But the continued good news in relation to player injuries (with the exception of Italian defender Georgio Chiellini’s slightly nibbled shoulder) would allow FIFA to increase the payouts still further.

Although the amount due to the World Cup participants, clubs, national football associations, CPP and congresses comes to US$775m, FIFA still looks like reporting a surplus in 2014. With revenues of nearly US$1.4 billion in 2013, profits from the World Cup mean they should be much higher this year. And, the early exit of so many big names should give it even greater confidence of this.

Kieran Maguire does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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During the first half of Argentina's semifinals match, Javier Mascherano was wobbled and appeared to suffer a head injury when his head collided with a Dutch player while both attempted a header.

Mascherano momentarily left the pitch but quickly returned.

A similar scene occurred during Uruguay's win over England at the World Cup as Uruguayan midfielder Alvaro Pereira was injured when his head collided with the knee of an English player.

Even though he appeared to be momentarily unconscious, Pereira remained in the game, in large part because FIFA's antiquated substitution rules do not allow teams enough time to properly evaluate players for concussions.

This particular case is a perfect example.

It was clear to anybody with access to a replay just moments after the collision that the contact with Pereira's head was not only severe but that he was clearly out of it as he laid on the pitch.

Pereira was able to get up and walk off the field, but he was clearly woozy and a person who appeared to be the team doctor immediately signaled to the sideline that a substitute was needed.

But once Pereira saw the signal for a substitute he immediately argued that he was staying in the game, saying no to both the doctor and to the coaches.

After the match, the team doctor signed a statement saying he had completed a full neurological examination before allowing Pereira to return.

And here is where soccer has its biggest problem when it comes to head injuries.

The team's manager must make a decision right now, and he has three choices.

1. He can insert a substitute and lose one of his best players for the rest of the match. In soccer, once a player is replaced by a substitute he cannot re-enter the game.
2. He can have the player evaluated for a concussion. But this forces a team to play with only 10 players until the evaluation is complete. According to the NFL, a proper concussion evaluation takes a minimum of eight minutes and includes a test where a player must recall a specific word five minutes later.
3. He can just trust his player and put him back in the game at the next dead ball.

The Uruguayan manager opted for the third option, reinserting Pereira without a proper concussion evaluation. Most managers would make the same decision.

Former American national team member and current ESPN analyst Taylor Twellman was one who expressed his concern with how FIFA handles head injuries, saying "Any questions about Perriera being unconscious?! This has to stop FIFA."

While this particular injury was a freak accident, head injuries are not rare in soccer. Concussions are actually a huge problem because of headers in general and especially when two opposing players attempt to head the ball at the same time.

The simple solution is that FIFA is going to have to allow special temporary substitutions when a head injury is suspected, something already being tested in Rugby. Allow teams to enter a substitute while the injured player is tested along with a time limit on the return of the player (e.g. if the player is not cleared to return in 12 minutes, he cannot return).

To minimize abuse of the rule, these substitutions could count toward the allotted three substitutes. Another possibility is to give each team one such concussion substitution per match.

Teams will still abuse the rule, but this is a risk FIFA must take for the safety of the players.

Like the NFL, a concussion crisis is coming to FIFA and the sport of soccer. Changes will have to be made that will affect the tradition of the sport. But those changes must be made.

Join the conversation about this story »

The first post-World Cup FIFA rankings are out.

As a disclaimer, the system FIFA uses to make these rankings is flawed to the point of irrelevancy.

It does show us some general trends though:

• Some European giants were the biggest losers. Spain went from 1st to 8th, Portugal went from 4th to 11th, England went from 10th to 20th. Italy, Russia, and Switzerland also fell at least three spots.
• Since it was the World Cup of CONCACAF, it's no surprise to see three North/Central American teams in the top 18 (U.S., Costa Rica, Mexico).
• The U.S. fell two spots after making it to the Round of 16. Bosnia and Herzegovina climbed two spots after getting eliminated in the group stage. FIFA rankings are funny like that.

The top 25 (via FIFA.com):

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