Lise Klaveness was only a few weeks into her post as the president of Norway’s soccer federation last year when she decided to start saying the quiet parts out loud.
Rising from her seat among the delegates at FIFA’s annual congress in Qatar, Klaveness strode purposefully to the raised dais where officials had, for the better part of an hour, offered little beyond perfunctory comments about the men’s World Cup that would be staged in the Gulf country later that year. There had been talk of procedural matters, and updates on the financial details.
Klaveness, one of the few women in soccer leadership, had other themes on her mind. Addressing matters that for years had dogged FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, she spoke about ethical questions, about migrant workers, about the rights of women and gay people. She spoke of the responsibility of the (mostly male) officials in the room to ensure that soccer hold itself to a higher moral and ethical standard when it chose its leaders and the sites for its biggest competitions.
By the time Klaveness had finished about five minutes later, she had, in typically direct style, issued a challenge to FIFA itself.
But she had also made herself a target.
Almost as soon as she had returned to her seat, an official from Honduras asked to…
