World Cup Soccer: The Real Match Won't Be On The Field

The 16th World Cup opens in Paris on June 10, and France will be throwing a monthlong party. It has spent $1.5 billion to rebuild stadiums and construct new train lines for the more than 2.5 million fans expected to attend. And with a projected 37 billion TV viewers (cumulative), most of the planet will be watching.

But perhaps the most important match for professional soccer will take place two days before the games begin, at a conference center on the Left Bank. The players who will square off are hardly lithe 20-year-olds. Joseph Sepp Blatter and Lennart Johansson are slow-footed, round-bellied sixtysomethings vying for the presidency of the Federation Internationale de Football Assn. (FIFA), the powerful organization that controls global soccer.