AKA Sports Washing

Sports washing is when an individual or state uses sports to burnish their reputation. It doesn't matter if you're a Russian oligarch or authoritarian country. The concept goes back much further like the bread and circuses in ancient Rome. John Oliver explained so bloody eloquently the question this all distills down to. There's never been anything more complicated than balancing your love for the World Cup with the organisation that produces it, right? I guess the really brutal honesty is that I'm probably going to watch and enjoy a World Cup that shouldn't be happening there. I don't know what that says about me as a human being, but it's not great. We've done two stories on