SHOULD those who are normally less than gripped by the "beautiful game" be concerned about the latest scandal to wrack its governing body, Fifa?

Even those who skip over the Star's excellent sports pages will know of it. 

It certainly reads like the start of a Tarantino movie. Swiss plain clothes police entered the five-star hotel in Zurich where the annual meeting of Fifa was going on and arrested six Fifa executives.

Meanwhile, in New York City, the Justice Department revealed a 47-count indictment against 14 defendants - including Fifa personnel - on charges of racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering.

The scandal is, however, merely the latest in a long line of instances that display the naked greed and self-centred mendaciousness of developed capitalism.

Recent decades have seen commercialisation of sport run riot. Regular fans have largely been priced out of attending their own clubs. 

Deals between Fifa, advertising and marketing groups, and broadcasters for the television rights to air major international football tournaments, including the World Cup, are now big business. Public service broadcasting rarely gets a look-in.

For the last quarter of a century, bribery of international football officials to the tune of hundreds of millions has become routine.

But the investigation now going on will not focus on the awarding of the World Cup in 2018 to Russia and 2022 to Qatar, which was so publicly beset with vote-buying and hints of corruption.

The indictment deals with alleged fraud and corruption in Concacaf and Conmebol, the sub-continental organisations that run North and South American football.

Individuals so far arrested come from the Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Guilty plea deals have been reached with four individual and two corporate defendants. 

One, Jose Hawilla, the owner of a Brazilian sports marketing conglomerate, will forfeit the equivalent of almost £100 million as part of the deal.

Not named in the case is Fifa president Sepp Blatter, who easily survived re-election as head of a body that has more member states than the UN.

It's not hard to see an appalling parallel to the way the kleptomaniacs of global capitalism almost wrecked the global economy in 2008 through massive fraud.

Few financiers have paid much of a price. At least, mythically, Wall Street bankers threw themselves off skyscrapers in 1929.

What seems to have triggered the US state's intervention here is that several of Fifa's partners and sponsors have raised concerns, including Coca-Cola, Adidas and Visa.

Plus, the relative unpopularity of "soccer" in the US makes it an easier target than, say, American football or baseball.

Prince Ali Bin al-Hussein, son of King Abdullah of Jordan, was one of a number of Fifa officials to call for investigations into allegations of corruption surrounding Russia and Qatar's bids for the 2018 and 2022 Fifa World Cups.

Russia sees some of this as inspired by US hostility to them.

Part of the puzzle is the timing of the arrests and whether it was connected to Hussein's challenge to Blatter for the leadership of Fifa.

The prince was educated at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. His campaign was largely backed by the European confederation, Uefa.

Like a transnational corporation, Fifa has become a shadow nation state that plunders the popularity of the commodity in controls. 

World Cup host bidding nations have been obliged to agree special and confidential laws, including blanket tax exemption for Fifa sponsors, and limitations on workers' rights. Despite claims to the contrary, little lasting economic benefit to the peoples of host nations has transpired.

The institutional gravy train that is Fifa has seen official payouts to its governing bodies and Blatter run into millions and doubled in a single year. Millions in secret bonuses are paid following major events. 

Fifa has revenues of over £850 billion for a declared net profit of $47 million, and cash reserves over nearly £900bn. So rich is it that it was the prime funder of a £16m film, United Passions, in which Hollywood star Tim Roth plays Blatter. It's time this movie reached The End and sport was handed to those who love it for itself and not for the riches they can make from it.