Naseem Zeitoon/Reuters
Not so long ago the idea of merely setting foot in the United States would have filled FIFA’s leaders with dread. The idea of holding an important meeting there would have been rejected as absurd.
That was because a sprawling corruption indictment by the United States Department of Justice in 2015 had threatened the very existence of FIFA, the governing body of world soccer. The investigation had produced the dawn arrests of more than a dozen top power brokers in the sport and eventually led to the ouster of some of the organization’s most powerful figures.