It seems like every sports journalist in the world is weighing in on the FIFA scandal, to varying degrees of success/entertainment value. We sorted through the rubble to find the essentials, the best work from the best voices on FIFA and all of its awfulness. In light of Sepp Blatter's resignation, these five pieces will help to understand why he did what he did.
5. Stefan Fatsis. In this piece for Slate, Fatsis does a great job explaining America's role in the whole ordeal.
4. Oliver Brown. The chief sports feature writer for The Telegraph explains just how bad of a person Sepp Blatter's sidekick, Jerome Valcke, is. The first paragraph of this article is amazing.
3. Charles P. Pierce. Pierce, a staff writer for Grantland, is, in my opinion, the best sportswriter in America (I can't speak to other countries because I only know English). He's thoughtful, well-informed and reasonable. And he knows his way around a sentence. Basically: when he writes, we should all read.
2. Brian Phillips. Grantland again. Phillips is the only writer they have who can match Pierce sentence for sentence. He also has been writing about how awful FIFA is for quite a while and is one of the better-informed people writing on the scandal. Read if you like the image of Sepp Blatter being compared to a cat that swallowed an "Adidas-branded carary."
1. John Oliver. The Last Week Tonight host went in on Blatter and FIFA and was even angrier than the first time he spent a segment on them, just before the World Cup. John Oliver is a national treasure, despite being technically from a different nation.
Note: now that Blatter has resigned, Oliver is actually going to do all that stuff.
Bonus: here's a video of Man in Blazer Roger Bennett calling FIFA a "corrupt sausage."
Contact The18 Staff Writer Sam Klomhaus at Klomhaus@The18.com or follow him on Twitter @SamKlomhaus
