Why are there additional minutes to a football game?In any football match, the referee (ref) controls the clock and decides when the game ends. The situation lies entirely in his hands. A few years ago, a new rule was created, allegedly to enhance transparency according to FIFA. Under the arbitration improvement, the ref must announce how many minutes he will add to the game. He can do so at around the end of the regular 90-minutes. If 91 minutes have lapsed, he can announce 2 more minutes and whistle 30 seconds later, leaving him almost as broad a discretion as before the new rule. Refs have that much control. Why give them so much power? A friend recently explained it to me: “if time control was transparent, there couldn’t be any corruption! Offsides exist exactly for the same reason.” Corruption is an inherent part of football, and this, not only in Italy. It exists because those at the top benefit from the “rent-seeking opportunities” they generate with such discretionary rules. If a referee can somehow control a game outcome, earn “a little something for the week-end” from a club manager and get away unnoticed, chances are he will. Those at the top of the federation are all connected to this machinery as they control the rules and sometimes the results. Last year Juventus’ bribing scandal is one patent example.
Trapped into poverty
All around the world, people with power create these rent-seeking opportunities. In Mozambique, it takes 153 days to register a new business[1] because of forms, bureaucracy and complicated procedures, also known as red tape[2]. By greasing a palm, it takes much less. The pockets of civil servants, from the police officer to the cabinet minister who created the self-interested policy, get filled with “speed money”. Other examples of bribe-opportunity-oriented policies include price controls, multiple exchange-rate systems and trade restrictions. In Cameroon, tariffs are around 60%. No wonder importing firms prefer to give “envelopes” to customs agents rather than to import officially. Basically, a person who has discretionary power will try to extract money.
The consequences of such inappropriate government behaviour can destroy all the motivation of well-intentioned citizens. It hassles them every day and lets them know that there is no point in going to university to get a good job (it all works under the table) or to invest in a new business as you’ll get harassed and all your benefits will be taken by drunk police officers and the President’s sons. Why bother? Instead, they stay in the unproductive informal sector running small underground firms or subsistence farming.
How could we get these corrupt officials to act honestly? We give them incentives to do so. For instance higher salaries so that they don’t need to steal from their population or benefits for good performance, such as health insurance and paid-vacation time in Mauritius. Such a meritocracy could discourage bad behaviour. The other necessary ingredients are detection and punishment mechanisms, in the form of a free press and NGOs that will investigate government operations as well as strict prison sentences and fines. But since those who could put this structure in place are those who benefit from the status quo, nothing changes. This endogeneity of problems is known as a poverty trap. Poor countries are the most corrupt. It is one explanation of why poor countries are poor, not why they excel at football.
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